Songs for the Road... in York

The David Ford gig at Fibbers on Thursday was truly fantastic.

During some of the support acts, we spotted him sitting at the merch stall. We could tell it was him because he was wearing David Ford's hat and I'm not sure he ever takes it off. It was tempting to go over and say hello but we didn't due to not wanting to look like stalkers.

He started the gig with State of the Union. He used a looping pedal to build up layers and layers of looped sound. I haven't seen anyone do that live before and it's very impressive technically. It looks like it must be really hard to get the timing right on it, but maybe it's just one of those things that looks harder than it really is. The sound was spot on throughout the evening - you could really hear every word.

After that he played loads of other songs from his two solo albums, and also a random cover of Leonard Cohen's Everybody Knows. I personally would have liked a few old Easyworld songs in there too but I wonder if he's trying to leave those days behind a little.

I spent a lot of the gig with a big smile on my face because it was just so damn good. A real master was at work.

Afterwards I bought copy of the second album on CD (I'd previously bought it off of iTunes but the CD has a couple of extra tracks on it including a cover of There Is A Light That Never Goes Out). David was still around and the man running the stall said he'd sign the CD for me if I wanted. Of course I wanted! And so we wondered over to where he was trying to have a quiet chat to some people and shyly asked if he could do the honours... he was very nice about it! Even though we probably looked like stalkers.

If you get chance to see him (the tour is proceeding at this very minute) then please check him out. Easily one of the best singer songwriters in the UK.

In other Fibbers news, it's good to see that they have reverted back to selling Guinness there.