On Friday 19th April Live In The Living Room hosted an evening of country music from Pizza Express in Brindley Place, Birmingham. Our compere for the evening was James Vince.
It's a nice venue. We made our way upstairs to a large room laid out with circular cafe style, marble topped tables. At one end of the room was a stage all set up and ready to go.
The night started off with a songwriters round with three artists from the Midlands singing 3 songs each in rotation.
Opening the show was Jessie Desai who is new to us. She confidently sang her original, country pop style songs. Her voice put me in mind of Taylor Swift.
Next up for me was my personal highlight of the evening. Andy Hughes from Burton-On-Trent gave a song we wrote together it's first airing in front of a country audience. It went down very well which is always a bonus. Between his guitar picking, his great storytelling a lilting melody and his 'made for country' voice this is a man that needs to be listened to.
Sam Shemmell was our next songwriter. I was looking forward to hearing Sam sing again as he has the most gorgeous tone to his voice. You definitely need to hear it for yourselves.
The first full band of the evening was my good friend Sam Coe and the Long Shadows who took the stage by storm. Their set was full of energy and you could see they were having a lot of fun performing for us all. A couple of firm favourites and some new original songs made this performance stand out in my mind.
Headlining the evening were Simon James and The Deep River Pilots. We don't often get the chance to see Simon perform with his band and I absolutely loved it and so did he by the looks of it. He has a very different sound to that of 2 years ago, following a more americana rootsy style. He is such a great songwriter.
After the music ended the musicians chatted to all the people who had turned out to see them. It was a great way to finish the night and I hope they come back to my neck of the woods soon.