Ginger Wildheart - Jun 23 Since the demise of the legendary Wildhearts (again) a few years back, a revitalized Ginger Wildheart has been busy touring with the Sinners (releasing an excellent debut album with a second one already waiting in the wings), and more recently has been playing a small number of acoustic shows celebrating his former band’s songs. Tonight, the acoustic roadshow rides into Reading with local Berkshire boy Baz Francis and the fantastic Carol Hodge supporting.

Former Magic Eight Ball singer, the immaculately dressed Baz Francis opens the show with a mixture of songs from both his excellently named ‘Face That Launched a Thousand Shipwrecks’ and his earlier band career. There’s a 90s indie rock feel to the songs (the Manic Street Preachers come to mind) and Baz has an enigmatic stage presence. I’d love to see him again with a full band to see how the songs play with more instrumentation behind them.

Baz Francis - Jun 23 I’ve never been disappointed by a Carol Hodge performance and with album number four now out, she has a wealth of material to play with. You can’t go wrong with the opening duo of ‘The Moan of a Thousand Years’ and ‘Stop Worrying Baby’ which allow Carol to demonstrate her full vocal range and playing ability. Coupled with Carol’s northern charm it’s a winning combination – you can’t help but be won over.

A version of The Offspring’s ‘Smash’ is turned into a powerful torch song at which point Carol is joined on stage by Ginger’s faithful dog Maggie, who saunters around oblivious to the music being performed around her. Dog lovers in the audience swoon and there is a danger that Maggie will be the star of the night.

Carol Hodge - Jun 23 Ginger joins Carol for ‘The Price’ from her latest album and you can see the respect between the two artists. Closing with the ’Twenty Miles up’ Carol has the appreciative crowd singing the harmonies and hopefully even more fans about to delve into her back catalogue.

Carol Hodge - Jun 23 The WIldhearts live were always an exhilarating experience with the gruff vocals, lush harmonies and crashing guitars, and as a result their fans are some of the most loyal out there on the scene. You know that no matter how obscure the song, they will know the lyrics and will sing along.

Opening with ‘Weekend (5 Long Days)’ Ginger chooses a clear fan favourite and already the crowd is bouncing in appreciation. There’s no mistaking Ginger with his dreadlocks and glorious Geordie drawl as he reminds us that he will probably talk as much as he sings during the set.

Ginger Wildheart - Jun 23

Mentioning that ‘My Baby is a Headfuck’ has four guitar solos and he can’t perform all of them, kazoos are distributed to the crowd and a new star is discovered with a very impressive kazoo solo. Baz is on backing vocals for the epic ‘Do the Channel Bop’ with some highly entertaining vocal gymnastics and posturing. ‘Urge’ and ‘Eager to Leave ‘er’ follow, the latter getting a rare outing. It sounds great.

Carol and Baz return to the stage to play some of Ginger’s favourite Wildhearts songs. The three piece sound great but sadly after just one song Ginger leaves the stage along with Maggie (who has continued to win hearts). Nobody is quite sure whether Ginger is coming back and after a storming 50 minutes the gig finishes in a haze of numb confusion. Earlier in the day Ginger had cancelled the post gig meet and greet, and later stated online that his depression had kicked in during the day.  He'd played as much as he could. Sadly Ginger’s well documented mental health issues had reared their ugly head again.

Ginger Wildheart - Jun 23 Until the abrupt close to the set, we had been treated to a fantastic night of music and the sell out crowd were clearly enjoying themselves. Ginger is one of our finest songwriters and his experiences have infused a good number of his songs – he should be treasured for his song writing and increasing awareness of the complicated mental health issues that inevitably will affect most of us at some point during our lives.

Maggie Wildheart - Jun 23