My son and I went to see the 3 Headed Beast (consisting of Nick Harper, Rev Hammer and Dan Donnelly) the Friday before last at the Georgian Theatre in Stockton. They were supported by a local artist, Jake Holt, but I can't say I was impressed. His voice was good if a little penetrating and his songs were ok, but his guitar playing was rather basic and he struggled when he attempted anything a little more advanced. However I have to say David was impressed enough to say he would check him out on Youtube after the gig. The main act though was rather good. I wasn't as keen on Rev Hammer - his songs are ok, and he has a good line in patter (as do they all) but I wasn't keen on his voice. Dan Donnelly was really good - fine songs, good voice and he's a really good guitarist, and he uses one of those gizmos that records him doing backing tracks as he goes, like KT Tunstall used when she was on Jools Holland's show all those years ago. I particularly liked his song about his experience of an open mike night in America where all of the other singers sounded like David Gray clones, so he wrote a song about that while waiting his turn and sang it in his open mike spot at the end in the style of David Gray. They did two and a half hours between them, taking turns to do their songs, and it flew over. Nick of course was as excellent as ever - the only downside was that he obviously didn't do as many of his songs as I would have liked. Setlist (I'm not sure of the titles of Rev's songs as he didn't name them all in his introductions). Blood Song 40 Whitechapel Row (?) - Rev Your Loving Arms - Dan Peace, Love and Happiness No-one or Nothing - Rev Break Even - Dan In This Life Ready and Waiting (?)- Rev Cigarette - Dan Juicy Fruit Girl Ralph McTell - Rev David Gray - Dan Vampire Song Finger in the Eye (?) - Rev The Time of Our Lives - Dan This is the Beginning (introduced but not played) Evo Long way Down - Rev I Don't Care - Dan Karmageddon Drunkard's waltz - Rev Running - Dan Aeroplane Flight of Fancy - Rev Diamonds in the Road - Dan Watching the Stars Every Woman's Pain - Rev with Dan and Nick
