By Moose

After a bite to eat, a couple of bears and a rather large JD and coke, I'm squeezing down the stairs to the lower level at the Academy. Gary (a mate from work) follows in the wake I'm creating in the rather packed crowd, while Rob (Gary's son) bumps along between us. Rob was 14 on Monday, and this is his first Bristol gig. He's a seasoned festival go-er though, so used to pushing his way to the front just to see what's going on. And we're talking Glastonbury, Wickerman or Download here - serious stuff. We make it half way to the front as the house lights go down, right in front of Mark Tremonti and his array of gear - four Mesa cabs and one head, two Fender combo's, a couple of Bognor heads and a rack full of other fancy stuff - bastard……..
 

Last time they played Bristol there was a distinct lack of material to flesh out a headline slot, mainly 'cause songs from the old Creed days weren’t even considered for set inclusion. Same applies tonight on the Creed stuff, but now the AB-boys have two damn fine CD's to build a set from. The other difference is Miles Kennedy - this time around he's a guitar player as well as a singer, opening up a whole bunch of potential arrangement variations, as well as delivering an even heavier live punch to the simpler songs.

Don't get me wrong, Tremonti is still the techno-master when it comes to the six-string stuff, but Kennedy keeps up well on some fancy unison riffage, as well as showing he can hold down a solo or two as well, while Tremonti carries the tricky finger picking or something equally impossible to play. Kennedy even gets to play some low down and dirty blues on a slide-tuned acoustic towards the end of the set - is there no end to his talents???

The set is dominated by newer material from the Blackbird CD, songs clearly written with the twin guitar thing in mind. Brand New Start is especially impressive, with it's acoustic-like tones from Kennedy's piezo equipped PRS guitar, prior to opening out to a huge chorus. We also get Ties That Bind, Come To Life, Buried Alive, Before Tomorrow Comes and a couple of other killer tracks that somehow seem to balance power with melody perfectly. Perfectly for me anyway. Watch Over You uses more clean/acoustic tones in the guitar department to great effect as well.

We also get a selection of tracks from their debut One Day Remains CD, some of which have been re-worked to take advantage of the twin guitar thing going on these days. Find The Real sounds especially massive, as does Open Your Eyes once the chorus kicks in.

Brian Marshall and Scott Phillips provide a foundation on which you could build a new Bristol Arena - sorry, had to mention that - on bass and drums respectively. The Shadowsky five sting that Marshall thunders through the set on could be used to clear unused inner city brown field sites in minutes given the chance. Come encore time we get to Rise Today, the best track from the Blackbird CD, and what better way is there to close out a set? I can't think of one that's for sure.

Post gig, as we wander down Hotwells for a final beer at the Mardyke, Rob is well impressed - he blags an Iron Bru from the Co-Op, and heads home to practice his guitar playing. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that he got a Tremonti model PRS guitar for Christmas - kids today eh, don't know they're born……..

Moose.