As the day that Pearl and the Beard completely rocked my socks off!

Frank and I went to The Castle Hotel in Manchester to see Pearl and the Beard last night. When the tickets were announced at the start of October I knew I had to go, and the fact that tickets were only £5 each made it a dead cert. According to the tickets, doors were at 7.30, but as it happened, the doors didn’t open until about 8.15. Thankfully the Castle Hotel was a really nice pub, more of a ‘real ale’ kind of pub, but as I was driving (and I don’t really drink), I stuck to the lemonade. Frank did have a Kopparberg, which was apparently very nice (and smelled really fruity). The venue was quite small (the back room in a pub which probably held about 40 people), but I loved that it was so intimate. It did mean that I didn’t take many pictures though.

After the doors opened, there was a 45 minute wait until the first band came on. They were a band I’d never heard of before called ‘Onions‘. I wasn’t too sure about them when they first started playing, and although they did grow on me a little by the end, I don’t think I’ll be picking up their CD. They played for about 40 minutes, and then there was a 20 minute gap while it got set up for Pearl and the Beard.

After they’d got the stage set up, they took a few steps off the stage to the front of the crowd, and started a floor stamping version of Douglas Douglass (one of my fave songs). It was fantastic, they were walking around the room through everyone that was watching and stamping and clapping for percussion. When Jocelyn started singing I was blown away by how clear her voice was – usually singers don’t sound quite as good live as they do on their albums, but PatB were just as good, if not better! They played for about 50 minutes, but I really wish it could have been longer. Jeremy was great on his guitar with beautiful vocals, and Emily on Cello was amazing – I’ve never seen someone play Cello in a band before but it was great!

After they had finished, we bought our tour posters, and then left quite quickly to try and make it back to the car park before the charge went from £6 to £11, but unfortunately we missed it by 7 minutes! At least we didn’t have to leave early like we did for Wakey!Wakey!