“Hey guys. I’m Gary Thomas. Welcome to The Waiting Room. We’re going to play you some music, in case you were wondering about all…this.”
So began Gary Thomas’ Long Street gig last night. It stayed awkward, but the music got better as the night went on.
By around 9h43, which is to say two fancy beers later, the place had pretty much filled up – unreasonably gorgeous hipster girls lining every spare bit of floorspace like judgemental skirting and sailor-tattooed dudes perching on the edge of vintage couches in the hopes of seeing the evening’s artist emerge, or, better yet, some hipster girl side boob.
I’ll be honest, I spent the first two or three songs starting at Gary Thomas’ crotch. And I mean not in that vaguely sexual manner – yes, the dude’s attractive enough with the whole musician vibe, Michael Cera patter and Abe Lincoln beard, but it was more because there was a chunky tear in his jeans, and I could see some folded stuff moving in the gloom whenever his insane strumming made him shift position. I wasn’t sure what I was looking at – the red/blue alternating lighting made it hard to tell if there were flesh tones involved, and from where I was sitting, spotting hair was difficult. I may never know.
Fortunately, the music took my mind off of Gary Thomas’ balls pretty quickly, once we got past the technically impressive, but stilted, opening pieces. Thomas started employing the big guns from his most recent album, Contraption Distoria – Stone Thrower and The Inventor stood out in particular; blindingly rapid strumming, ethereal vocals, great rhythmic progression – that whole anti-folk Gary Thomas bag.
These shows are generally awesome – in particular because, no matter how big the crowd gets, they tend to quiet the fuck down when Gary Thomas is playing, and watch his hands blur across the frets like they’re watching a classical virtuoso. Which, they are, sort of. Granted, the douchebag sitting in front of me and the lady on his lap weren’t exactly playing along with the ‘sit quietly and watch this guy rock the hell out’ game, but for the most part the audience was respectfully and rightfully awed at the performance.
The set peaked around the penultimate song – Stowaway, I think, but I can never hear what Gary Thomas is warbling between footstomps, so don’t take my word on that. For unclear reasons (“bleeding fingers”) he opted to go for a more relaxed exiting song than the earlier stompity-stomp strummidy-strum numbers – which was a little disappointing, I guess, but the audience was hanging on to his performance so tightly that he could probably have played Twinkle-Twinkle and still received a standing ovation. He’s an awkward dude who plays amazingly – his audience seems to get that.
I’m not totally sure if Gary Thomas would work if he were any ‘bigger’ – the acoustic strumming thing only works so well when projected beyond a certain point, and half the charm of attending his shows is in seeing the interaction with the evidently loyal (R40 cover charge) fans; this was a great show, though, and in future attendance ought to be mandatory for all non-douchey folk in the area.
[Images via GaryThomas.co.za and TheBestKirby]
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