Damian Wilson & Adam Wakeman
Merlin Theatre,
Frome, UK

3rd June 2017

Lineage:
Church Audio CA-14 cardioids > CA-9200 > Edirol R-09HR (@24/96) >
Cool Edit Pro 2 > CDWave > TLH
Recorded front row house left

Recording, transfer & artwork by boombox

Two sets - 126 mins in total

Disc 1 - Set 1:
1. Introduction
2. She's Like A Fable
3. When I Leave This Land
4. Banter
5. People Come And Go
6. Quietly Spoken
7. Don't Think Twice (It's Alright)
8. Banter
9. Disciple
10. Introduction to 'I Won't Blame Life'
11. I Won't Blame Life
12. Introduction to 'Weirkeeper's Tale' *
13. Weirkeeper's Tale *

Disc 2 - Set 2:
1. Banter
2. Catch You When You Fall
3. Written In Anger
4. Banter
5. Fine Weather
6. Banter
7. Commune
8. Summer's End
9. Banter
10. Cold
11. Naked
12. Banter
13. Homegrown
14. Battlelines ^
15. The Evil That Men Do
16. Encore Break & Banter
17. Seek For Adventure

* - with Chris Mars on backing vocals
^ - Intro patched due to diginoise

boombox's notes june 2017:

A criminally small audience of around only fifty, many of whom had driven for miles, were treated to this wonderful acoustic show in a tiny theatre in Somerset. I'd passed up the chance to see Rob Reed doing his 'Sanctuary' show in Cheltenham in order to see one of my favourite singers and songwriters, accompanied by the highly talented Adam Wakeman, a decision I was more than glad to have taken. When the vocalist comes out before the show to say hello and personally thank everyone in the bar for coming, you know it will be a special night, and indeed it felt like a real family affair, with Damian's erstwhile bass and keyboard players in the audience, the latter of whom even got cajoled into joining in on backing vocals. For those unfamiliar with the guys, Damian has sung just about every genre of music there is all over the world, in prog rock/metal outfits like Rick Wakeman's New English Rock Ensemble, Threshold, Ayreon and Headspace, the band in which he plays with Adam, to acoustic Iron Maiden tribute act, Maiden United, and of course, the role of Valjean in 'Les Miserables' for two years. Adam has recorded both solo and with Rick Wakeman, has toured with The Strawbs and Snakecharmer and has been Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath's keyboard player since 2004. Adam has also inherited some of the raconteur gift from his dad! The setlist was mainly material from Damian's solo catalogue, which is often quite different from his band output, an Adam solo track, just over half the album Damian and Adam have just released together, and a couple of interesting covers. Lots of chatting and larking about between songs (which was often a nightmare to split out!) added to a great atmosphere for one of my favourite shows in the past year or so.

The recording overall is very good - I was so close to the stage that the sound you hear is pretty much the acoustic sound mixed with the foldback; Damian's new Lowden guitar came through very well, even though he'd knocked out a lead for the first couple of songs. Add to that a polite, attentive audience and little extraneous noise other than a chap a couple of seats away who coughed once and sneezed once means it's all very clear. I should mention too that the knocking sound you sometimes hear is Damian pacing around the stage, so you get odd bits of footsteps and mic cable slapping. There are a couple of minor warts though. The staff were very visibly watching for people taking photos and I had one of them sat in the seat next to me. As a result, it was very much 'set the recording running in the toilet and forget it'. Unfortunately, during the setbreak, a lead somehow got loosened, so there were three bouts of diginoise which had to be removed. The first bout was at the start of the second set, so was easily fixed. There was another during some dead air and then at the start of 'Battlelines', I lost about 7 seconds of the introduction. Luckily, I was able to use an unblemished measure to reinstate the section - not quite perfect, but it's better than a cut. As always, my 24bit master files are available for anyone who wants to try to improve this. I did manage a couple of sneaky pics for the artwork, but I must thank my neighbour for sending me a pic she'd managed to snap from the back when she arrived late, which is used for the front cover.

Please go out and see these guys if you can - you won't regret it. Also, go buy 'Weirkeeper's Tale' as a minimum - already one of my albums of the year.







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