COMMENTS/FURTHER
INFORMATION
Submitted by Frank Lay.
First of all,
and rather disappointingly, Bruce only played for about one hour, encores
included. That was due to the fact that he was part of
a triple bill with Ron Sexsmith and Stefan Stoppok. It was three hours
of music in all, but I definitely would have liked more Bruce. Just 10
songs makes it one of the shortest gigs I've ever seen.
He played, as on the previous European gigs, an acoustic set together with
Julie Wolf on keys, backing vocs and accordion.
The sound was a little bit fuzzy at the beginning, the keyboards producing too much bass, but that got better later on. When somebody requested Wondering Where The Lions Are, Bruce briefly commented that there are only about 25,000 lions left in Africa, "which seems a ridiculously low number — so if you're wondering where they are, you'd better do that quickly, or there might be none left."
Many songs from the new album were played, and it was a special treat to hear The Whole Night Sky, which as far as I recall was at least partly written in Cologne.
Ed Osborn contributes:
The bill was split evenly between Bruce, Stephen Stoppok, and Ron Sexmith, each getting about an hour of stage time. This resulted in what seemed like a short set from Bruce, though in reality it ran about 70 minutes. The set was strong, if a bit routine, throughout.
He and Julie Wolf only really hit high gear for the encore which was soaring and detailed at the same time. I was hoping for an unlikely performance of Badlands Flashback, the guitar and keyboard setup for this part of the tour seems perfect for it, but it was not to be.
I was also sorry not to have heard a longer set or have a full backing band present, but Ron Sexmith's performance more than made up for it. Hopefully one day he, like Bruce, will have twenty-some albums of material for us to hear.
One of the Manzer guitars that Bruce used has some writing along the side. After the set, I took a quick look at it and could make out the words, "there is nothing left to lose." There was also a small drawing and some longer texts both in English and French that I couldn't quite read. Any one know what these are?