George Boomsma is a singer-songwriter hailing from Northallerton, North Yorkshire but now residing in Brum, so tonight`s a kind of hometown gig of sorts. Mark Radcliffe and Lauren Laverne from BBC radio 2 and 6 music sing his praise and on the strength of this thirty minute set tonight, you can begin to understand why.
He released his latest album `The Promise of Spring` last year and has recently released a live version of it as well. It`s a reflection on grief for the loss of a family member and dedicated to George`s brother Tom.
The reflective `Lily of the Nile` eases us in before `Cashmere Grey` and what George denotes to as his country song `Johnnie Walker Man` which refers to a real charmer who enjoys the delights of the Scotch Whiskey brand along with an accompanying cigarette. The acapella `How High the Mountain` almost has a traditional lilt before closing out with the meditative `Passing The Silence` before leaving us with `Open Curtain`.
Mr Boomsma is certainly ensconced in this fair city as he delivers beer for the Birmingham Brewing company and helps out on the sound desk at The Kitchen Garden Café venue in Kings Heath. A really enjoyable short set and a name to watch out for around town and beyond.
Ernest Aines is a Melbourne-based singer-songwriter and fingerstyle guitarist who is on his third tour of the UK in the last eighteen months and arrives in Birmingham on the home stretch of this current trek. He takes a seat and kicks us off with `River Mouth` a song that he shares was the first song he ever wrote before heading into `Already Found` which is on his 2019 EP of the same name. This warm and engaging artist offers up `Feelings` a song about apathy in a relationship and `Ghost Song` which is quite haunting which he played on the Celtic Connections tour in Glasgow earlier this year.
We enjoy a cover of German Bluegrass player Jens Krüger`s `Bristol Bay` before a new song and his latest single `Just Once` which is delightfully mesmerising. We have a number of songs from the artists last release `Spiral Bound `where he encourages the audience to join in on the first being `Pixels` before heading into `Yellowstone` which was inspired by a Sir David Attenborough documentary and somebody who he deeply admires. The contemplative `Rigged Games` is a hard song for the singer to perform but he does so before closing with `So Far`.
There isn`t really an encore but the singer remains and plays `Real Boy` as he`s heard somebody talking about it in amongst tonight`s crowd. This evening was an absorbing and engrossing hour of cuts from across this musician’s career. He has a new album due next year and an American tour but has promised to return to the UK soon after. There`s another five dates left around the UK on his `Shifting Scenes` tour so if you want to catch this storyteller before he heads home you`ll need to get a move on.
