Well, I was gone for a few days, so no posts while I was seeing Midge Ure a second time last Monday night on the final date of his 2016-2017 North American Tour. My wife and I enjoyed our first show last October so much that afterward she told him we’d be catching this show as well, so by the time we got home, I made a move on the tickets for the show at City Winery in Nashville. The venue could not have been more different from The Earl in Atlanta, where we’d seen him three months ago. The Earl is a dive bar with a show room that had a 106 occupancy. City Winery is a small chain started by Michael Dorf, the founder of NYC’s Knitting Factory. The expansive listening room was paradoxically large, yet intimate, with a 300 seating capacity to keep it humane.

Another difference this show, was that my good friends Elisa + Tom were in attendance. They had planned on making the Atlanta show but could not make it due to a health crisis at that time. I was the music guy in high school who apple seeded all of my friends with the sound of Ultravox, who became one of our top bands we closely followed/collected. Many’s the time that there would be word of a new single and we’d head to the import bins and grab a copy together. So this time I’d be sharing the experience with one of my “Ultravox crew” I’d been friends with since high school as well as his wife, who I’d known since college.

We had primo seats, about 10 ft. from the stage, and there was no opener, so we got uncut Midge Ure. The reason our friends could not make the show last time was that Elisa had damaged her foot, making standing for 2-3 hours a no-go, so the seated show here was right up her alley… and then some. My wife preferred some room to dance, so she got up and moved back to the soundboard area for a little room amid the somewhat cramped tables.

The set was almost unchanged from the earlier set with the addition of “Reap The Wild Wind” being a wise, and appreciated addition. As Midge explained, after the last date of his first leg, he’d realized that they did not play perhaps the one Ultravox song that got half of an airing in The States back in the day. I recall seeing the clip in medium rotation for a few weeks of MTV and it remains the single Ultravox song that I ever heard [once] on the commercial radio of Central Florida. I especially enjoyed the tougher, tighter version of “Hymn” this time as a highlight, but it was cheeky of Ure to drop out in the end choruses just as the song leaped an octave – just out of my range, for the record. When Midge laughed that the crowd were clapping along when they should have been singing, I gamely jumped in even though I really had to push hard to get anywhere near the destination.

Ure once again closed with a reading of Bowie’s “Starman” where he got to indulge in walking in the footsteps of the twin influences of Bowie and Ronson. My Bowiephile friend Elisa [who had seen Bowie only once, with my wife and I in 1998] had an emotional moment as this happened, since she had not a clue that this was how it wrapped up. Except that it didn’t really wrap up. Of course, Mr. Ure came out to chat with the fans who had stayed behind as the backing band [who live in Nashville] chatted with their friends. This time I had the presence of mind to remember to discuss the notion of a team-up album with his old friend Glenn Gregory, so if it happens, you know who to thank.

If you remember my Midge Ure Mystery from a recent post, I had received a copy of “The Gift” unbidden, in the mail last Fall and had no idea who sent it to me. After posting, I was contacted by a reader, [Dana] who is also acquaintance of Ron Kane. He sent it to me as a “gift” [geddit?] and having already owned a copy, I was planning on passing it on somehow. My wife had said to pull some Midge Ure to hear on the trip, so I grabbed it [it was already off-rack]. My wife had suggested that for an autograph this time, I get my copy of “If I Was,” his autobio, John Hancocked; a great idea. When I hooked up with Tom in Nashville, he mentioned that all of his collection of Ure vinyl had been inaccessible in storage, so I told him “no worries,” and gave him my extra copy of the 1996 DLX RM of “The Gift” to have Ure sign. Perfect!

Mr. Ure heads home to Bath for a few weeks with his family before the peripatetic Scot heads off for new lands on his ambitious tour. One caveat: I believe that these dates have India Electric as the support band, so know that these shows will probably be acoustic guitars and violin; not the electric rock music we got in The States for some reason. The North American tour was half of “Vienna” and a broad overview of his career. An arrangement that I was happy to pay twice to see. Abroad, it’s the “Something From Everything” tour where he pledges to perform at least a song from every album he’s ever made. So a Rich Kids and an extra Visage track will probably figure in the show. What I want to know is this: will there be any Slik?

Midge Ure | Something From Everything World Tour – 2017 leg

Feb 16 | Winchester, United Kingdom
Feb 17 | Maesteg, United Kingdom
Feb 18 | Westgate, United Kingdom
Feb 22 | Belfast, United Kingdom
Feb 23 | Cork, Ireland
Feb 24 | Galway, Ireland
Feb 25 | Dun Laoghaire, Ireland
Feb 26 | Dublin, Ireland
Mar 02 | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Mar 03 | Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates
Mar 08 | Subiaco, Australia
Mar 09 | Adelaide, Australia
Mar 10 | Melbourne Vic, Australia
Mar 11 | Circular Quay, Australia
Mar 12 | Brisbane, Australia
Mar 16 | Tauranga, New Zealand
Mar 17 | Auckland, New Zealand
Mar 18 | Wellington, New Zealand
Mar 19 | Nelson, New Zealand
Mar 21 | Christchurch, New Zealand
Mar 22 | Dunedin, New Zealand
Mar 23 | Queenstown, New Zealand
Apr 26 | Newport, United Kingdom
Apr 27 | Leamington, United Kingdom
Apr 28 | Shoreham By Sea, United Kingdom
Apr 30 | Ibiza, Spain
May 11 | Copenhagen, Denmark
May 12 | Goteborg, Sweden
May 13 | Stockholm, Sweden
May 19 | Oslo, Norway
May 20 | Bergen, Norway

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