Live
Circa Waves
EBGBS, Liverpool
April 5 2018
Words/Pictures: Jane Davies
For one special night only, one of Liverpool’s small live venues, EBGBS, was transformed into a micro festival stage for local lads Circa Waves. Nothing can top the atmosphere of a packed venue, for gig goers, the band, the promoter and the club. Too often, this is not the case for Britain’s small live venues at the heart of grass roots music, nurturing the next best big thing, yet fighting for survival.
Enter stage left, the Music Venues Trust, who, in association with Jack Daniel's, organised this unique event to raise awareness and funds for the cause.
An already buoyant and warmed up (to the point of sweating buckets) capacity crowd cheered in the band to the strains of ‘Wake Up’ and were warmly welcomed by frontman Kieran Shuddall who promised that there would be a lot more older songs than new ones in the set. He later confessed that it had been four months since their last live appearance and that the band had been busy re-learning all the songs!
Slightly rusty or not, the band packed a stellar, flawless set which interspersed favourites from both albums, with offerings from ‘Young Chasers’ one minute to punchier mosh pit friendly anthems from ‘Different Creatures’ the next. A typical example being the gritty ‘Stuck’, to which the audience were positively encouraged to jump up and down to, followed swiftly by a calmer, communal sing-along in the form of ‘Stuck In My Teeth’. The formula worked, along with a running dialogue between Kieran and the audience between songs.
It was most pleasing to see, and hear so many younger audience members -.particularly female ones - who perhaps may not regularly frequent small venues. In thanking the audience for their attendance, the band highlighted the whole ethos of the gig’s cause and urged them to continue to come out and support small live music venues in future.
Coming towards the end of the set, ‘My Love’ steadied the crowd in preparation for ‘Fire That Burns’ and the associated arm punching, dancing and lots more jumping. The final song of the evening started off with what sounded tantalisingly like the first few bars of ‘Stairway To
Heaven’, before shifting into ‘T-shirt Weather’. A most fitting finale for what had been a fine, warm day in the city, that had offered an enticing preview to a summer of wonderful music to come.
It had been an amazing, uniquely intimate gig for the band with an appreciative, highly charged audience of fans that had served as a throw back to their earlier days, starting out in their home town. It is hoped that the evening and the multitude of forthcoming gig posters on the walls of the venue may entice some of the audience out again soon.
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