Reid & Ruins - The Piano - Christchurch - 26 November 2020

 

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.

Tiny Ruins - Blue Smoke - Christchurch 23 June 2017

Tiny Ruins is another of our local female singer/songwriters, along the lines of Nadia Reid and Aldous Harding. I had heard of her, again via the Counting The Beat Podcast, but hadn't really heard her music. She did come fairly well recommended and so I though I'd head along to Blue Smoke and check her out. The tour was kinda in support of a new album that is still being finished as we speak and several new songs were played this night, not that I would tell as I was not at all familiar with her work. I did have a listen to some of her more recent stuff on Bandcamp before I left the house and to be honest I wasn't all that taken with her music on first listen and started to have doubts about going, but I already had purchased a ticket so didn't want to waste it.

  Got to Blue Smoke about a half hour before the support act and the place was already mostly full. Unfortunately for these more laid back gigs, the venue leaves the tables spread around the floor and have a couch up near the front of the stage, I don't like this for gigs as it places too many objects in the way of standing space. It would be better if they either made it a sit down gig with more tables and seats for all or (for bigger numbers) just remove all the tables and seating near the stage end of the venue.

 My back, for some reason this night, decided to start making me uncomfortable as I stood with my drink and waited for the support act. There was no familiar faces at this gig for me tonight.

  The support act was going under the name Reb Fountain. She was solo with acoustic guitar playing a  folksy type of music as you do with that setup. She had a nice voice and the songs were enjoyable enough. It also turns out that She was a member of The Ravens and also The Eastern, both of whom I had seen at Blue Smoke several weeks back. I didn't recognize her though being back in the crowd a bit.

  My back was becoming less comfortable as I waited for Tiny Ruins to hit the stage and the wait wasn't too long as she kicked off her set with a solo acoustic number before adding a bass player and drummer for the next song and finally an electric guitarist for the third number, thus completing the band. It's kinda hard to describe the music but it was soft and laid back and I liked the occasional combination of the twin vocal melodies of Tiny and her female bass player, but overall I was really uninspired buy her set and got quite bored. The songs all sounded a bit the same and the band didn't sound all that tight, especially the electric guitar which seemed out of place at times. The gig was supposed to finish at 10:30pm but as usual the acts started a bit later than advertised and so were going to go over that time a bit but as 10:30 chimed, I had had enough, the physical discomfort and just not at all getting into the music I was hearing was enough to force me to leave the venue early.