A few minutes later at 8.20PM we were introduced to Sam Keeley, Brendan’s 18 year old son who treated us to some tunes. I was really impressed with the maturity of his singing & guitar playing as well as some excellent song writing! A song of note was ‘Paris Lights’ which he wrote after being in Paris for his 18th birthday. I enjoyed that he came across as being very at ease on stage & had very good stage presence. He even took a few swigs from a bottle of Heineken at various times during his set! While his set mainly consisted of original music he also done excellent renditions of Andreas Johnson ‘Glorious’ & The Kings of Leon ‘Sex on Fire’. After playing for approximately half an hour he thanked the audience & said he hoped we would enjoy Brendan.
After an interval of 30 minutes Brendan’s band took their places on stage to cheers from an enthusiastic audience. We could hear Brendan singing a few bars from ‘I’ll always be Lonely’ but we could not see him. Suddenly he appeared from the back of the auditorium & joined his band on stage to where they opened with ‘I can’t believe it’! (We couldn’t believe that this gig had finally arrived after months of waiting, especially after having tickets to a cancelled show in February of this year!)
Brendan than thanked his son Sam for opening the gig & proceeded to sing a song he wrote about him as a child called ‘Eyes of a Child’. Brendan introduced ‘Lady in the Painting’ by telling us the story of how his father was a second hand furniture sales man & that they had many second hand items at home including a painting which Brendan said had eyes that seemed to follow him around the room. Other songs of the first half included ‘Wishing’ & ‘After the Love’. ‘Take the Chains Away’ was dedicated to birthday lady Vera Anderson in the audience with her daughters.
Perhaps the best story of the night belonged to ‘Three o’clock Train’. Brendan spoke about how he used to get the 12.35 train to Dublin for meetings & he would see this man trying to woo a woman to no avail & he would hold an umbrella for her whenever it rained. They eventually got together & the last Brendan heard they had gotten married. Obviously the train times were different as Brendan explained 12.35 was a hard time to fit in a song. He promised us though that every other part of the story was true.
Just before the interval we discovered that ‘Does he really love you’ was Brendan’s highest chart entry before the first of two heart wrenching tributes. ‘This Woman’ was written in dedication to a friend who at the age of 33 died in a car crash leaving behind four young children. Her husband asked Brendan if he could write a song for her.
While Brendan left stage for a few minutes the band treated us to a rendition of Van Morrison’s ‘Moondance’. After this Brendan came back on stage & all the band members left the stage except for the keyboard player, Paul Skelton. They treated us to a song called ‘You Sleep with Angels’. This is from a forth coming musical that Brendan is writing. On first listen this came across as a beautiful song & I look forward to hearing more new songs & of course seeing the musical when it is released.
After this song Brendan started talking about when he was playing in bars when he was starting out. He described how difficult it was to be singing his heart out all evening & getting no attention until he announced the last song & then would get shouts for more! He told us how he would change his voice to catch people’s attention & then he treated us to a couple of examples including a very funny & convincing Christy Moore. One of my gig highlights was when he was using his guitar as a drum while he sang Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Cecelia’. During this song he was joined back on stage by the rest of the band.
Shortly after this he introduced us to each band member in turn. On backing vocals we had Lorraine Nolan & Olivia Mc Ternan. Darren Sweeney was on bass guitar with Nicky Brennan on lead guitar. The aforementioned Paul Skelton on keyboards & backing vocals & on drums was Aaron Masterson. There was excellent playing/singing from everyone in the band. It was a special moment when Lorraine & Brendan dueted on ‘Miss you Tonight’. Brendan personally believes that is the best song he ever wrote.
Between introducing the band & singing the duet Brendan paid tribute to Joe Cocker & sang his only cover of the night, ‘Unchain my Heart’. This song included an excellent guitar solo from Nicky Brennan. The second heartbreaking tribute was for a friend who was paralysed in an accident. Brendan sang ‘Heart & Soul’ for him. This song saw Brendan walking along the front of the audience with most of us now on our feet. Brendan sang it with passion & it is my personal favourite part of the gig.
At numerous stages during the gig people thought Brendan was about to sing ‘I’ll always be Lonely’, but he actually waited until the encore & it was definitely worth the wait sounding as good now as it did when it was first released in 1995. With the audience in excellent form Brendan ended the gig with repeating the brilliant ‘Take the Chains Away’ where he was joined on stage by his daughter. It was a special moment & left me with a warm feeling inside.
After the gig Brendan did a meet & greet with his audience, happily signing autographs & posing for photographs. It was nice talking to Darren & Nicky about the gig while we waited to speak with Brendan. I also had a few words with Sam where I told him I was really impressed with his musical maturity at the age of 18. While speaking to Brendan I told him it was great seeing him & thanked him for a wonderful evening.
While I had seen Brendan sing live years ago in Rose Earley’s in Newbridge I’d never seen him with a band & singing much his own material. As a fan of his music since the release of I’ll always be Lonely 14 years ago this gig was definitely worth going too. The music sounded amazing live & I loved hearing the stories behind the songs. Brendan & his band gave an excellent performance & the passion for what he does was plain to see. The Moat was a great little venue & I loved the intimacy of it all. I now await the release of Brendan’s new album ‘Under a Celtic Sky’ which is being released on September 29th.
No comments:
Post a Comment