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Eliza Gilkyson at Chequer Mead - pic 2 Eliza Gilkyson at Chequer Mead - pic3
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Robert McEntee was the support for the evening? What? Robert emerged from stage right and wandered around front stage to take care of business. He picked up and plugged in an acoustic guitar and started to play. He played well crafted songs and sang them with feeling, his face often shaded by his now trademark hat. His guitar work was good and his voice was extremely interesting with a nice laid back tone. He announced that he would be doing four or five numbers before giving way to Eliza for the main act. He performed: When The World Treats You Cold; Down Hill - Back Home; Regarding Birds; and Mouth Of The Mississippi. He went down well and then he changed mode and introduced Eliza, with who he has been touring recently. He placed the acoustic guitar that he had been playing over her head and walked back and picked up a beautiful purple Fender Stratocaster propped up to the right of the stage and they began to set up. They kicked off with Borderline and straight away we were presented with Eliza’s laid back honey coated vocals, but I fear she was suffering from a while on the road and she looked slightly tired. We didn't get the 'right up front and in your face, but gently' we normally get with her - this was more understated way - but it was just as enjoyable. I love the way she rolls her r’s. Her guitar work completed her music and there was a good rhythm and picking going on, strongly locked-in with Robert McEntee’s playing and singing. I found out afterwards that Robert had been hanging out with likes of Mark Andes (formerly of Spirit and Jo Jo Gunne and also Dan Fogelberg ( A King of his genre and from the ’70s) amongst others and anyone who hangs out with people like this is OK by me. Robert was a different person from the one who kicked off the show. He now came across as a personality all of his own, but rolled up with Tom Petty, Daniel Lanois and John Mellencamp all at once, with a little dose of the late Stevie Ray Vaughan’s guitar dexterity. All the time he was in close support of Eliza and she was plugged into that too. There were sounds coming from that Strat that whirled around the auditorium with waves that resembled the sound equivalent of silken peaches. And, imagine in the middle of one of Eliza’s songs he managed to fit in a section of Jimi Hendrix’s “Third Stone From The Sun. Tell me now, who makes a Stratocaster sound like a peal steel guitar? There’s only one that I can recall and that’s the late Clarence White of the Byrds and he made a little gizmo and upset the manufacturers of the finest Pedal Steels and bought up the patent. Now apparently there’s someone else and “he ain’t got no gizmos either. I drank every note. A wonderful friendly audience, good and friendly performers. it’s good to be amongst them. Songs Performed: Borderline, Paradise Hotel, One Man Woman, Beauty Way (A Navajo saying), Separated, Midnight Rider, Dark Side Of Town, Tender Mercies. Man Of God segueing into Welcome Back, True Companions, Wonderland, Highway 9, Coast, Hard Times In Babylon, Jedidiah 1777, Think About, Invocation of Mary (Requiem). As an encore, the end of the performance, Eliza changed the tempo entirely, and in homage to her father she, with audience participation sing two of her father Terry Gilkyson’s most successful songs, Memories Are Made Of This, Bare Necessities and the excellent Take Off Your Old Coat (Life Is A Hard Road To Travel). And d’you know what? It was all fun. Review courtesy of Bob Preece |
