Road Demons, Coin 15th April 2017

After something of a lean time on the gigging front and following our first 2017 gig at Bistro Bar Las Amigas in Coin, we're back in full swing at the Road Demons clubhouse on the outskirts of Coin for an afternoon gig to a packed house!

The previous gig introduced our new drummer, Ivor who you'll get to see in the videos... spoilers!

This time around we had a special guest Peter Kemzura who kindly shot some video of us performing and shared it on his Youtube channel. Just so that we can similarly connect with everyone who appreciates our original songs, four of which were captured, I've copied them to our own Youtube channel to help spread the music around the place. See below for details.

The Gig

karma at Road DemonsOK, you want to know how the gig went, don't you? Well, it was a lot of fun for us and those hardy fans that stayed close up front with us for the two sets. We performed our trademark mixture of original songs interspersed with some well-known, rock-oriented covers that got a lot of people up off their butts and dancing along with us.

Our set-list opened with the old Who standard, "Substitute" followed by Brad's, "I Won't Let You Down." We followed with the John Mayall classic, "All the Love I Miss Loving" which we followed with Brad's quirky but very catchy, "Yellow Moon."

With covers of songs by the Clash, Led Zeppelin, the Buzzcocks and Ian Dury, we managed to include our own ska "Skaturday," smooth rock "Stealthy Karma," blues-based "Hard Times" and "Long, Long Time" into a varied and moreish first set. The first set culminated in a really powerful climax with the Golden Earring classic, "Radar Love."

The Change

The second set has us doing the big change around where I (Terry Roberts) give the bass to Brad and pick up my trusty 1990 HM Strat to play four of my own songs. I open with the funk/rock "Hold Back the Hours," then the 1992 written soft rock, "Stranded." The next song is one I wrote with Mama Paula back in 2003 that was then an instrumental, but which I've added a chorus and lyrics to but which retains Paula's original opening riffs: "Crystal Rose."

The last of the four has a jazzy feel and is a song I wrote back in 2004 and performed live on Lee Jay's radio show on Wish Radio that same year with just my acoustic guitar for backing. "Feel Myself Falling" is in my own opinion the best of the four that I currently play lead guitar on. It has a great feel and even though it contains no more or no fewer than three chords (!) it has a big sound and a solid melody/rhythm that I can see it getting a lot of attention in all the right places for all the right reasons.

So there - nothing like bigging up your own work when you're writing the report!

After the first four songs, Brad and I swapped back to our usual bass/guitar format and continued with the Jam classic, "Start" followed by some high energy popular songs, including the Beatles' "Back in the USSR," Abba's "Does Your Mother Know," Queen's "Crazy Little Thing Called Love" and Eddie Cochrane's "Summertime Blues," with Brad's original, "Lover Doll" holding its own with the Stones' "Honky Tonk Women" and "Brown Sugar" and finishing with Howling Wolf classic "Killing Floor."

What's Next?

Where do we go from here? Well, there were mutterings about future bookings for the band with a definite spot at Willies Arseout Rally in August and a possible return to the Road Demons clubhouse later on in the year.

We'll be showing up at a few more venues for sure in the interim, so keep an eye on Facebook where Pete will post up-coming gigs and in here where I might even be cajoled into writing about them some more! Whatever you do and wherever you are, if you get a chance to come and see us play somewhere, take it. You'll enjoy it and be glad you did!

Wanna See?

OK, there was an ulterior motive in posting this gig report. I want to give you a sneak look at the videos that were produced from the gig. So I embedded then below: