Shepherds Bush Empire

11/11/00

The Borderline, London

08/07/01

Whitchurch Festival

03/08/02

Venue: Shepherds Bush Empire           Date: 11th November 2000

The portents are not particularly good tonight - it's a horrible rainy night in West London, so who's going to turn out for a gig by the forgotten singer of an old 80's prog band? Well, quite a lot of people as it turns out, the Empire's a big place and whilst not quite full, there's a decent audience out to see Francis Dunnery strut his stuff.

It's clear he's not going to be doing a major rocking out session tonight; there are no drums set up on stage, just a keyboard and various (mostly acoustic) guitars. When Dunnery emerges, to roars of approval from the crowd, he has a huge grin on his face and he opens up with a bit of inspired improvised soloing, showing that the sound is great tonight, and things are looking good. He starts the opening song proper, 'Heartache Reborn', solo on acoustic guitar, but gradually his three piece band saunter on to the stage to join him; a bassist, second guitarist and female keyboard player-cum part time drum machine operator.  At the end of this first track, Francis announces that he's over his 'depressive' stage (whenever that was) and is clearly in the mood for a good time, which is good news for everyone.

Next up track wise are a couple of upbeat songs from his latest album in the form of 'Perfect Shape' and the jaunty 'Riding On The Back'. Despite his low profile over the last few years, the audience seems to know every word of these songs, and Dunnery is clearly elated at the reaction they get. After these we got the first It Bites track, an excellent stripped-down version of 'Hunting The Whale'.  Dunnery's voice and playing is full of emotion, and ably served by some excellent harmony back-up vocals and sympathetic instrumental support. Indeed, Dunnery and the band's interplay with each other is superb all night; they obviously know the material very well and appear relaxed and completely at ease with each other, with Francis and his second guitarist entering into some good-natured riff tradeoffs throughout the evening.

Following a strong new track (I think called 'The Garden of Mystic Lovers'), Francis talks about his forthcoming 'Deep Cabaret' album, and how he doesn't want to do 'the same old rock n roll bullshit', and wants to interact more with his audience.  Spotting that some of the crowd are seated on an upper floor, he declares that he wants to go up there and play them a song.  After inquiries about how to reach them, he set off through the audience, guitar in hand. However, on his way he stopped off several times to play impromptu (and truly unplugged) versions of 'Sunflowers' to each section of the crowd - busking, in other words! With much banter between audience members and Francis, and everything singing along wherever he happened to be, this was a magical gig moment that just served to endear Dunnery even more to the faithful.

On his eventual return to the stage, the band start to play what appears to be a new song, before it gradually becomes apparent that this is actually a completely reworked version of the classic It Bites' track 'Underneath Your Pillow'. Once they realise this, the audience sing along, and even sing the parts for where the guitar solo is supposed to be! Also very strong was a track on which Francis' keyboard player (Eddie?) sang vocals, very impressively.

The highlights of the main part of the set for me though was a superb version of 'Too Much Saturn' (from 'Tall Blonde Helicopter') and, the moment for which Francis finally straps on a 'proper' electric guitar, an amazing rendition of 'You'll Never Go To Heaven' with Francis' emotional vocals and blistering guitar work making the live version of this powerful epic even better than the original, in my opinion.

For the encore, Francis plays a new track, plus the downbeat and suitably late-night-sounding 'Only New York Going On'.  The night ended, as everyone knew it would, with arguably It Bites' best song, the still-excellent 'Still Too Young To Remember'. Once more the audience sung along to every last word, and gave the band a thunderous and well-deserved show of appreciation at the end. Francis really does look bowled over, and says that when they were playing in July in the UK the band was being booked into tiny venues because they didn't think there would be an audience out there for him - and he couldn't have been more wrong!

Overall, a highly impressive concert by Francis Dunnery, which bodes well for an upturn in his solo fortunes in this country ... Roll on the new album!

Tom De Val

Venue: The Borderline, London            Date: 08/07/01

There was a time, a few years ago, when I wondered if I was the only Francis Dunnery fan around and whether I'd ever get to see him playing live - so low was his profile over here. Thankfully, the answer to the first question is a resounding no, and as for the second one - he now never seems to stop touring over here, this being his third full UK tour in a year.

The Borderline is packed tonight with an enthusiastic and receptive crowd, and Francis seems to have the crowd in the palm of his hand as soon as he steps onto the stage.  For this gig, he's on acoustic guitar, accompanied by Matt Pegg on bass and, later on, by Dave McCracken on keyboards.

The set opens with the uplifting 'Because I Can' from 'Tall Blonde Helicopter'. The material aired tonight spans all five of his solo albums, concentrating on 'Tall...' - which is mostly acoustic and stripped down anyway, so is well suited to this environment - and the new album 'Man'. Tracks from this which go down particularly well are: 'The Only One', the chorus to which Dunnery soon has the crowd singing along to gustily, even though the majority have never heard it before; the uplifting 'I'm in Love' and the plaintive and wistful 'Hometown', which builds with a convincing momentum to an emotional climax.

Other highlights include a gutsy run through the anthemic 'American Life In The Summertime', from 94's 'Fearless' album; and the breezy, off-the-wall 'Riding On The Back' complete with some amusing 'alternative' lyrics.  Dunnery is certainly in high spirits and there's plenty of humour on show; after the second song Dunnery announces that "Tonight is all about playing fast" and proceeds to have an instrumental duel with Matt Pegg to see who can play faster - Francis being fairly derisive about the bass player's efforts!

About midway through the show, Francis announces that "Things are getting too serious" and the three musicians proceed to butcher, in the nicest possible way, a variety of songs including an hilarious attempt at a disco number - complete with Francis trying, somewhat unsuccessfully, to get Matt to provide vocals!  There's also a run through The Pretenders' 'Talk Of The Town', the lyrics to which Francis obviously hadn't learnt that closely!

By the time the band left the stage to wild cheers, it suddenly dawned on me that not only had Francis not played any It Bites' material, but that this hadn't seemed to matter at all, given the quality of his solo stuff and the crowd's ready acceptance of it.  However, that doesn't mean that a couple of It Bites' encores aren't greeted with loud cheers: with both 'Yellow Christian' and 'Still Too Young To Remember' coming across wonderfully well, with the enthusiastic singing of the crowd adding to the effect of the songs.

Overall, this was another fine gig by Dunnery. With an excellent new album in the can and a 'full band' tour penciled in for August, the future looks bright for both him and his fans.

Tom De Val

Venue: Whitchurch Festival                   Date: August 3rd, 2002

Francis Dunnery's career has been an erratic one, but he certainly seems to be gaining a sizable fan-base in Britain - thanks largely to almost nonstop touring over the last couple of years. Many of these fans appear to have descended on Whitchurch for this headlining set on the Saturday night of the festival, judging by the large cheer which greets his appearance and the very positive reaction to the gig throughout.

The current lineup of the Grass Virgins has changed a little over the last year. Long time cohort Matt Pegg is still there on bass, with Mike Williams now on keyboards. Providing back-up are Francis' nephew John Dunnery on guitar, Dorie Jackson on backing vocals and Wayne Wilkinson on programming.  The latter three musicians also make up John Wayne, who played the support slot tonight, with the music very much in the mode of Dunnery senior's recent solo work.

Francis opened the set with 'Blinded By The Memory' from his latest album 'Man' - and this set the tone for a surprisingly downbeat set, with Dunnery concentrating on the slower material which dominates this album plus a handful of cuts from his back-catalogue.

From the latter, the highlights are excellent re-workings of two It Bites tracks, 'Hunting The Whale' and 'Plastic Dreamer' (a vast improvement on the original, which I thought was one of the weaker tracks on 'Once Around The World'); a drawn-out version of 'Immaculate' which showcased some sublime lead guitar work from Frank, and the jaunty 'Riding On The Back' which provided a welcome foray into more up-tempo material. The highlights from 'Man' were 'Hometown', already a crowd favourite which many join in on, and the poignant ballad 'Wounding And Healing'.

Francis himself seemed in good spirits, but there was surprisingly little audience interaction or "improvised" moments - at least compared with the previous times I have seen him. Francis did have one surprise up his sleeve however, as about half way through the set ex-Squeeze man Chris Difford appeared on stage to a good reception.

The band ran through the old Squeeze classic 'Up The Junction' and a new track from Difford's forthcoming solo album, to be released soon on Francis' Aquarian Nation label. The latter boded well for what should be an interesting album ... especially given Dunnery's heavy involvement in the writing and recording process.

Overall, I guess your enjoyment of this gig depended on how well you knew Dunnery's material - I'm a big fan and thought this was a great show (helped by excellent sound and good use of lighting), but for newcomers to Dunnery I'm not sure if this was the best possible introduction - a better mix of slower and more up-tempo tracks and more of his amiable between-songs banter would perhaps have been preferable.

However, whichever way you look at it there's no denying that Dunnery has hit a rich vein of form recently, and hopefully he'll be back gigging again soon - and with new material to boot.

Tom