Deacon Blue celebrate forty plus years of the inspirational Pop music and finish their Australasian tour on the high in Auckland tonight.
This is the first time I can recall a VIP standing audience at the front of the Bruce Mason Centre tonight, and they are primed and ready for the show.
Steffany Beck, a singer-songwriter from Christchurch plays the curtain raiser set with some lively Country Rock to get the appetites whetted.
Second song in and she unwinds with a straight-ahead brisk treatment of Dolly Parton’s Jolene. Crisp and to the point with some tasty teardrop acoustic guitar.
Shakes out some Rock’n’roll roots with her own Wild One, taking the opportunity to strut her stuff and lets herself fly. Gonna blow them all away!
A quieter acoustic number is dedicated to her late father on Carpenter’s Daughter.
Deacon Blue has a new album out released in May last year, The Great Western Road, and they begin the evening with two of the best from that, Turn Up Your Radio and Late’88.
That first one borrows the phrase from Van Morrison’s classic Caravans and throws in a brand-new contender for great songs paying homage to the broadcast airwaves.
Then it is right back to 1989, and Queen of The New Year is led by some incisive Rockabilly guitar. There is a little of the punky energy of the early X and the style of Billy Zoom.
This heralds a brace of the early classics. Fergus Sings the Blues poses the question, which is always in the affirmative, can a white man sing the Blues?
Deacon Blue are a great example of classic blue-eyed Soul and I am sure that Phil Spector would have approved mightily.
Followed by Raintown, their first hit from 1987. The drummer leads this one out, and siren vocals add some nice gospel tones.
Clearly this is their Classic Hits tour, and they are out to prove that their live energy is undiminished and enjoying a renaissance.
Principal songwriter and leader Ricky Ross reflects awhile on the fraught and troubled times that the world is experiencing. His main message from his music is one of compassion. That is the aim of their music, which always stays high on inspiration and motivation.
With him from their beginning, his wife Lorraine McIntosh, backing vocals, adding frequent siren bursts and a heavy gospel presence. Dougie Vipond on drums makes up the original three members from 1987. Gregor Philp on guitar, and Lewis Gordon bass complete the lineup.
Ross pays an emotional and heart-felt tribute to longtime keyboard player Jim Prime who passed away last year. In many ways the emotional core of the band, he says. They welcome his replacement and friend of the band Brian McAlpine tonight.
How We Remember, off their current album, is played as a tribute, pushing it to the peaks of Country Soul.
This segues into Chocolate Girl, where Ross goes off on a little rant and the band follow him to come up with a cover of the Stylistics I’m Stone I Love With You, one of the many great Seventies Philly Soul numbers written by Thom Bell and Linda Creed, before closing it out with a reprise of Chocolate.
Lorraine takes one lead vocal on Cover from the Sky, with a beautiful piano accompaniment, where she sings in classic honky-tonk angel style and reminds me of Kitty Wells. Teary and emotional.
There is a little of the inspirational tone of Springsteen on songs like Ashore and The Hipster.
Ross comes closest to connecting to the fiery Scottish Highlands bombast of another great Scottish band, Big Country, with the rolling thunder drum intro to Your Town.
The Great Western Road. One of the few genuine ballads of the night and the closest to a pure Folk sound. Played as a tribute to Jeane Freeman, active as a politician and a strong advocate of Scottish independence, who has passed away barely a week ago.
Of course, there are many peaks and highlights tonight but special mention to When Will You (Make My Telephone Ring)? This song blends Country with R’n’B and a heavy dose of soulful Blues and would fit right in with the much-celebrated Exile on Main Street from Rock’s English royalty, the Rolling Stones.
They continue to pull out pop ragers like Real Gone Kid towards the end, but they close on a tender farewell and a cover of Warren Zevon’s Keep Me In Your Heart.
Shadows are falling and I’m running out of breath.
A touching farewell from Deacon Blue, but it has been a night of inspirational and heart-felt music.
Rev. Orange Peel
Photography by Leonie Moreland
Deacon Blue
Steffany Beck
