Luka Bloom @ De Barra's - 13 March 2008

De Barra's, Clonakilty
Thursday, 13 March 2008

Here is a belated review of a lovely, intimate gig Luka played in De Barras in mid-March. I am relying on scribbles as I write this two months later; I had hoped that, by now, the kaleidoscope of impressions, memories and emotions from my very first visit to Ireland would have settled into some kind of coherent pattern but it has not! Yet hopefully I can give you a glimpse at this gig.

Clonakilty is a friendly welcoming town and De Barras is a fantastic venue – not least because of its established reputation as a premier venue for live Irish music in an intimate setting, especially for contemporary artists. De Barras is spoilt for choice as to what artists they can get, so we punters are always the winners, guaranteed first rate music, no matter when we go or who is playing. The fact that John Spillane has a residency there on the first Thursday of every month says it all, really!

I met up before the gig with Rich who lives nearby and we got seats in the front row. The room filled slowly, reaching perhaps 100 in total, though a few seats remained empty all evening. The stage was clear of everything except sound equipment and two guitars (Rudy and, yes, Judy!) and a third (empty) guitar stand. Rich idly remarked that the guitars looked like they'd "been through the wars", then he suddenly said: "Where’re the flowers?" "Never mind the flowers," said I, "where’s the chair?!"

Because, YES, after nearly 4 years, The Man Is Standing!! :-)

What a great gig! Luka came on stage from a staircase off to the right, carrying the Martin classical guitar he has been playing the past six months, and was welcomed with huge cheers and applause. He was very happy to be playing here among his own people, as of course the audience was full of Moores and various other relations and friends. He was grinning and bouncing with energy the entire evening, really psyched up – said he’d had a bit of a rest since Celtic Connections but needed something like this gig to get back in the swing of things before performing the next Sunday at the St Patricks Festival in London, as he didn't want to "go straight from the bunker to 40,000 'nutcases' in Trafalgar Square". [I teased him afterwards for insulting Londoners... he denied he said it!! ;)]

Here are the songs Luka played, not in the correct order as I wasn’t taking proper notes and have only pieced together the first half dozen for certain:

Set list
(on the Martin guitar)
Lorelei
There Is A Time
I Love The World I’m In
I Am Not At War
Eastbound Train
Primavera
Tribe
I'm A Bogman
Peace On Earth
Look Over The Hill And Far Away [a Gerry Rafferty song with harmonica]
City Of Chicago

(on to Rudy/Judy – I didn’t note which songs were played on which guitar)
Fire
I'm On Your Side
Sunny Sailor Boy
Ciara
See You Soon
Candle In The Window
Natural Mystic
When Your Love Comes
Every Man
You Couldn’t Have Come At A Better Time [last song of main set]

Encore
(two of the Rudy/Judy songs above, don’t remember which ones)
then back to the classical guitar for the closing song of the night:
Sunday

So many new songs for me. Quite a few have featured in his live sets before but have never been recorded. My one and only previous Luka gig was seven years ago and so I hadn't heard Candle In The Window, See You Soon or Fire (which I loved). A few songs were written just in the past few months and are still being "tried out on the humanoids" - Sunday was lovely but Every Man raised goosebumps on my arms. Luka did not introduce When Your Love Comes at all so I didn’t find out until a gig later this spring that it was written in January for John O’Donohue – it simply registered in my memory as very intense and very gorgeous.

The Gerry Rafferty song also caught my attention: I grew up in the USA with Gerry Rafferty songs and must admit I hadn't heard this one before! Luka had a bit of fun getting the headgear set up to hold the harmonica to his mouth so he could blow into it and still have both hands free to play guitar – he obviously had not perfected the technique and his clumsiness was fodder for a few jokes.

I have a scribble in my notebook that Luka also played an instrumental that I’d never heard before (in addition to Peace On Earth), and I haven’t heard it since either, so don’t know what it was and haven’t included it in the set list.


(Originally published 2008 at http://www.rbergholz.net/lukabloom/review/fanreviews8.htm#130308)



The Man Is Standing
(after 4 years doing all his gigs on a stool - he said in an interview this week
"I'm ready to stand up and make some noise again").




They say 'never meet your heroes'... but he was really nice!
(well, after making me promise never to share any of the recordings I made that night!)