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A review from 5D Music & Theatre writer Maria Robertson.
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Cammy was supported at this gig by Amy Papiransky and Tom A Smith. It was a sold out concert, as is his entire tour at the moment.
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Organised by AGP Aberdeen, the evening started with Amy who I had recently seen support KT Tunstall at the Music Hall, Aberdeen (5d-blog.com). She had a shorter set this time and sang some really lovely songs with her amazing vocals. At the Music Hall it was just her and a guitar on stage, whereas for this set she had a gentleman playing guitar and she was concentrating on singing. Her set started with the lovely song Pencil Me In; and culminated in the song Dear Amy which she wrote to her younger self after hearing Tom Grennan on the radio having done the same idea and made it into a song. She also sang a song called Isabella about the students at her school from when she was working in lockdown looking after the essential workers children. One day there was quite a change in the atmosphere in the room, a lot of them were disengaged from the class and playing on their phones and just generally slumped and not their usual excited itself. So she went home, had a couple of glasses of spritz and wrote this beautiful song about the children. Amy did also report that they were all back to full happy enthusiasm since lockdown ended, which was good to know!
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Following this we had Tom A Smith, a young singer songwriter from Sunderland. He has a floppy mop of blonde hair which caught beautifully in the lights, and it was just him and the guitar in the middle of the stage. He has a distinctive voice, or should that be accent, and although he looks incredibly young he has a lot of confidence on stage. He announced all his songs and gave a little bit of chat in between songs. Mostly I enjoyed his set, some of the songs such as Good Enough For You were a bit repetitive, but other songs seemed to make up for it. At one point I was reminded of the Supernaturals, but I could not quite put my finger on what it was, obviously they have very different accents! He played his latest single Weirdo, a fantastic cover of Whole Of The Moon, and a song he wrote with Miles Kane when touring with him called Like You Do.
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Eventually it was time for Cammy Barnes to do his thing. The atmosphere built up in the room was quite something, when the lights went down you could feel the sheer excitement of the crowd. It really was a full on crowd at The Tunnels, it was full to the brim with the sold out crowd. Overhearing some members of the crowd there seems to be a certain following that probably saw him on Britain’s Got Talent, but there were also many people from Fife and Aberdeen who have presumably been following his career much like myself. Again I had seen him recently, supporting https://5d-blog.com/elephant-sessions-at-lemon-tree-aberdeen/. He did a wonderful set there so it was good to see him headlining his own concert with AGP Aberdeen.
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Like Tom, Cammy also has a very distinctive voice which I could listen to all day. He has some powerful songs and his set included some happy songs and some slower songs. He performed his number one hit single Bonnie’s Song about his little daughter, and introduced it saying that he didn’t know his heart worked until he met his little daughter earlier this year. As a parent I can totally understand where he’s coming from because a parent’s love is a whole different level than any other love you can encounter. He also played us his future hopeful number one hit, so ensuring he’s not destined to be a one hit wonder! It’s called Circles and it is another great song.
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He also played my favourite song which is Beauty In These Streets, it has some really fabulous lyrics which totally speak to me at the moment: “when it rains I’m looking out for rainbows, when its dark outside I look out to the stars”. The video for it is amazing too, it has clips of lots of lovely movies and is just a joy to behold. He introduced this song by saying that he misses the days when you would walk down the streets say hello to someone, smile and they would smile back. So many people that don’t talk to anybody now and just keep themselves to themselves, some of these people in the street that you pass you might be the only person that speaks to them that day. We never know what someone’s going through and so we should all be kind and say hello to strangers in the street. It was obviously a sentiment that was shared by a lot of people in the room as there was a cheer and clapping.
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In fact we cheered and clapped a lot that night for Cammy Barnes, it was a magical experience. At one point he told us he’d been to his old school during the day and invited two of his teachers to come down the front, because he owed them a lot. He sang the beautiful Caledonia to them, at first there is no sign of them, and then part way through the song they appeared at the top of the steps and made their way down to the front of the stage. He stopped singing and said you took your time, and it was just a lovely moment. Hopefully it was quite a magical memory that those two ladies can take with them proudly.
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Cammy also came off the stage at one point and got everyone to stand in a little circle around him and asked us all to turn the torches on our phones on to to light him up. He then sang a song about Tiree that he wrote when he was over staying on the island, it’s a gorgeous song and he was singing it so beautifully. Everyone around him was either shining their torch or recording this special moment. He gave one lyric with such gusto that and some spittle flew out of his mouth and hit a girl’s camera! My goodness was he embarrassed and apologetic. It was actually really funny, and only those of us in that room shared that specific moment when that girl got some of his DNA on her camera lens!
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When it got to the last two songs he did warn us that he doesn’t do an encore, plus there was a ten o’clock curfew for the evening as there was another event happening in the Tunnels afterwards.
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I think most of the people in the room would quite happily have stayed for hours and hours and listen to him saying all night but he had to wrap it up, and we’ll just have to hope he makes it back to Aberdeen again soon! He did mention that every time Ross of AGP Aberdeen books him a gig it sells out so lets hope there’s not too big a gap till the next one.
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Further information: https://m.facebook.com/profile.php/?id=100050229320480
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Maria Robertson is the Chief Music & Theatre Writer for the 5D Pop Culture Website and provides reviews & coverage of local Aberdeen music & theatre gigs. She’s an experienced writer for numerous sources and is a self-confessed live gig addict ever since seeing The Counting Crows at the Barrowlands in 1994.
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