This Silent Forest & Little Fire (Supporting The Boy Who Trapped the Sun)

King Tuts Wah Wah Hut

15.04.11

The whole point in a support band, or warm up act, is to warm up the crowd- right? Pretty self explanatory. Still, it must be pretty tricky; going on stage to perform on front of a room full of people who, lets face it, aren’t their to see you, and are using this time to get their round in at the bar, catch up with their gig buddies and sneak in a pee break before the main act comes on.

Well if this was what you did at The Boy Who Trapped the Sun gig at King Tuts, then in all honesty, you lost out.

The first support act, This Silent Forest, demanded the entire room’s attention. It was almost in a reverse psychology kind of way, as their stage chat was incredibly laid back, with their dulcet Scottish tones reaching out to the audience.

This was then emphasised by the semi-acoustic, stripped back set that they performed, with Squirrel, their lead singer, explaining, “We’re a lot louder on the single. This is very different to how we normally sound.”

Even without drums and their usually incredibly full sounding musical accompaniment, the six piece still held the audience’s attention throughout their set. There was an almost vulnerability to their performance, with their echoing harmonies and beautifully story telling lyrics being entirely exposed.

Considering the band are from all across Scotland, the mix of accents and influences, including Scottish folk music as well as a healthy mix of up tempo pop music, all contribute to the band’s un-ignorable sound.

Falter Discover, and The Fight both went down particularly well and not only showed a lovely snippet of what this band are capable of, but left the audience suitably warmed up for what was to come next.

Little Fire; quite ironic as a name for a warm up act, but entirely appropriate.

I always admire solo artists, and Jamie McGeechan, aka Little Fire, as he strolled on stage and introduced himself, is no exception. To have the confidence to showcase yourself, your voice and your song writing, even with the amount of talent that he has, is something I cannot comprehend. 

He started strumming, then burst into some of the strongest vocals I’ve heard in a long time.

No wonder he’s called Little Fire; his voice is so strong, rich and powerful that I don’t think the audience had any choice but to be warmed up.

On the rockier side of the folk scene, Little Fire’s dulcet Ayrshire tones went down a storm with the audience, who, by the noise of them, where there specifically to see him play at his debut King Tuts performance. 

Fire Me Up Now, and All I Need in Life were definite crowd pleasers, with the avid fan standing behind me singing his socks off to every lyric.

I think that’s what is so great about these types of performances; the support can get such a strong crowd in and get such a strong reaction that you begin to wonder how much pressure the headline act is under to outshine their scorching hot warm up acts?

Why bother with the main performance when the warm up acts are on fire?