Tonight sees Tom Grennan perform at The Piece Hall, the iconic 18th century former cloth mill in Halifax, and what a beautiful backdrop it is for the venues aptly named Summer of Music in collaboration with Cuffe and Taylor.
Starting the night off is support act The Ramona Flowers, a Bristol based band who are well experienced having previously supported U2 and Stereophonics. By the time the band enters stage, the venue is already pretty full so they have a decent sized crowd to perform to. After a tricky first verse where lead singer Steve’s microphone wasn’t working correctly, the band fluently segued through song after song. Perhaps not the most chatty of bands during songs, the vocals and musical accompaniment more than made up for this. The stand out song for me was new track ‘California’. The Ramona Flowers will be back to visit Halifax soon, performing at Square Chapel Arts Centre in September – tickets available here.
Tonight is a sold out event and the venue is packed with a crowd varying in age. Special mention has to go out to the management and promoters, The Piece Hall is a truly wonderful place even when empty, but with the bar set-ups and food stalls around the venue there is a real festival feel and it’s easy to see why many of the planned gigs this summer have already sold out.
So, the stage is set and the crowd are waiting and there’s a real buzz about the venue as Tom bursts onto stage shouting ‘Halifax, what is going on?’, to rapturous cheers. Beginning the set with the opening track from the Evering Road album ‘If Only’, Tom’s raspy vocals are on full display with some excellent Jagger-esque strutting on stage too.
As Tom flits between tracks from both his albums, the crowd join in with clapping and waving, their spirits never dampening despite a few rain showers with extra loud cheers as Tom proclaims this is one of his favourite gigs he’s done.
Anyone who follows Tom and his music, will know he is a fairly open book and it’s great to see his honesty as he confesses to recent struggles with his mindset before launching into ‘This Is The Place’. Blending up tempo tracks with the slower moody tones of “Make My Mind Up” whilst phone torches are waving in the crowd, Tom holds the crowd’s attention at all times. ‘Don’t Break The Heart’ is a real crowd pleaser with plenty of singing and dancing and new track ‘Remind Me’ is well received with the crowd joining in with the chorus.
With the encore finishing with Tom’s arguably biggest hit to date ‘Little Bit Of Love’, the night comes to an end and what a night it has been! With only a handful of opportunities to catch Tom live this summer, tickets can be found here. Hopefully it won’t be too long before the follow up album to the critically acclaimed ‘Evering Road’ is released!
