Acoustic Night

I’d wandered up to Halo for Acoustic Night after getting depressed over some newspaper article saying Art is the new politics (so why are we paying politicians to do the job most artists, it seems, are willing to do for free?). It was good to see a well turned out audience and a diverse bunch of excellent performers. So I began smoking copiously and settled into the vibe.

The ever-brilliant Andi Langford-Woods was our MC for the night and got us straight into it with the literary-inspired singer-songwriter James Bunting. James reminds of Leonard Cohen but with a better voice: soft, subtle, longing songs of love.

JAMES BUNTING
David Sollors, a poet who seems to improve every time I hear him, began with polite observations that always carry a deep sense of urgent attention and then launched into a faster, ruder take on the not so ordinary life of the ‘egg shell woman’, possibly the best I’ve heard him.

DAVID SOLLORS
Barry came to the stage looking the everyman and then surprised us all with sublime slide guitar serenades.

BARRY

Annaliese has one of the most fascinating voices I’ve heard recently, somewhere between everywhere and yet very warm at heart. Her poems were equally fascinating accounts of exactly what penis-plasty and vagina-plasty is!?

ANNALEISE

Richard Lawson put in a fine effort with his flying fantasy Greek tragedy R.I.P. sung to war gone youth, and the poem Ruins 3000AD, an archaeology of the holocaust to come as food for future shamans.

I’ve seen Talkin Tekla a few times now and it’s nice to see how stories and poems can develop as they’re tried out on new audiences. He reminded us that despair leads to fear and to never steal the clothes of over-muscular AA men! He’s both hilarious and inventive.

Mark Patrick-Hill told us to watch out for devil bearing metaphors and reminded me that it’s probably better if artists do take over politics.

Andy (not Andi L-W) gave a short poem pregnant with feeling and took us into the break and I made this drawing worrying about how I was going to write all this down:

ANDY

Andi Langford-Woods kicked things off again with beautiful tension leaving us just waiting to believe.

The night’s special guest, all the way from Canada, was Mark Berube who I’ve seen before with the multi-faceted and multi-talented outfit The Fugitives. This time he was on a solo Euro-odyssey with Accordion in hand. He’s something like Bruce Springsteen meets Bob Dylan meets Jeff Buckley meets Swaziland, which is confusing of me but means I liked him a lot and you should see him for yourself.

MARK BERUBE

The ever evolving and assured Gina Briganti showed just how eclectic poetry can be with a funky punk take on rap MC’s and a heavenly take on the Jazz standard The Skylark.

Remi T gave political pontifications of social perturbations cut out of crisp air.

Ed Kean was the only Acoustic Night Virgin of the night, I think, and combined flute, vocals and guitar with the help of a pedal, into a breezy rolling performance.

ED KEAN
Then I got up and read a poem about intangible things. (SIMON LEAKE, don’cha know)
The up and coming Wilf Merttens ignited new futures with beautiful burning skylines, always good to watch.

Josie was our resident shaman for the night and got everyone clapping, singing whaaoo, whaaoo, whaaoo!

Jamie Stewart took to the stage and put in a good performance of two poems that reminded me a bit of Paralailia’s own David Johnson: kind of measured take on the profound and inane.

JAMIE STEWART

Poet and Musician Marco regaled us with tales of eco warriors and egotistical situations and how he can’t find his bender!? [I think by now I may have been a little drunk!]

Ben took to the stage claiming he was a drunk, not a poet, only to give a fine performance on Mark Berube’s accordion.

The night wound down with poet Miles Chambers love of loves poetry.

Andi then did the appropriately titled Give Thanks, which brought the evening to a close.

Bits of everyone’s words and poetry have crept in here and there in this blog I think, which hopefully creates a nice little tapestry of an evening of, as ever, excellent performances.

ACOUSTIC NIGHT STATS

AUDIENCE 45
VIRGINS 2
CANADIANS 1

Thanks to Simon Leake for the review