When British singer David Gray announced two dates for Live at the Marquee as part of his ‘Past & Present World Tour’, promising that both evenings would have different set lists, it quickly became apparent that many people were going to go to both nights. Gray has recorded 13 albums in 30 years so the two-night deal for the tickets meant the audience were not just going to hear White Ladder.

Before Gray, the headline act, took to the stage, The Divine Comedy had played a tremendous opening set.

 

As Gray walked out to a full Marquee, the roar of approval to his simple ‘Hello Cork City’ set the bar for the night.

 David Gray fans bring a birthday wish sign as he performs at The Marquee on the night of his 58th birthday Pictures: Noel Sweeney. David Gray fans bring a birthday wish sign as he performs at The Marquee on the night of his 58th birthday Pictures: Noel Sweeney.

The dogs on the street seemed to know it was David’s birthday on Saturday so he let the crowd get the Happy Birthday sing-song out of their system at the start of the show. There was balloons brought out by the encore but the upbeat energy of David and his band really captured the celebratory mood.

Never one to shy away from reintrepeting songs by other people, Gray incorporated elements as disparate as Van Morrison, Gloria Jones, Depeche Mode, and David Bowie in to his set, as well as his classic version of Say Hello, Wave Goodbye, by Soft Cell, a song many people mistakenly attribute to him.

Fans moments before David Gray took to the stage:  Fans moments before David Gray took to the stage:  

We were not stuck for Gray’s own songs, though, as he played for two hours, with some of his big hitters getting the strongest response: The One I Love and Now and Always, from 2005’s Life in Slow Motion, had many voices singing along.

Classic songs

It was classic songs from the White Ladder album that created a choir of several thousand people. Please Forgive Me was possibly the jewel of the whole gig, with its extended outro and with the drummer Clune, who played on the original recording, seeming to find even more rhythmic ideas to add. Babylon’s lyrics ‘And if you want it, come and get it/crying out loud/ The love that I was giving you was’ /’Never in doubt’ were repeated by the crowd, and Sail Away also got a tremendous reaction.

 PJ and Ursula Walsh attending the David Gray concert. Pi  PJ and Ursula Walsh attending the David Gray concert. Pi 

It wasn’t just the drummer who was on form. Gray’s whole six-piece band were on the button and at one point Gray called out ‘The Nancy Spains section’, a reference to the long-closed venue on Barrack St where Gray first made his name in Cork in the early 1990s.

The evening spanned many eras of David Gray’s career, but all of them seem rooted to Cork and the Irish audience. Many of them went home happy knowing they’d be doing it all over again the next night.