Ipswich, Regent Theatre, 6 June 2010 - Karen and Deb go East

Picture the scene.... Saturday morning in Holmfirth and we are sitting outside the Bridge with Mike, Ann and Mark watching the octogenarian locals, in flat caps and tweed jackets, stagger in at 11am for their first beer of the day and all we look down at our table where our beverage of choice is a pint of tap water with ice apiece.... how rock and roll are we? Nightmare journey home – it all goes well to Deb’s place but then Karen can’t go through the Blackwall Tunnel and gets diverted via the 20 miles of congestion on the M25 leading to the QE Bridge at Dartford and  eventually opens the front door of her house eight miserable hours after leaving Holmfirth!

Sunday and we have things to catch up on, Deborah’s house looks like it’s been burgled so there’s tidying and washing to catch up on and Karen has a report to write/ assemble and studying to do. But soon enough with the banalities of life under our belts we are off on the road again. This time our destination is Ipswich.
If Holmfirth was HOT then Ipswich was COOL. Firstly the weather was distinctly cooler and huge dark clouds dropped copious amounts of rain on us throughout our separate journeys. It was raining when we (Deb, SeanR and Karen) met in a local pub and where we first encountered a very excited Nicky and her partner Ash. Nicky was like a cat on a hot tin roof; this was a special birthday treat for her and, whilst she’d been a fan of the man and his music for some 15 years, had never actually been to a live gig. Ash was looking forward to it but had no real expectations but we assured them both they’d have a wonderful evening.

Back at the venue we bump into SeanM and Caron and Ollie (who are as excited as Karen is about the Isle of Wight festival this coming weekend) and we take our seats – bliss – big comfy chairs and cool air-conditioning in this massive purpose built theatre in the centre of the city. Really pleased to have a brief chat to Adam Houghton who is in the audience, looking healthy and happy and still, you will be pleased to know, doing lots of music work.
The Lartey Sisters are really well received and they unveil a new song for us tonight, entitled ‘The Girl with No Name’. They are both growing in stature with each performance on the tour and are looking more and more comfortable on that big stage with each performance.

And tonight the stage is not just big, it’s enormous, with each place set for the band members, well-spaced, so we can glimpse them all from the darkness in which we sit in cool comfort (except Deborah’s cold and its wearing Karen’s fleece!).  Sean M had said to us earlier that he really likes the song ‘Faith and Virtue’ so imagine the look on his face as this is the opening number – cool! It rocks with Ashley providing shaken percussion and Steve bemoaning a ‘plastic’ nation and ‘legacies received too soon’. ‘Psychomodo’ and we are seat dancing furiously – have a quick look round and apart from Nicky, whom we met earlier we are the only ones – there is the odd nodding head but everyone else is motionless. How can this be? We watch in awe as they gather on stage around the James Lascelles Trio who is giving the keyboards an utter hammering, bathed in golden light and producing the most joyful sounds. ‘Judy Teen’ maybe this’ll make the crowd happy. Steve is smiling and urging the crowd to respond and ride with him on the carousel and eventually they do get it. We don’t care what everyone else is doing from this point onwards as we sing and dance in our seats to ‘Panorama’ which is breath taking tonight with a pace set that only he has arranged....

‘No Bleeding Hearts’ and at last we see some crowd reaction – huge applause. It’s not that their applause has been cool – far from it. It’s just the weird 'non-reaction' during the performance and to the banter that is cool – perhaps, to coin a phrase, this is because ‘it’s Suffolk, after all’.  ‘True Love Will Find You In The End’ follows and has Karen wondering, uncharitably perhaps, how many people in the audience will know how to Google Daniel Johnston? The start of the amazing ‘Mirror Freak’ sends shivers down your spine and not through the cold did this performance send a shudder from head to toe, it was spectacular, culminating only in Robbie’s mandolin, Stuart’s drums and Lincoln’s bass playing together until the finish plunges the stage into darkness.
As the lights rise for ‘This Old Man’ all the band, bar Steve, are bathed in red light with he in exquisite gold and a tale to touch anybody’s heart and the song so beautifully delivered with passion and feeling and a crystal clear sound carries out over the cool auditorium air. The acoustics are perfect; the sound some of the best we’ve heard all tour. ‘All Men are Hungry’ follows with more tinkling of keyboards from James and Stuart’s drums setting the rhythm before another belting guitar solo from Robbie. They are ablaze tonight on that stage; a fire in the cool dark night.

‘Mr Raffles’ arrives and at last some of us are having a real party and then curiously the crowd singing really starts for ‘Here Comes the Sun’ as the keyboards make the introduction, drums crash and the dual electric guitars of Robbie and Barry rip through the air – magnificent! From nowhere,a lone heckler appeared asking Steve when he was going to play in Norwich. Funny we think, that’s only just up the road – why don’t they all come here and join in the party! The heckle is sweetly and cleverly interpreted as a request for ‘The lighthouse’ which is beautiful and as dramatic as ever and ends with the spectacular violin solo from Barry once more – it’s enough to melt any cold heart.
‘Mr Soft’ is next with those excellent little drum rolls from Stuart and James pounding the djembie and once more we are dancing in our seats before Steve calms it all down once more for the title track from the new album and the impressive and earnest lyrics as enunciated by Steve of ‘Stranger Comes to Town’ along with the piano refrain, delivered so beautifully by James, bring a lump to the throat. Cool and magnificent!
Talking of magnificent....next comes ‘Sebastian’, which always was, but has again during this tour, re-established itself as a real tour de force. Lights red and green, Steve intense with eyes shut, violin and flute and all rising to such a crescendo that we feared the keyboards would crash from their stand. Finally a few others join us in giving this incredible man and his fabulous band the standing ovation they deserve.

Encore for ‘A Journey’s End’ and then ‘Make me Smile’ with initially only Karen on her feet in the whole auditorium, Deborah and the lovely lady next to her are then up too and then a few more and we are joined at our place six rows back by the ever so excited Nicky, whom Karen takes by the hand and drags down to the front of the stage to dance next to her newly found live hero. Tears of joy are streaming down Nicky’s face and even when the local ‘fun police’ (good grief this is the final song you know!) try to stop us dancing, we don’t and Nicky gets a smile and a look from the stage that she will cherish forever!

Out in the evening air we say our goodbyes to those departing immediately and the man in the foyer has managed to get us a poster apiece, except when we unroll it, it’s only one... so we decide that there’s only one deserving recipient tonight – the lovely and ecstatic Nicky. We grab the cars, Ash and Nicky and assemble at the rear of the theatre yard.
It appears we have just missed James but, one by one, the others from that wonderful band sign Nicky’s poster, as they leave, and Stuart and Barry have time for a hug and a chat with us too. We wait longer in that cool air, Nicky is hoping and praying for an audience with the Man, something that would make her night, her week, and her year, in fact, all her birthdays’ complete. She is not to be disappointed as Steve appears and is able to sign her poster and pose for a photo with her – wonderful!
We get our moment too; he makes us happy! But the night belongs to Nicky and when we ask her whether she and Ash, who are now our friends for life, would like a lift back to their car– the answer from Nicky is that ‘she’ll just fly’ – how cool was that! Fabulous! Bet she’s still up there on some fluffy white cloud as I type.....