So fair warning, this is probably going to be a really long, emotional post about my love for my favourite musician in the last few years, so most of you might not actually be interested but I'll also talk a bit about the parts of Liverpool I did see and my first hostel experience! So bear with me.
General background: I have adored Patrick Wolf for the past six years or so and he rarely does tours in the US/anywhere near me and often sticks to Europe and the UK (he's London-based) and when I found out he was doing a ten year anniversary tour in the UK while I was studying abroad it was fate and I HAD TO GO. And I somehow accidentally managed to find this the moment the tickets went on presale (thank you time difference) and I got two tickets for the very center of the front row for his performance in the Epstein Theatre in Liverpool.
I left York around 12 on Thursday for the 2 hour and 20 minute train ride to Liverpool. I really do appreciate how convient the train system is here! I was staying at Hatters Hostel Liverpool which was a really great hostel for my first experience. The staff was super friendly and the location was really great (once I found my way from the train station- that was a bit of a struggle because I came out a side exit instead of the main one). I was in an 8-bed co-ed dorm, which was really basic, but it had a great view of the city!
Hostel room on the 5th floor
View from the window by my bunk
After I got settled and orientated myself, I went on a walk around the city centre. I mostly stuck to the Cavern Quarter and the big shopping centre of Liverpool because by the time I would have walked to the main museums in the dock area of town, most of them would be about to close! The Cavern Quarter is where the Cavern Club originally was, where the Beatles first made a name for themselves. The original club isn't there anymore (it's a Vivienne Westwood shop actually) but a club and pub are still on part of the original land, and are remodeled after the original design, so it's pretty close. The whole street is litered with Beatles themed pubs and bars and shops, and anyone who knows me knows I am the world's biggest Beatles fanatic, so this was quite exciting to see!!! I'm planning to go back another time to take a Magical Mystery Bus Tour where you go to their childhood homes, Penny Lane, and other famous locales (they leave at 2 pm and I didn't arrive until nearly 3:30).
BBC Radio Merseyside!
Oh hey John Lennon?
The Cavern Quarter
The current Cavern Club entrance
Mathew Street, aka the Cavern Quarter
I spent most of my time just walking around and seeing what was in the area. I managed to find a Chipotle knock-off called the Bare Burrito for dinner, so I got my Mexican food fix in :-) And I found a place with Reese's milkshakes, so it was like an American food day haha. I haven't really missed it at all, but it was a nice surprise to see those things around!
The doors for the concert opened at 7:15, so I headed over around 7:25-7:30. It was unfortunate that my first proper migraine happened on the night of the concert I was so looking forward to, so I was a bit under the weather but there was no way I was letting that get in the way of me and Patrick Wolf! There were two opening acts that were performing in the bar portion of the venue. The theatre is named after Brian Epstein, the Beatles' manager and the person responsible for getting them going, so there was nice little circle of favourite music-ness happening there! One of the opening acts was really good, if you like Mumford & Sons you should check them out! You can listen to some of their music here.
The doors opened around 8:30 which a bit later than scheduled, but they were allowing for the acts to finish up in the bar. The theatre was really atmospheric and quite intimate- it was a rather small theatre with old Victorian type decorations. The opening act was Abi Wade, who was so amazing! I hadn't heard of her before, but she was fantastic live. She plays cello, but also uses the cello itself as a percussion instrument in the most interesting ways, and her voice is fantastic, she's a bit like Florence & the Machine. Here's a video so you can get an idea of what I mean:
She was great and had some banter with the audience. I really love musicians who get creative with their instruments like her.
Abi Wade in the Epstein Theatre
There was a huge wait between her set and Patrick Wolf's because they had to tune like ten instruments- there was a tenor guitar, a ukelele, a piano, a harp, two violins, an accordion, an oboe, and a clarinet. It was crazy. But finally the show started and it was so worth the wait!! He came out and he is seriously one of my favourite humans to grace the planet. Seeing him live was surreal, honestly. He's been a muse to my artwork and kept me sane for years, and it was just amazing to be five feet away from him for an hour and a half. There really aren't words. I didn't cry, which was an accomplishment! (I'm known to shed a tear at concerts of bands I love oops). I think I was so in awe (and in pain, stupid migraines) that it didn't seem real.
He is so talented, as well. His voice sounds better live, and it's so pure and on key, which is kind of rare with a lot of artists today. And he can play a billion instruments. But what was my favourite part was when he would talk between the songs and explain their significance or some little anecdote or whatever. For the ten year anniversary, he put together an acoustic album of rerecordings of some of the songs that mean the most to him or he loves the most, so those were the songs he primarily performed.
"The Falcons" was hilarious, because he went on this long ramble about the backstory of the song- when he moved into his first flat in London with his partner, there were all these bird watchers outside his building because apparently a pair of Peregrine Falcons were nesting there and there hadn't been any sighted in London (or England? I can't remember) for ages, so all the bird watchers were so excited. So he started to watch them as well, and when he and his partner moved out, the falcons left as well, and pretty much he felt a connection to them or something and wrote this song about that period of his life. And he said it was especially important for him to perform that song yesterday because the House of Commons passed a vote on same-sex marriage the day before, and you could tell he was just so so happy about it :-) He was so silly, though, because he said since he'd been talking for so long he would mess up the song, which he did (he forgot the first line), which someone caught on video.
He also performed "The Libertine" which is like MY SONG by him- I made a screen-print of a design based on the lyrics to that song which I then used to make hand-bound books on year at Interlochen and I've always just loved that song, and to see him perform it was actually beyond words. He got really into it as well and it was during that song that he came up to the very front of the stage and was like two feet away and I was about to die.
So it was moments like that that really made the concert. There was a lot of banter between him and the audience as well, as the evening went on- everyone was laughing a lot and interacting with him and he found it funny. It was great because he performed songs he hadn't ever performed live in the past ten years of his career, so that was especially exciting! He could only do them at the Liverpool show on the tour as well because there was a Liverpool a cappella choir that joined him to make that possible! So while I didn't get to hear a few of my favourite songs by him, I got to hear him perform songs that he had always wanted to do live but couldn't, so that was definitely better.
Patrick Wolf- "The Falcons"
I'm not sure what that face is for, but it's one of the clear pictures I have haha
Abi Wade joined him for a few songs!
Actual light of my life
The Libertine!
Blurry, but this was when the a cappella choir joined him.
Also blurry, but this was when he was right at the front of the stage for The Libertine and I almost died a bit
My camera didn't do so well with taking photos, which is a shame, but here are some better photos taken by some professionals haha: there's a review here and a gallery here.
So that was quite long and props to you if you actually read everything haha. I could have gone on some more but I saved you lot from enduring that :-)
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