Feeling a bit sad as I headed into the Palais tonight, it was the last gig of Tour 09. What a tour it had been - the best!
It was back to the Palais to where this tour started and back to a theatre gig. It was very hard to come back to this after the great Queensland gigs.
Elly and the guys were once again support and sounded really good here, a lot louder and clearer. Obviously this venue has a lot better acoustics. She has some cool songs in her set that get the crowd going. What a shame they didn’t carry it on into Jimmy’s set. After all the excitement of last weeks Qld gigs I found the Melbourne crowd a little disappointing. The band was the same - Dario, Davey, Jackie, Rob, Punchy, Elly, Shauna and Darren and they were in fine form, awesome!! They interacted and played off each other the whole time. Dario is great at this as he moves around from one to the other encouraging each of them and bringing fun to the stage. It makes such a difference. For the first time Mark Punch moved from his spot to go across and meet Dario half way. It was Jackie’s last gig before he heads back to Berklee. Going to miss him but we know when he returns next year he’ll be even better. Jimmy was pretty damn good too, as he tried his hardest to get some response from the crowd. We were up and hoping others would follow. They did - for Khe Sanh then they were down again like stale bottles of …. The lady next to Renee didn’t even know Merry Go Round, yet claimed to be a big fan. Not sure what was up with Melbourne tonight, they can’t blame security - they actually told us to get up. We didn’t need to be told twice and nothing was going to stop us from enjoying ourselves and the awesome music. There was no break tonight which meant the night was a bit shorter. Disappointed Time Will Tell was missing when it sounds so good with Dario’s loud, excellent bass. But Jimmy was brilliant and after all the touring he’s been doing over the weeks he certainly was not slowing down any and once again gave it everything. It was a little sad when Goodbye finished up the night because it also finished up the tour. Tour 09 had come to an end. It was a fantastic tour, it had it all - a brilliant set list that included old songs from the archives, new songs from The Rhythm and he Blues album, hits and favourites, Chisel songs and a few acoustic songs. It had special guests - David Campbell, Ian Moss, Ross Wilson and Mexican harp player, Victor Valdes. It also had great support acts - Mahalia and The Soulmates, The Pictures and Elly May. Nearly all gigs were sold out too - awesome!!!
Well Jimmy, you have your work cut out now to top that!!