december 2012

Juliana & Evan

Excuse me while I kind of pseudo-tweet this one - really needed a change of style

Fall of 2012 is approaching and suddenly a crazy amount of Juliana shows are announced - seems too good to be true!

Well not exactly Juliana solo shows - but either US shows playing bass with the Lemonheads or Juliana & Evan shows taking place on other continents

Hey - Juliana & Evan in Berlin - sounds cool I'll go with that

Too good to be true indeed - she ends up pulling out of the Lemonheads shows and also cancels some of the European gigs

Berlin is cancelled so now what? Oh well - the UK part of the tour is still on so London it is instead

Royal Festival Hall is the larger sister venue of Queen Elizabeth Hall where I saw Juliana in 2008

Capacity 2500 instead of 900 - thinking of the only half filled Queen Elizabeth Hall there's no way that this one will come close to selling out

Outside it's Christmas:

Really nice preshow meetup with fellow hardcore fans Lieve and Craig (and Craig's friend)

Lieve has been doing the road trip thing - Cambridge, Birmingham and Glasgow and can fill us in with a few details

Also Charlie - another road tripper - shows up (road tripper indeed - he ends up doing the extended version continuing on to the Melbourne shows 2 weeks later!)

Once seated I realize that I've been proven wrong - they can indeed nearly fill up this venue - Evan still pulls a large crowd of loyal fans

The guy next to me though is a dedicated Juliana fan - he also attended the Manchester show

So here we go:

Considering that the majority of the crowd probably don't know much of Juliana's stuff, starting out with Butterflies seems a bit ambitious

And yes the excited screams of recognition are mostly reserved for the Evan songs - but overall a very polite well behaved audience - no talking during songs

Which is good since while the acoustics are great they do play at a rather low volume - much as was the case at Queen Elizabeth Hell 2008

Juliana is playing the odd Vox Super Ace guitar that she found in her moms basement recently - first time I've heard her play a single coil

But she plays a mean single coil too - even does a surf style guitar solo on Brain Damage

Compared to 2 years ago they do more solo stuff while leaving the other part hanging around - did feel a bit odd at times:

Both seem to be in great vocal shape tonight

And now what - Evan suddenly introduces a saw playing guest to help with Hard Drive - works out amazing!

Never been a big fan of Candy Wrappers but tonights edition is pretty amazing

As expected Juliana is the one delivering a bit of stage banter - talks about the "gruelling 5 day tour"

I can imagine that even for just 5 shows trying to keep track of Evan can be quite a task

This is not quite fair to Evan - he does stand up and sing songs now and then:

The saw lady returns for Big Gay Heart - excellent

OK at least My Sister does get the cheers of recognition!

The Vox is a good fit for Ugly which she ends by doing the last couple of lines a capella - goose bumps!

I've heard so many performances of Baby Gets High but this one (as the first encore) ranks among the very best of them

After that there as a bit of an awkward moment when Juliana decides to leave the stage while proclaiming Evan the real star of the show

And Evan therefore wraps it all up doing Different Drum alone

Overall this has been a real cozy evening with 2 outstanding songwriters delivering their stuff in great style - so much worth the short trip to London

The day trip to Oxford wasn't bad either:


When:

December 4th 2012

Venue:

Royal Festival Hall, London UK

Setlist:

  1. All My Life
  2. Butterflies
  3. Bit Part
  4. Choose Drugs
  5. Candy Wrappers
  6. Down About It
  7. Hard Drive
  8. I Picked You Up
  9. Confetti
  10. Brain Damage
  11. Into Your Arms
  12. Pale Blue Eyes
  13. Ride With Me
  14. Waiting For Heaven
  15. Hospital
  16. It's About Time
  17. Cells
  18. Big Gay Heart
  19. My Sister
  20. Being Around
  21. Ugly
  22. Frying Pan
  23. Somebody Is Waiting For Me
  24. Shame About Ray
  25. Buddy
  26. Baby Gets High
  27. Different Drum

only everything