What followed was spellbinding, The Matador was haunting All You Got Is a Hammer was punchier than usual with Barry giving us some unexpectedly Jazzy flourishes on the piano.Īlthough I gave it a favourable review in 2015 I didn’t remember Pretty Things which found Gretchen being joined by Kim singing harmonies tonight but vowed to seek it out when I got home … and it really is a cracker.Īs I alluded to earlier Gretchen Peters has such a large back catalogue to select from, many of us wouldn’t recognise everything on offer which happened again with Everything Falls Away (again from Blackbirds!) but many near me were singing along …. This was followed by another co-write with Northern Irishman Ben Glover Wichita which was the first and certainly not the last to feature intricate and wonderful interplay between Barry Walsh on a Steinway Grand Piano and Colm McClean on electric guitar. With barely a smile or any eye contact Gretchen and band started with the haunting Blackbirds which bizarrely, if you know Gretchen’s long and illustrious back catalogue somehow seemed highly appropriate, if you’ve really listened to the words. Now I’ve got a few versions of this song including two very different versions by Kris Kristofferson himself but none came close to the way Kim Richey delivered it!Īfter the obligatory break where we got fleeced at the bar for two pints in plastic glasses, it was back into the auditorium for the headline act. Then just when I thought she couldn’t get any better Kim told us about the first time she played The Opry and closed her set with Sunday Morning Coming Down. Wearing a slinky black velvet dress, Kim was greeted with a loud ovation as she entered the stage and went straight into a beautiful heartbreaker that I didn’t recognise but have possibly worked out to be Easy River from her 1997 album BITTER SWEET even without the marvelous story preceding it, I certainly recognised the next song Pin a Rose as it’s my own favourite of hers and now I know that it came from something Andy Sipowcz said in Hill Street Blues it takes on extra resonance too.Īt this stage I was at the front and meant to be taking photos but was transfixed throughout Come Around another older song (1999 Glimmer album) which my notes give it 3 Stars, which is amazing for a song I didn’t know.Īlthough only on stage for 40 minutes, Kim still managed to fit in a couple more introductions and send a shiver down my back via her rolling guitar licks and deeply emotional rendition of Chase Wild Horses. and that made for a palpable frisson of excitement in the bar areas before tonight’s appearance.Īs usual Gretchen’s best friend Kim Richey was the warmer upper and in my humble opinion is a singer worthy of selling out this venue in her own right rather than the 60/70 seaters she regularly fills on her solo tours. So after 26 years or so of touring the UK where she’s gone from venues like that to now selling out the Hall #2 at Sage Gateshead Gretchen Peters is retiring from touring but not recording …. I’ve probably seen Gretchen Peters in concert 5 or 6 times now so why wouldn’t I go see her on her Finale Tour?Īpparently her first appearance in the NE of England was in 1997 at the Ropery in Sunderland, where she thinks less than 20 people were in attendance and most of them were sitting in the front row tonight.
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