Matt Costa...

For my birthday present Abi got us tickets to see Matt Costa playing at the Williamsburg Music Hall on Friday night... It was absolutely brilliant.

We'd planned to go to our favourite place - Sea - before hand for some of their delicious seafood, but it was incredibly busy, so we went somewhere new, just across the road called Chai Home Kitchen - which was a Thai tapas place. It's a tiny little and very cozy place in a small two story corner building just off Bedford Avenue. We'd seen it a couple of times as we were walking to Sea, so it was great to give it a try - the food was delicious!

We got to the Music Hall at about 10.30ish, just in time to get a drink before Matt Costa started. I'd only been to the venue once to see Rogue Wave play, but I loved it then, and this time we went upstairs and it felt even better, we got a spot on the balcony, looking down over the stage.

Upstairs in the music hall they a little lounge area, and on the walls are Sheperd Fairey murals - it looked fantastic, just like the massive mural he did down on Houston in Manhattan and like the prints I got of his...

It was a fantastic surprise - I had no idea they were up there.

WE caught the very end of the last song of the second support act - Everest, they sounded good from what we could hear, they were covering 'All You Need Is Love', so they've obviously got good taste in music. Then the lights went down for Matt Costa, everyone turned to the stage waiting for him to appear, but all of a sudden there was a bit of a commotion coming from the back of the audience...

Matt and his band were walking towards the stage, playing Miss Magnolia without any microphones or anything - they stood right in the middle of the crowd and sung half the song, then they disappeared again for a minute and then reappeared on stage to finish the rest of the song.

The last time I properly saw him play was supporting Jack Johnson at Manchester Arena, that time we all went a few years ago - and then it was just him and another guitarist, but now he had a 6 strong band with him and they sounded great.

He's just released a new album, so he was playing quite a lot of new songs - which sounded quite different to his other stuff, especially now he had a bigger sound from his band. He also did the ones that everyone knew, like Cold December and Sunshine...



When he sung Astair, it was just him and his acoustic guitar. A lot of people were annoyingly talking loudly when started playing it, then the people telling the people talking to shush were being louder themselves, so he cleverly started to sing quieter, which made everyone shut up... then he stoop up, away from the microphone - so he was just singing without any amplification... then the room was absolutely silent. He sounded fantastic.

For the finale, the lead singer from Everest came back on stage and they all covered 'You Ain't Going Nowhere' (I had to look up what it was called, I thought it was called 'Down in the Easy Chair' or something...)



After the gig we went to the merchandise table and I got his new album and a really lovely screen printed poster with his two New York dates on - the poster was designed and printed by a studio called Two Arms Inc. in Brooklyn. Then as we went outside, Matt Costa and the guy from Everest were just casually standing around having a cigarette - I thought about getting him to sign my poster, but it didn't really seem to be the done thing in Brooklyn...

It was an absolutely brilliant gig, and even nicer that it was in such a small venue - Abi hadn't really heard much of his stuff and she came away loving his songs, so that made even more special.