Nadia Reid must be getting pretty popular after needing to put on a second show with Tiny Ruins after the Friday night show sold out rather quickly. This was good for me as I dithered around for ages deciding whether I was going to go or not, especially after already seeing Nadia down in Oamaru earlier in the year. It actually turned out that we got the invite to my wholesalers end of year bash for early on the same evening as the gig and there were still tickets for the Thursday night and my wife indicated she would like to go also, so it all fell into place.
After scoffing ourselves full to bursting at the work do, we headed off the to The Piano, and duly found some good seats once the doors opened. Nadia and Tiny Ruins (Holly Fullbrook) duly take the stage with just acoustic guitars and with out any introduction, go straight into their first number. After that they then explained the format of the show, and after doing "rock, paper., scissors" Nadia played her solo set first.
She was a bit slower getting into the groove this show, although the first couple of songs she played were unfamiliar to me even though they maybe on one of her three records I have, but then she started playing stuff I did know and I thought her performance lifted and my wife though the same. She swapped around between electric and acoustic guitar and again showed just hoe good a songwriter and singer she is. Although not as powerful a set as she did down on Oamaru earlier, it was satill a most enjoyable set.
Tiny Ruins has also been round the tracks for a while now and has a few albums under her belt. I saw her play live with a band about three years previously and wasn't all that impressed on that night with what I heard, so I had not bought any of her music until her last album "Olympic Girls" which had impressed me a lot. Tiny played a bunch of her songs, some I didn't know but a couple from the aforementioned album I did and they were great. She did a lot of talking between songs but what really impressed was her guitar playing. She is technically, well ahead of Nadia in this department and really impressed with her skills on her acoustic. The first song had all sorts of cord and tempo changes and almost felt like it could have sat well on Van Morrison's Astral Weeks album with its jazzy feel. Her singing is almost as good as Nadia but she is not as strong a songwriter. She also played a great set.
The last part of the show was them both preforming together. They are old friends and also flatted together several years ago, so they know each other well and sing together wonderfully. They have a similar singing style and their voices complemented each other well on the several songs they did, including a Dylan cover and a Don McGlashan song. The ending to a very good show.
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