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Review: 'BAIRD, DAN & HOMEMADE SIN'
'London, St Pancras Old Church, 2nd June 2016'   


-  Genre: 'Rock'

Our Rating:
Dan Baird and Homemade Sin are back! The St Pancras Old Church is once more the venue for the band's 3rd-ever acoustic show and the first one was at the same venue in 2014. This time they're here on of A European Acoustic tour with a set-list that the band are still figuring out at this show which is almost like a live rehearsal in places for the rest of the tour. However, with a band as good as this that really doesn't matter.

The first set of the evening starts with them slowly feeling their way into Dunk'n'Dine as Dan gives us his order for Hash browns and coffee and lets us know there is no setlist for this tour so anything could happen. Still, Damn Thing To Be Done works well in this semi-acoustic format as Warner E Hodges' electric guitar is turned down a bit from normal and wow, it sounds great even if Warner wonders at the end about saying "Damn" in church. Oops too late!

I think Silver Little Lies was the first song where I saw Dan Mouthing the chord changes at Micke Nilsson on the bass who is the only one of them without a monitor and yet he still sounds great almost all night long. Knocked up is great fun even if the participants in the song might need to go to confession afterwards and I'm not sure if Anglo-Catholic churches like this one have a confessional or not. Either way they will be either knocked up or locked up.

Days Gone By features Warner on main vocals with Dan switching to backing vocals as the song unfolds and there is some real nice picking going on too. Moving Right Along has plenty of urgency to it like we need to avoid seeing something but then Mauro Magellan's drumming becomes more and more laid back and fluid as he seems to be having fun in a situation where he's not required to bash the hell out of the drums.

Warner and Dan had a discussion on where to put their respective capos before they did Fairground People. This sounded to me like they figured it out just about perfectly but they may argue about that still. But hey. Little Darlin' had a good plaintive edge to it for a cool little love song.

All Over But The Crying was next and featured one of Warner's best solos of the evening. He really went for it, sending the notes high up above the pulpit searching for forgiveness for whatever went wrong in the relationship. The first set closed with Railroad Steel, which chugged along like it was trying to beat some of the trains leaving St Pancras Station a couple of hundred yards behind the church.

They came back from the break fully refreshed and ready to busk a version of Roadhouse Blues as it seemed like Dan was the only one that knew the song at all and the rest of them were just guessing at it. That led into Six Years Gone that was a bit more together even if Dan was shouting the changes to Micke and also giving odd signals to the band's roadie that turned out to be a request to find his Top Hat that he'd left in the dressing room (!)

Breakdown & Cry was played for maximum emotional effect and by this point Warner was leaning back in his chair so we could see that his rather fancy snakeskin cowboy boots seemed to match his shirt pretty much. Dang Me brought the fun side out of them both musically and lyrically and they had a lot of fun with it.

Crooked Smile always goes down well and this was no exception to that rule and the party seemed to get going on Keep Your Hands To Yourself. Well what else would we do we were in church after all?

They then did the most ragged version I've ever heard of We Gotta Get Outta this Place as they had never even tried to play it together before. Not sure anyone was quite in time with anyone else but it sorta sounded OK by the end. Thin Disguise was slightly more together as at least most of the band seemed to know this one.

They were back on familiar ground with a good, slow-burning version of Two For Tuesday which came in all slow and easy and built and built to Warner's biggest solo of the night. It went down the storm it always does, by the end of it Dan was claiming that Mauro was playing like he was in the James Gang and decided they should play Funk 49 even though only Mauro and Dan had a clue as to how it should sound!! Yep he taught the band on the spot and off they went and miraculously it wasn't a total disaster.

That was followed by a long instrumental that's apparently called County Black that many musical twists and turns and sounded like a very cool jam. They then got most of us singing along on a version of Sheila which sounded as great as ever.

It was then time for another odd cover as we got a short pretty much busked version of What A Day For A Daydream the old Lovin' Spoonful classic. They could almost have been sat round a campfire playing this rather than in a church.

Dan then thanked us all and told us they wouldn't be playing any encores before closing the show with a great version of Promised Land and some of the band looked happy they were playing a song they all knew again. They received a massive ovation as expected and against Dan's wishes had to play one more song and so we got a nice (if a little ragged) version of Golden Light to send us all on our way very happy indeed at having seen another great Dan Baird show. I'm beginning to think there isn't any other kind of Dan Baird show actually.
  author: simonovitch

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