Support act Talia Rae will be well known to David Gray fans as she has performed with him on several studio album tracks. She has a fantastic voice and is warmly received and applauded by the Royal Concert Hall audience.
After a short interval Gray and his band bound onto the stage. If one keyboard played by Gray wasn’t enough, there are two additional keyboards, plus drums and bass. Everyone on stage is a multi-instrumentalist and throughout the show there is double bass, slide guitar and Gray also plays tambourine.
Gray moves fluidly between guitar and his Kawai piano. Rae joins Gray on stage for Plus & Minus and Fighting Talk. Lights bathe Gray and the band in blue light, as dry ice drifts across the stage into the audience.
Naturally the audience join in for Please Forgive Me, and Gray can’t suppress a huge smile throughout the whole song - and pretty much the entire set. He’s loving it. It feels like the encore already and we are only half way through the evening.
After this, Be Mine and Dead in the Water are both high tempo guitar tracks on which Gray takes centre stage.
Gray suggests that the album A New Day at Midnight was rather neglected. A fan shouts something out - presumably that she bought it and disagrees - and Gray answers with the witty retort that he “saw the stats - believe me.”
Gray is quite the accomplished storyteller - of course all good songwriters are - he tells a story of how the fame of his breakthrough album White Ladder which he had written and recorded in his spare bedroom. He was the underdog, it was low tech. But he was soon after very famous and touring the world for three years. Naturally it was difficult to recapture the magic for the follow-up album.
After three years on the road, he says the world had changed; his dad had died. Gray says, “I was making the video for This Year’s Love out in the desert in Dubai. My dad was ill, and he called me to tell me to come home as his health was getting worse. Dad wanted a big party. All my family came from Manchester to Wales to celebrate his life.” A day after the party, when everyone had gone home, his dad died, and they had to call everyone back for the funeral.
It’s a heartfelt and poignant story. And it inspired him to write the song Last Boat to America which he sings next.
Gray closes the main set with Babylon and the audience gets up out of their seats to enjoy it, as he encourages everyone to sing along with the chorus.
The band leave the stage and there is a short break before the encore. The audience applaud and cheer as Gray returns to the stage to sing Shine unaccompanied - just him and his guitar. The rest of the band rejoin him and they finish out the encore with The Other Side and Sail Away.
Gray has an amazing voice and his lyrical abilities are well developed. He has an impressive stage presence: he’s an engaging and skilled performer, along with his aforementioned storytelling abilities. This was a really enjoyable show.
David Gray performed at the Royal Concert Hall on 24th March 2025.
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