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SHOW REVIEW
JJ GIMOUR- PAISLEY 27TH JUNE
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Re-Hope church on Gordon Street in Paisley is a fairly new music venue where LNP Promotions recently brought the excellent JJ Gilmour to perform a solo show.
Now well into his fifth decade in the music business, Gilmour is an accomplished performer with a voice that still remains strong and articulate.
Before the main event the audience were treated to a 5 song set by a talented young singer-songwriter from Paisley called Erin Hephzibah. She really deserves a review of her own and is highly recommended in her own right, her songs are enchanting and sung in a beguiling voice accompanied by herself on guitar.
JJ Gilmour took to the stage around 9pm and immediately kicked into his first couple of songs. Although this was a solo performance, Gilmour was not alone on stage, seated to the right behind a couple of keyboards was Johnny MacKinnon who provided all other musical accompaniment.
Gilmour's set list included songs from throughout his career, there were a couple of songs by his former band 'The Silencers' , 'I Can Feel It' and 'Sylvie' both of which the audience received enthusiastically. Other songs were from his acclaimed solo albums, or songs he had written for other people,
Gilmour is a natural raconteur whose life has given him a wealth of material to draw on. An introduction is given to most of the songs played tonight, often with stories about the many famous and renowned people he has worked with over the years, but they are told without any sense of self-importance or grandiosity, and as is common for people from Scotland’s west coast, he is also adept at comedy, as was demonstrated when an audience member’s mobile phone rang during the show with a call from her son in Turkey.
The introduction to the song 'Dancing Shoes' informed the audience that it was written for a musical about the life of George Best. Gilmour explained that the phrase 'Dancing shoes' was used in Glasgow to mean a person was going out clubbing.
Of all the stories Gilmour has to tell there is perhaps none stranger than the brief time in 1996 that he fronted the popular boy band 'East 17', this was a short tenure and Gilmour himself thought it was a bad fit for both parties, but he recalled this time when he introduced a song he had written with 'East 17's' Tony Mortimer called 'Believe Me Now' which segued into East 17's 1994 Christmas number one 'Stay Another Day', delighting the audience who happily sang along.
His song 'Cowboy's Lament' that he performed in the latter part of the set was commissioned by Gilmour's former manager Miles Copeland, who wanted a song about a Cowboy and a Belly Dancer. The option to perform the song was held by ‘Kenny Rodgers’ for several years, but he died without ever recording it.
Gilmour took the opportunity to pay tribute to the recently deceased James Prime, keyboard player in the famous Scottish band 'Deacon Blue' and an esteemed member of the Glasgow music community to whom one of the set’s latter songs was dedicated.
Gilmour closed his set with his poignant song ‘Glasgow Town’ with images of old Glasgow projected onto a screen behind the stage and a beautiful spare piano by MacKinnon. It was a fitting end to the evening.
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