Monday 22 July 2013

Our First Two Gigs and Beyond!

Ceol's doors finally opened on Friday 12th July 2013 with a wonderful performance from Glasgow bluesman Alan Murphy and his new musical foil, bassist Martin Byrne from The Wirral.  This was Alan and Martin's first "proper" gig after meeting at a recent John Martyn tribute event and it augers well for the future. Playing a mixture of Alan's own material and some favourites from the repertoire of the afore-mentioned John Martyn, the pair looked and sounded as if they had been playing together for years, which given the complexity of the music, was no mean feat!

Aside from the quality of the music, we were pleased at how well the venue worked - the sound was excellent, the audience, by and large, bought into the idea that they were there to listen and closing the bar during the performance was perhaps brutal but effective!We also introduced the concept of the Telt-a-Gram which ironically was dealt to Alan's buddy Michael!

See Michael's Telt-a-Gram for more information....

We will take confidence from the  things we got right and will give some thought to the areas where we can do better. Here is Alan on his trusty Gibson SG and Martin on his amazing electric double bass.


Here's Alan's take on  Ceol: 

A great venue in a beautiful part of Scotland. The gig is very individual with it's telt-a-grams and a new, musical, don't -miss destination for west coast music. - Alan Murphy
........... and here's the view from a member of the audience:

Excellent music last night at Ceol- Alan Murphy- so much so I'm off to get tickets for tonight's guests! Well done the organisers!  - Jacqui Millar

On to Saturday 13th July and we welcomed Chris Adams and George Tucker from String Driven Thing, who played a selection of songs that literally spanned Chris's career from Mark 1 String Driven Thing through to the present day via all the essential incarnations of the band as well as Chris's solo stuff. In addition to playing some beautifully fluid lead guitar lines in a variety of styles and throwing in the occasional backing vocal, George also gave us one of his own songs, Strange, which really deserves to get out to a wider audience.  Naturally, the set contained a number of SDT anthems which worked very well in a stripped-down acoustic format and there was something right Campbeltown about the way Jack Diamond, a song about a man facing the gallows and maybe not in the best of spirits, was transformed by a section of the crowd into an anthem to the restorative properties of Jack Daniels!

On both nights, we played The Lucky Chair, which gave every person in the audience the opportunity to win a signed CD by the evening's artiste(s). Here's Chris and George with Maureen who won a copy of String Driven's "Songs from Another Country" signed by the pair of them.



Chris's verdict on Ceol?

 A gem in the making in deepest Kintyre. Great room, intimate setting, and an excellent audience - Chris Adams (String Driven Thing)
.... and here's what Jacqui thought:

 Just back from another evenings entertainment at Ceol. You can't beat a man with a guitar, or, better still, 2 men and guitars!  - Jacqui Millar

Now we look forward to our next gig on Friday 16th August featuring Steve Daggett of Lindisfarne and no doubt there will another blog about that in the not too distant.........