Samantha Fish + Jesse Dayton, Barrowlands, Glasgow. Friday 20th October, 2023

An unexpected gig for me. I accepted the offer to go along because someone dropped out. I wasn't familiar with her tunes except for a few streams on Amazon Music.

We started the evening at the pub, The Sir John Moore, where we table shuffled, like everyone else, to accommodate our party. The food was good, the (soft) drink was cheap and the company was great.

Then I drove across town to find a parking bay near the Barrowlands. Plenty of choice. The venue was the quietest I'd ever seen it. Usually, the long bar is open at the side but tonight that whole area was cordoned off with barriers and curtains. Instead, Sam's Bar (the small one near the upstairs doors) was open. This also meant the trestle table sites where sweets and soft drinks were usually sold were absent. Tonight's patrons were on the mature side, unlikely to trouble the Consumer Division of Just for Men (mostly grey or bald). With plenty of space, we took up our position in the middle/left of the dancefloor.  

It did get busier but not a sell-out.

The support act was The Commoners. Their website describes them as "possessing a sound tapped from the oaken belly of a whiskey barrel, (they) are a 5-piece Roots/Rock outfit from Toronto, Canada. I was unaware of their work but found them rather excellent. They looked like they'd time-travelled from the mid1970s, with their hippy clothes and facial hair, but I  enjoyed them so much I streamed their album on the way home. The following day, I was surprised to hear them again, being played on the Planet Rock Weekend Breakfast Show (I was in the shower at the time, thinking there's another band that sounds like The Commoners). Bob bought one of their T-shirts (design as below) and Alex bought their CD, which is great for a support act, previously unknown to us. 

 

By the time the main act took the stage, the dancefloor was still spacious (except in front of Bob where one long-haired bloke and his girlfriend decided to slide in just before the lights went down). 

From the start, Samantha Fish, dressed in a black leather jacket and gold spandex flares, looked uncomfortable with her sound, often fiddling with her earpiece and gesturing to the engineers to up it. Her vocals reminded me of a cross between Amy Whitehouse and Dolly Parton. She's an accomplished guitarist with a great presence on stage and this tour was to support her album with Jesse Dayton, a musician/actor/record producer from Austin, Texas. He was pulling the cool dude vibe, dressed in black, firing up his guitar chords.

But...     

The combination of Sam and Jesse didn't quite work. Having the two up front diluted the performance rather than enhancing it. His guitar playing is good but not outstanding, compared to Samantha's. He played twiddly bits while Sam soloed which was distracting, as if he wanted to show off what he could do too. When Jesse was front and centre, it felt like a different concert. I preferred it when Sam was leading.  

Overall, the night was okay. The worst bit was the drive home in the rain with the M8 shut, having to find our way home through the Southside.    

Setlist

Kick Out the Jams (MC5 cover)

Deathwish

Feelin' Good (Little Junior’s Blue Flames cover)

Hello Stranger (Barbara Lewis cover)

Brand New Cadillac (Vince Taylor & The Playboys cover)

Settle for Less

Bulletproof (Tangle Eye Mix) (Samantha Fish cover)

Down in the Mud

No Apology

Trauma

I'll Be Here in the Morning (Townes van Zandt cover)

Baby's Long Gone (Jesse Dayton cover)

Lover on the Side

Dangerous People

Supadupabad

Flooded Love

Rippin' and Runnin'

I Put a Spell on You (Screamin’ Jay Hawkins cover)

7 and 7 Is (Love cover)

Riders

Encore:

You Know My Heart

Goin' Down South (R.L. Burnside cover)

Ticket Price: Face value £25 plus £3.25 fees. 

The 1970s is missing a New York undercover cop

Deacon Blue, "All The Old 45s - The Very Best of Deacon Blue", OVO Hydro, Saturday 14th October 2023

They say parking spaces are too small for the size of cars these days. I think the same could also apply to the seats at the OVO as a generation of Deacon Blue fans expands. If the band continue to fill the venue year after year, the OVO management is going to have to replace the current seats with bigger ones. Just an observation that applies to me as much as the people sitting around me, side belly to side belly.

The place looked a sellout, every tier packed. With no support act, most people knew to get there early. I was very early, not bothered by drinking at the bar or dining on the fast food available in the foyer. I sat at my empty row, sucking a Werthers Original, flicking through Facebook on my phone wondering if any of my FB were in attendance, and then reading a book on my Kindle app. Very rock n roll. 

I was there alone, my wife hating the music of Deacon Blue with a passion. The woman seated on my left arrived with her husband, carrying two half-pint tumblers, handles conjoined. She showed me her OVO Lounge wristband and sang its praises, informing me that the Lounge had its own toilets and the service at the bar was so quick. "It's free you know, so long as you book it. We always do. The couple in front of us hadn't booked and tried to blag their way in but the staff were having none of it." I must have given her a look she interpreted as 'I think this woman is crazy' because she assured me she wasn't drunk. She informed me one of her drinks was water. She wasn't one of those who got drunk and missed half the show. She was too big a fan to do that. Deacon Blue has been an integral part of her life since she was thirteen. She asked me what my favourite song was and I picked one that I could remember (I don't really have one). She told me hers. Though she was chatty, carrying the conversation herself, with me struggling to think of anything to ask, I did actually enjoy talking with her. 

Then the band came on to perform the first set acoustically. The sound was crystal clear and while I didn't know all the songs, I still enjoyed them. The audience remained in their seats so my view was fairly good, though my photos suffered a bit from bonce creepage. 

At the interval, most of my row disappeared to the bar (wristbands). By the time the lights went down again, not all had returned. Then the 'excuse me's' started, as they filtered back. I didn't realise the last person was wanting past, thinking she was the woman who had been on my left, so sat back down. Her indignant excuse me was worthy of Steve Martin causing me to leap back up again, apologising. Obviously, I didn't vocalise my thoughts:  Waddle back quicker, next time, bitch. 

Deacon Blue went on to play another full electric set. Whether it was the old 45s, 55s or 65s, age didn't matter because the songs were timeless. Ricky's voice has a statesman-like quality: clear, precise, and note-perfect and everyone listened. He's got his moves and his stories and we love him for it. He's a Caledonian poet at heart. Lorraine was as bonkers as ever, her voice divine, her spirit demented like the music inhabited her. My view of the part of the stage where she sang was unfortunately eclipsed by a tall bloke in a baseball gap most of the time. 

The woman on my left burned out midway through the show. She'd been singing and dancing and then suddenly sat down, reaching into her handbag for a battery-operated fan. She wafted cool air at her face for a while, then left to go to the toilet and was away for a couple of songs. To her credit, she returned fully energised and continued to gie it laldy for the remainder of the show. 

The band played from 8 pm till 10.45 pm (albeit with a twenty-minute interval and a short break before the encore). What impressed me was how at home they looked on that stage. The light show, the screens, the music and the sing-a-long adulation of the huge audience gave the performance a scale that showed Deacon Blue deserved to be there. They gave us what we wanted and so much more. They might have been bigger in the eighties and nineties but they've matured into a fine outfit that wears well today. A great night!

Setlist  

Set 1 (Acoustic):

Wages Day (acapella first verse)

A New House

She'll Understand

Chocolate Girl

Cover From the Sky

He Looks Like Spencer Tracy Now

S.H.A.R.O.N.

Queen of the New Year

Raintown (James Prime, Lorraine McIntosh and Ricky Ross)

Set 2:

The Hipsters

Wages Day

Bethlehem Begins

Your Swaying Arms

I've Been Making Such a Fool / The Day That Jackie Jumped the Jail

Loaded

Your Town

On Love

When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring) 

City of Love

Twist and Shout

Real Gone Kid

The Believers

That's What We Can Do

Encore:

Peace Will Come

Dignity

Fergus Sings the Blues

Keep Me in Your Heart (Warren Zevon cover) 

Ticket Price: £71.80 inc fees from Ticketmaster (£60 face value)