Graeme's Living Room Concert

What a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon! My pal Graeme invited us over to his place to be part of a small audience in one of his occasional Living Room Suite concerts. This involved about 30 people crammed into his living room to watch two rising-star singer/songwriters give their all with just a piano and a guitar to perform with, while Graeme recorded the whole thing for his radio show.

First we had the highly acclaimed Kim Edgar (www.kimedgar.com), who has recently returned from the USA, and whose new album, Butterflies and Broken Glass, is an absolute delight. It's rather nice to hear the songs as she would have played them to herself as she was writing them, without the full orchestration that appears on the album version, and then to go to the CD and hear the full article. Although many of the songs could be described as being less then cheerful, she is a charming, funny lady, and well worth seeing live - although I doubt you'd find a venue as intimate as Graeme and Gillian's front room: we were less than two metres away from Kim as she performed!

After some fabulous food, provided at the interval by Gillian, we were back for the second half with Alex Cornish, another class act whose music has been used in several films, and who has produced his own album, Until the Traffic Stops, after being messed around by the record companies to the point where he gave up on them, and did it himself. Alex is an entertaining guy, as well as a talented singer and songwriter. Again, it's interesting to hear the music stripped of all the studio layering and orchestration. You can find out more about him at www.myspace.com/alexcornish, or www.alexcornish.com.

Needless to say, we bought the albums :-)

Graeme will edit these recordings and they'll be played on his show on Leith FM (98.8 MHz in Edinburgh, or via the Internet at http://www.leithfm.co.uk/) on either the first or third Thursday in April, between 10am and noon.