It has been an exhaustive weekend – but I wouldn’t swap it for the world. Seeing the best live music from my most favourite bands and artists. I know I am in a very fortunate position to be able to do it, even if I am doing it on a very tight budget.
The weekend kicked off with a very anticipated first gig experience for me at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut – the iconic venue located on St Vincent Street. Hamish had warned me at Galashiels that the gig wouldn’t be kicking off until midnight (so in fact the gig was on Saturday morning, if we’re going to be pedantic about things – more on that in a moment!) – and he wasn’t lying!
Doors opened at 10pm and I wanted to be at the front, of course. I persuaded Birdy (who after a week or so that the tickets had been on sale decided that she’d come along with me, as she thinks Hamish is pretty darn good and all) that we should arrive at King Tut’s for doors open as the venue is meant to be WEE! To save our feet for the dancing, I decided we should get the train to Charing Cross, so all we’d have to do is walk down Elmbank Street and walk a little way up St Vincent Street to get there. The crappy thing is that when booking the trains through the Scotrail app, they insist upon you collecting a paper ticket to get out at Charing Cross! If you book a ticket for Partick though, it’s all electronic. The OH says to me “oh, maybe they don’t have the scanners at Charing Cross and that is why you have to get a paper ticket?” So…because I didn’t want to get stuck at a potentially unmanned station trying to get out with a ticket the barrier couldn’t read, I bought two separate tickets. One to Queen Street, then one to Charing Cross. Honestly – there were bloody scanning readers at the barriers at Charing Cross so I don’t know why the fook you couldn’t buy an electronic ticket on the Scotrail app! Jeez-o!
Anyway, despite that ‘first world’ bugbear, it was all fine and we got to King Tut’s just a few minutes before 10pm. We got a drink and sat down in the bar for a bit, then I could see that people were going into the auditorium and I said to Birdy I’d like to go in just to guarantee our position at the front. A quick loo stop and in we were, just left of centre. That was me in front of Andrew again. I think he might have recognised me from the Gala gig.
There was a clock on the wall on the right side of the stage (audience perspective) and Birdy and I kept clock-watching. We went into the auditorium about 10.15pm so we had some time to kill! There was some great music being played in the interim and I informed Birdy about the wonders of Shazam as there were a few songs being played that we liked but didn’t know who the artists responsible for them were.
The clock ticked over to 00:00 and there was no sign of Hamish. Stefan had been out on the stage around 10 minutes beforehand, distributing water bottles and setlists and laying out a hand towel for Hamish, as well as placing the light into his bass drum to backlight the drumhead.
The wait wasn’t long. Around 3 minutes after midnight (a time I used to think had some kind of particularly eerie significance, that I can’t find anything alluding to it when Google searching, so it must have been all in my head), the band arrived on stage to rather rapturous applause before even playing a note. The guys in the band were all buzzing to be there, you could tell.
The band were listed on the show timings notices on the walls of King Tut’s to be on stage for one hour. Off by 1am. With my proximity to the stage, I could easily view the setlist and had taken a count of the number of tracks due to be played. It listed 14 songs – that’s a mighty fine set to get through in an hour. There weren’t that many songs cut from the set that he performed at MacArts in all honesty. Quickly checking the setlist I got from that gig, only four songs were cut – Bridget St John, two of new songs (Big Cat Tattoos and The Hard Won), and Daggers.
I thought there was a lot of love in the room at Galashiels and St Luke’s but WOW – on Friday night, the crowd were going MENTAL! Again, Hamish was really genuinely humbled by the reaction. Humility – genuine humility is a wonderful thing to see.
A moment that had me in absolute stitches was when he started to briefly talk to the crowd between songs saying “this is our second gig of the day. Earlier we played a rather larger stage…” (referring to their stint at TRNSMT). He was then interrupted by someone calling out “yesterday”. Hamish tilted his head, cupped his ear and said “sorry, what was that?” The person elaborates in a louder voice “you mean you played yesterday – it’s after midnight, so it was yesterday” – he replies, “yes, you are correct” – he then looks behind to Stefan, then at the bass player, Alex, then to Andrew on guitar – all the while gesturing that he’s ready to give the guy a knuckle sandwich and screwing his face up and making out he’s mouthing off expletives – then looks back to that area of the crowd where the guy’s voice emanated from and smiles broadly and waves. Then, takes another look at the guys in the band and does a further quick fit of gestures and mouthings. I was cracking up inside. I couldn’t believe someone would pedantly heckle like that! Hamish’s reaction made it ssooo fucking hilarious though.
Other than Mr Pedant doing his “it was yesterday” heckle – the crowd were just awesome and going absolutely bonkers.
Just amazing. Another absolutely fantastic gig by a guy who deserves to just keep on climbing and climbing and be the biggest thing out there. Before he reaches that highest munro – I am determined to go and see him play as much as humanly possible.
On the day of the gig/s (bone of contention!), it was announced that the next big tick for where Hamish is on his ascent is – a gig at the Barrowland Ballroom! So far it is still only Simple Minds playing there in 2018 that has been my only experience of the Barras and I can’t think of a more amazing next gig to experience there than seeing Hamish Hawk absolutely “gie’in it laldy” on that stage. The date for your calendar is 10 February 2024. If you sign up to Gigs In Scotland – you can get pre-sale ticket access from Wednesday 12 July – 48 hours before tickets go on general sale at 10am on Friday 14th. Click the relevant words for ticketing info. I am hopefully already pre-booked and secured my ticket. It is a gig not to be missed!
P.S. How did we get home you may be wondering? Easy peasy. Booked a taxi after the show. A car arrived within 5 minutes. We were back home before 1.30am. I quickly hit the sack and fell asleep, ready to be up and out the door by 8.30am to take the trip to Newcastle and on to part two of the weekend!
All that is to come in the next post. Stay tuned!
