Tom Baxter played a great gig in the Savoy last Saturday night. Thanks to Red FM for the tickets! It was a miserable night outside but we had the foresight to warm up in the Woodford beforehand with some hot whiskies/ports. We arrived into the Savoy in time to hear a couple of songs by the support act, a band called Box Camera. They were really good with a sort of Beatlesque (Blue Album 1967-1970) sound. Tom Baxter arrived on shortly after 10pm with his band. The band were initially made up of a keyboard player that looked a bit like Jay Kay, a double bass player with a hat and funky beard and a drummer that I thought was wearing a hat but it just turned out to be his hair (in my defence it was dark in there and I had sort of already named them the ‘hat band’). They were later joined on stage by a violin player that looked really like Captain Jack Sparrow’s cousin.

I didn’t know that many of Tom Baxter’s songs bar those that I had heard on the radio but I still had a good time. I really enjoyed some of the livelier songs and the band played up a storm. You gotta love a band with a double bass! Tom Baxter had trouble with his guitar and basically had to tune it in between every song. He filled in this time with stories about the songs he was going to sing which was great. I like hearing about the background to a song, where it comes from and what it means to someone. The only slightly sour note to the night was the noise from those people in the crowd that were talking loudly. At one point Tom appealed to the crowd to keep the chatter to a minimum or to take it elsewhere. This was met with cheers from most of the crowd that were there to listen to the music but some of the chatter still persisted. This isn’t the first time I’ve encountered this at a gig, in fact it happens regularly and it really annoys me. You know it’s bad when you can hear more of someone’s (completely uninteresting) conversation behind you than the music you came to hear!!! Anyway if Tom Baxter happens to roll back into Cork some day I’d definitely recommend going to see him for a toe-tappingly good gig.