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Hal Ketchum in Leeds and Wolverhampton 23rd April & 27th April 2008 The first
show we attended was at the City Varieties Music Hall in Leeds City Centre.
This wonderfully intimate music hall is listed as a grade II historic
building of extreme rarity. It is also in a relatively untouched condition
retaining many of its original features, for example, the roof construction
has all its truss members still bearing the carpenters mark. The City
Varieties can trace its origins as a music hall back to 1865 when it was
known as Thornton’s Fashionable Lounge. It is known to millions throughout
the world as the home of BBC television’s Good Old Days, shown from 1953
until 1983, but still performing several weekends each and every year.
Click here for a virtual tour round the theatre from the Yorkshire Post
website. Hal was introduced onto the stage as the 71st member of the Grand Ole Opry (no raised by wolves and bound for glory this time!). The sound wasn’t right at first, Hal stopped singing and asked "Can you hear me out there?" We all shouted back "No" and he said "I can’t hear me either!" A woman in the audience shouted out, "it’s alright, we’ll just look…." Hal laughed and said he should have just brought a lounge chair out with him, but he is kind of a sucker for the sound of his own voice! Hal had brought two of his band members (the Staggering Prophets he calls them) over from the US, Keith 'Bluewater' Carper on bass guitar and Nicolas 'Nico' Leophonte on drums. Kenny Grimes couldn’t make it this year, so on lead guitar was Ivan Gillilan from Ireland, he used to play with Van Morrison. Hal’s voice was rather croaky tonight, understandable really considering he had done so many shows over the last month in Ireland. Hal talked a lot during the show, he told us that his daughter had just given birth to a 9lb 5oz baby boy on April 5th and that his son Graham and his wife are expecting another baby too. Hal says his children are 33, 30, 10, 7 and 3, which makes him a bona fide hillbilly, his kids and his grandkids are the same age! He told a tale about his grandfather, the joke about how his ex wife wanted a divorce for Xmas and that he wasn’t thinking of spending that much..! He told us about how he had been asked to write the song 'Awaiting Redemption' for a movie and they only played four seconds of the guitar solo on a truck radio during key dialogue! He told a story about a pilot who landed an airplane in a field and when asked if he needed anything, he shouted ‘we need whisky’… at that point Keith gave him a glass of whisky for his throat. Hal talked about his new CD which he recently recorded in Nashville, he cut 14 songs in two days live to 2 track. ‘The Millionaire’s Wife’ will be on it, and also ‘Yesterday’s Gone’ which he wrote about his grandfather. Hal sang a new song called ‘Invisible’ which he wrote on the day of the recording session, he said he was on the way to the studio when he saw an old fella standing there on the corner with a sign and he gave him a couple of bucks. Playlist Hal was on stage for around one and a half hours. He came back out for the first encore to sing 'Trail of Tears' on his own, then the band joined him for ‘Small Town Saturday Night’. We thought it was over then and some of us were just getting up to leave, but they came back out for one more song, ‘Sure Love’. A few people stayed behind to meet Hal after the show and he was very generous to give us his time, I should imagine he was tired out. I managed to get a few copies of the Live In Ireland DVD, sorry to the man on the stall, the DVDs hadn’t arrived when we got to the theatre so I had to go and keep asking if he had got them yet, he must have been sick of me…! Got a copy of the April issue of Maverick magazine with the feature on Hal too. The show in Wolverhampton was at the Wulfrun Hall, and it was pretty much the same as Leeds. Hal told the joke that when he was a lad, the Dead Sea was just sick! He talked about his grandfather again, how he had a good way of clearing a room, he would recite this poem ‘I love to lure the little birds with crusts of broken bread, they land upon my window sill and I smash their little heads! We also got the talking dog joke. Playlist It was nice to see Marie Crichton again in Wolverhampton, I still cherish the photo she took of me and Hal last year! Marie was named Favourite Presenter at the UK Country Radio Awards on 3 February 2008 for the second consecutive year. We waited around again after the show and Hal came out to meet all his fans, I got a t-shirt signed and took a few more photos. We had a great time both nights, and I can’t wait till Hal and the band come back again in October 2009. The photos I took have been loaded onto my Webshots Album if anyone would like to see them, and there are also a few video clips on YouTube. If anyone else out there attended any of the shows in April and would like me to add their photos on here, please email me.
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