Well, it’s now Wednesday afternoon and I’m still buzzing from Sunday evening, when I played a gig with The Diarys for the first time in months.
A bit of background….
Rich (who pretty much IS The Diarys in that he writes and sings all the songs) moved from the UK out to Spain last October and this was his first trip back since then. So there’s been a definite lack of Diarys gigs over the last three or four months and this one was well anticipated.
Rich, Stu & Giles came over to my house for rehearsals on Thursday evening and Friday afternoon, where we re-acquainted ourselves with a bunch of the old material and learnt four or five of Rich’s new songs. After a break for a delicious home-made curry, we ran through the entire set, which looked like this….
So, we had 22 songs, including just one cover (Rihanna’s “Umbrella” - very Live Lounge!), so we were all set.
Late Sunday afternoon I arrived at the venue (The House on The Hill in Sevenoaks) and the guys were already there setting up. Even at 5pm, the place was starting to fill up and there was a real buzz of anticipation in the air. We did a quick soundcheck, running through the new songs one more time and by 7:30, the stage was set…
Opening the show were Nick and Henry, otherwise known as “Walking on Sunday”. The played a great set of a mix of originals and covers, including a brilliant version of “Hit Me Baby One More Time”. Nick has a great, soulful rock voice, underpinned by some sweet guitar playing from Henry. I’ll definitely be checking the guys out again and hopefully getting them along to play a set at Fishbowl Acoustic at some future point.
Nick & Henry - Walking on Sunday
By 8pm or so, the place was packed out and it was our turn to take to the stage. I must admit, I was a bit nervous and my fingers felt quite shaky as playing with The Diarys is always quite a big deal for me.
But I needn’t have worried, it was a great crowd. Rich’s new songs (Shadow Man, Secrets, You Do and Cherish) went down a storm, so well in fact that we played them all again. And “Umbrella” was definitely a great choice of cover, we played that one twice too!
Towards the end of the evening (on about the third encore I think), a chap called Roland got up onstage with a trumpet and jammed along to “Kids & Dogs” and “Mainstream” (yep, we played those two twice as well!). And to top things off, when we finished, my lad Finlay (who’s only 10) got up on the drums and jammed with Roland on the trumpet! An excellent end to a fab night.
Lots more pics of the evening on my Flickr page.
