A week of rehearsals for a big arena show... WoT's gig diary!

[ead]

Great thread.  Thanks so much for sharing.

[Sandypjb]

So WoT,

 

How did it all go?

[casapete]

6 hours ago, Sandypjb said:

So WoT,

 

How did it all go?

Absolutely - we need some Sting and Lewis Capaldi goss! 

[Owen]

Shhhhh, he is asleep.

[wateroftyne]

3 hours ago, Owen said:

Shhhhh, he is asleep.

 

You weren't far wrong 🤣

 

It's taking a while for me to pull myself together, not helped by having to be at work in my proper job at 8am this morning. Ouch.

 

So.. yes. Matty Healy! Sting! Lewis Capaldi! The latter two were closely-guarded secrets, and genuinely took the audience by surprise.

 

The bad news: they did self-contained performances that didn't need the house band, so I didn't get to play with them.

 

The good news: they were amazing, so I didn't give it a second thought.

 

We did two shows, each around 3.5 hours long (it isn't just music - there's comedy and that too.). We opened the show with Chris Rea's 'Let's Dance'. As well as being a bit poignant, it also captures the essence of the show and fits the band line-up perfectly. We had loads of dancers on stage, and it was a real high-energy start. From there we went into a reel called Rakish Paddy, again with the dancers aided by a quick costume change. After that, Cuddy's Cave, a beautiful musical poem... it's a love letter to the region by the wonderful Nev Clay. Over the next few hours we played songs including December 1963, I Can't Make You Love Me, Always a Woman and Hit the Road, Jack. 

 

It all went swimmingly.

 

Of course our special guests grabbed all the headlines, but that's fine by me... the charity is going to benefit massively.

 

 

Need to sleep now, 'cos we're doing it again in 2028.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here's a clip of the finale:
 

 

 

[wateroftyne]

.....aaaaand here's a whistle-stop walk from the rear of the arena, across the backstage village, and up to my little bit of the stage:
 

 

[Daz39]

I’d been thinking it’s been a while since we last heard about this; can’t believe it’s been that many years!!