This livestream gig was held to celebrate The Starry Skies’ team up with Ride Brewery for a Starry Skies beer, also to mark the release of new version of the track ‘Do It With Love’.
Warren McIntyre and his cohorts played live from the Brewery, in Cook St Glasgow, backed by several huge brewing vats (?) under the railway arches with a few passing trains adding to the sound.
This evening’s lineup of The Starry Skies (Warren on guitar, plus others on cello (Jen), fiddle (Heather), viola (Sophie) and bass/electric (John) BM thinks, apologies if the details are incorrect) started with the familiar ‘Be Kind’ and ‘Sweet Honey Blue’ – gentle love songs, with some nice backing vocals from the others. Warren’s seemingly simple approach belies the fact that actually it is really hard to compose and play country-rock songs without them being either really cheesy or copying some of the usual masters (Dylan, Willie Nelson and the rest) so fair play to him and the band, these songs stand up on their own.
After a few quips about “organising a pissup in a brewery” etc., we get ‘I’ll Be There For You’, a slight uptake in tempo and some lovely strings from Heather and the others…
‘Forgotten Dream’ came next, with complaints from Warren’s about his bad back, the price of rock ‘n’ roll – and ‘Love’s River’ both excellent low-key strummers, and John’s subtle guitar work, the strings and the female backing voices lift them up, the Leonard Cohen influence more apparent here…
‘What Will They Say’ is the next tune – and there is a warning from Warren that the beer may have taken hold a bit by this time… but no, this is one of the best performances of the set, the strings perfectly in tune and great melodic lines.
‘Do It With Love’ was next, an old track being rereleased in a slightly different form, which may keep people interested before the imminent next album release…
Last tonight was oldie ‘Here Comes The Moon’, a more muscular number with slightly more pumped up guitar from John, but still with plenty of acoustic, strings – there was a great guitar solo from John around halfway through.
And then they drank the brewery dry – probably!