The Metal Files

This was my second time seeing Colin Hay doing his solo acoustic show and it was great.  You can read about past experiences with Colin and men At Work here.

The show was at the One World Theatre. This place is one of the best places to see a band that I have ever been to.  It’s small (maybe 250 seats) and acoustically perfect.  It’s in the Texas Hill Country and it’s got a gorgeous setting.

Opening the show was a guy named Chris Trapper (His Wikipedia page here).  He wasn’t bad at all.  Apparently he wrote a song on the Autumn Rush soundtrack.  He had a few good jokes, played about 6 or 7 songs and was gone.

Colin comes on stage to a standing ovation, straps on his Maton acoustic, tunes it and goes right into Men At Work’s Down Under.  After this song he starts his joking and storytelling.  He hadn’t gotten to the second song yet and says, “Maybe we’ll get 4 or 5 songs in tonight.”  If you’ve seen him before, you know he likes to talk, a lot.  It’s part of his show and he’s really an interesting guy.

He ended up playing 9 songs, a few of which I don’t think I had heard before.  Of the 9, three were men At work songs:  Down Under, Who Can It Be Now?, and Overkill.  I saw that he had added Blue For You to a few shows last year and I really hoped we would have heard that one last night, but no dice.  Didn’t matter.  He sounded great.  His voice is still strong and he’s a really good guitar player as well.

During the closer, Overkill, he used a memory man pedal to record the main riff of the song during the song and actually got to play the guitar solo.  He didn’t do that last time and it was pretty cool.  I love that song.

After the show, he did a meet and greet.  Lots of people there buying his new CD which was just released that day.  Lots of folks had Men At Work stuff.  One girl was wearing a vintage Cargo Tour shirt, which was pretty cool.  I got through the line, just shook his hand, told him it was a great show and that I had seen him a few times before.  I mentioned the solo show in 2009 and Men At Work in 1999.  We snapped a quick photo and I was on my merry way.  He looked pretty tired, but he was smiling.

If you get a chance to see this tour, do it.

Setlist (only songs 1,2,3 and 9 are in proper order):

1. Down Under
2. Wayfaring Sons
3. Who Can It Be Now?
4. Prison Time
5. Beautiful World
6. I just don’t think I’ll ever get over you
7. Waiting for my real life to begin
8. Maggie
9. Overkill