Straight off from his brand new single, “Give Me The Reason”, James Bay is on a UK tour and this past Thursday I got to see him live for the first time, at the LCR venue in Norwich. Being a big fan of James I was looking forward to this night in particular.
Doors opened around 7:30 and after the majority of attendees entered the building (and there was a lot!), we had US artist Kevin Garrett take to the stage with an acoustic guitar. Kevin put on a stunning performance playing his original work along with some unique arrangements of a select number of covers including “Skinny Love”, “I’m on Fire” and “Every Time You Go Away”. This young up and comer is certainly one to watch in the near future. In fact, he’s already rubbing shoulders with the right people in the business, writing songs for Beyoncé and (of course) joining James Bay on this tour.
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On to our headliner of the night, James Bay. After a massive ovation from the crowd James and his band went into an extended version of “Best Fake Smile”, which was a fantastic opener for the set.
Throughout the evening James included in the mixture a few new songs set to be released on his upcoming album in the very near future. This was sprinkled through material from his past two albums including “Let It Go”, “If You Ever Wanna Be In Love”, “Us” and “Wild Love”. What I appreciated about this setlist was that there were some tracks some people might not be quite so acquainted with, and which maybe he doesn’t play so often. We got an incredible guitar solo midway through too, so two thumbs up from my end!
James ended the evening on “Hold Back The River” which was a perfect ending to a fantastic night of music. He also mentioned he would be back here at some point, probably after the album’s release so I’m sure, like many of the fans tonight, I’ll be back to see him as well.
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Photos by Lawrence Potter
