Tom Chaplin: ‘Midpoint’ Tour 13/10/22

I don’t usually see someone multiple times on the same tour but there are always exceptions. This is a very special tour because it includes a Q&A session each night with all sorts of creative questions submitted by fans, followed by a rarely performed Keane song. I am always so excited to see what it is going to be next. There was a vote on Twitter but Tom Chaplin seems to be deviating from the suggestions more and more as the tour goes on, joking they are basically pulling songs out of a hat at this point. It doesn’t matter to me though, as any Keane song makes me happy. The setlists have been top-notch, featuring songs from his two main solo albums ‘The Wave’ and ‘Midpoint’ (but no Christmas songs as of yet) and some of the most popular/crowd-pleasing Keane numbers. It starts off slow with dimmed lighting and ends with upbeat songs which never fail to get people on their feet. TC is truly spoiling us and you can tell he is having a blast doing so, especially now he is recovering from his unfortunate spell of tonsillitis. I managed three out of the thirteen UK dates (Leicester, Gateshead and Glasgow) but hope to see him on the road again in the not too distant future. I’d like to thank everyone who has been recording the Keane rarities and insightful Q&As, as it makes the rest of us feel like we’re not missing out.

I had Thursday and Friday off work, so fitted in the back-to-back Gateshead and Glasgow gigs. My sleep suffered as a result of working late the night before but that wasn’t too much of an issue once doors opened at 7pm and the adrenaline kicked in. Sage Gateshead is a beautiful but odd-looking building on the south side of the River Tyne. I didn’t even realise it was a music venue when I last visited the area to see Keane at Tynemouth and had to Google it to satisfy my curiosity. Paul and I thought it was a giant car park or something but I should have given it more credit as it’s a lot more artsy looking than that. It’s a huge modern-looking silver building, which seems to “overflow” down on to the river bank. It was extremely easy to find, as it was lit up in preparation for the event. I just needed to figure out which bridge was best to cross, as there are so many stunning bridges crossing the river (of various heights). I took dozens of pictures of the gorgeous scenery on my way over. It was a perfect night and there was hardly a cloud in the sky.

I was later arriving than usual (thanks to a disastrous delay at dinner) but had enough time to grab more “cough syrup” (aka. whisky) before Edie Bens came onstage. The layout of the venue was confusing at first, having to go upstairs to reach “Sage One” (there is also a “Sage Two”) even though my seat was on the lower level. I was in Row E this time, instead of Row G. I wasn’t central like last time but that meant the microphone wasn’t getting in the way of my pictures and I got a different perspective. EB was fantastic once again. I like that she switches up her songs too and I appreciate how she takes the time to comment on each place they are visiting. She was enthusiastic about the 24 Hour Greggs in Newcastle, which beats the drive-in one she has back home in Wales. She knows how to get a laugh out of the crowd and has no trouble keeping people engaged during her set. I think she’s the perfect opening act for TC as her voice is gorgeous and her songs are about various relatable aspects of life and are raw and emotional. They’re not all just about boys, like she jokes about. She asks if anyone can help her come up with a better name for her song ‘Boys, Boys, Boys’, which she is unsatisfied with and claims is a bit of a mouthful. She said her dad is getting married for the first time in his sixties and she wrote a song about it. She was afraid of singing it in Cardiff because she said he’ll be there and it might make him even more anxious. If you’re reading this and saw her in Cardiff, I’d be interested to know if she went through with singing it.

Everyone came on stage a little earlier tonight than in Leicester. TC did a two hour set this time around, when it was closer to an hour and a half at De Montfort Hall. I don’t know if that was because it was the first show and they were still figuring things out, or if it was because he woke up sick that morning with tonsillitis. He does seem to be feeling a lot better now, thankfully. These things take time to go away but you would never know anything was wrong if he didn’t mention it. It was only at the very end of the first performance in Leicester he confessed he needed his bed straight afterwards. He’s worried his sickness is starting to spread around his team, which must be an absolute nightmare. He never fails to deliver, dancing around the length of the stage and singing his heart out from the beginning to the final bow. His vocal range is extraordinary and his new album ‘Midpoint’ showcases it marvellously, containing songs which all sound very different from one another but work very well together. On Twitter, the day the album came out, he said you have to listen to it in order and no skipping is allowed!

The setlist always seems to start with ‘All Fall Down’ and ‘Rise and Fall’, which are the perfect opening numbers for building tension and giving us an idea of what else we are in for. After those first two songs, TC told us they don’t want to kill our ears too early on because they’ll do enough of that later. Some people around me commented that songs from ‘The Wave’ are easier to dance to than the new material, which may be true. Others said they didn’t fully appreciate the newer songs until they heard them live and they were fully brought to life. ‘Midpoint’ is (mostly) not really a “get up and jump around” kind of album though everyone does seem to let loose during ‘Gravitational’ but there are enough upbeat songs sprinkled throughout the set list to satisfy those who do want to spend most of the night on their feet. TC encouraged us to stand up when we felt like it but emphasised it’s not obligatory. A lot of us regret not getting out of our seats a lot sooner at Leicester, as it took until the encore. It’s difficult to know what to do because rules vary wildly from venue to venue. The staff at The Sage were very friendly and didn’t mind when the crowd got rowdier (in a good-natured way). It’s nice to sit and fully soak in the slower songs, too. I think there was a good mix of fast and gentle songs.

He told us the team spent a lovely day off yesterday enjoying the “fine city” of Newcastle. I always wonder if musicians explore the cities they visit or if they camp out in their hotels and tour buses most of the time to avoid getting hounded by the public. He asked what’s best to say, if he’s in Newcastle, Gateshead or Tyneside when performing at The Sage. People were adamant it’s Gateshead. It was a unanimous decision. You can get from Newcastle to Gateshead by simply crossing the river and I’d like to see more of the area another time when I’m feeling better. The only thing I did there was visit the venue but I’d like to see what else is over there. He said he’s not going to mention Middlesbrough and divide the crowd so early on but there were people from there who missed the voting on Twitter and were cheeky enough to try and persuade him to come perform a Keane rarity of their choosing in their hometown. They wanted ‘The Starting Line’. He tried to make them feel better by saying he might do that one another time but they’d already practised a song and it’s too late to start voting now! Middlesbrough was the first place Keane performed away from home when they were starting out and he had also talked about that at Tynemouth in July. Someone shouted that they had been at that very early performance.

When introducing ‘Stars Align’, he explained it’s many people’s favourite off the new album and how it’s about spontaneity and not chasing “lofty ambitions” like he did when he was younger and how you can’t pay for the most beautiful things in life. All of the new songs have so much meaning behind them and a lot of depth. I’m so thankful ‘Midpoint’ exists and I can’t believe he managed to keep the project a secret for so long, after finishing working on it at the end of 2021. As soon as I heard the album it shot to one of my all-time favourites and experiencing this tour has made me even more fond of it. It’s finally getting the recognition it deserves. He told us the new radio edit version of ‘Overshoot’ was BBC 2’s “single of the week”, which is great because it will hopefully draw even more people to come see him on tour, who maybe wouldn’t have otherwise. They weren’t keen to play the original version (calling it a “show-stopper” and not in a good way) but the song was re-worked with a kind of “dance beat” and is gaining a lot of attention on the radio now. The edit is wildly different from the original. At first I thought the dancier elements detracted from the raw emotion of it but now I can appreciate both versions and the transition from the original to radio edit version at the end of the night ends the show on such a high.

He got a great reaction when he talked about revisiting the songs from ‘The Wave’. A man beside me cheered loudly and was proud to tell everyone around him (including Tom on stage) that he owns that album as well as the Christmas one. It was nice to hear about his fond memories regarding that album and get some insight into the history behind making it – how he was extremely nervous to put it out into the world because of the dark subject matter of addiction etc. and how he’d had such a long hiatus (four or five years between working on any projects at all). He feels he made no sense at all during the Jo Whiley interview on the radio at that time when he was promoting it (or “even less sense than normal”) but it gained a lot of momentum once it was released and he’s enjoyed reawakening the songs for this tour. He hoped people would appreciate the “human message” underneath it and not form a negative opinion of him after analysing it.

The Q&As are always a lot of fun, seeing what people think up to ask him and there is usually a mix of funny and serious questions. He does his best to give advice but suggests people contact a professional as he thinks he is the worst person to ask and says friends and family can mean well but their suggestions can do more harm than good sometimes. No matter what you ask the answer is guaranteed to be funny and/or interesting. He has gotten much better at remembering to answer the questions instead of getting side-tracked and hastily moving on to the next one. Not a lot of people knew you could submit questions and he was disappointed the message didn’t seem to get out there but it was a success, regardless. He talked about how much he likes the film ‘Yesterday’ when someone asked if there’s any songs he wished he’d written but hadn’t. He said there’s a lot he wishes he’d written but narrowed it down to a Christmas song he would continue to get a lot of royalties from each year. He talked about his own Christmas album and said it really needs a John Lewis advert to go with one of the songs. Someone asked where the most unusual place he’s ever performed was and a disembodied voice down the front entertainingly shouted “MIDDLESBROUGH!” It became a running joke throughout the evening.

He expressed his gratitude for being able to go on tour and perform in front of such beautiful audiences. He understands money is tight at the moment and it means a lot to him we paid to come and see him perform. There was a joyful atmosphere and a lot of love for him was radiating throughout the arena. It’s always funny to me when he talks about doing the “last song” because we know fine well it’s not going to be. He doesn’t pretend he’s not going to come back out when everything turns to black and says he’ll sing this one, go away and come back out again to do some more. Everyone made a lot of noise when he exited the stage. He took longer than usual to come back out because of a couple technical issues they had and expressed his concern we’d stop applauding and cheering after a certain length of time passed but we didn’t. If anything, it got louder the longer we waited. People were cheering, chanting and even stomping in unison to create as much noise as humanly possible. It was thunderous. Enthusiastic crowds make the night so much better.

He introduced ‘New Flowers’ by explaining it’s a track he wrote about his children and living his life at a slower pace than he has previously been used to. He said he was talking to his children on FaceTime earlier and this is the point of the tour where he really starts to miss them out on the road, even when they are covered in snot! That got a big “aww” when he admitted he misses his son so much he’d kiss him anyway. He mentioned his daughter too who is a few years older, saying she is at the age where she is starting to wind up his wife and he could feel the tension building at home when chatting to them. After all the sentimentality he nearly forgot the name of the song he dedicated to his children. He needed to check the setlist on the stage to remind himself. It’s a beautiful song and works really well as part of the encore leading up to ‘Overshoot’.

I’ve been having such an amazing time revelling in the magic of this tour. It’s hard to match the excitement of hearing Keane songs performed live and he knows how much this means to us long-time fans. It’s incredible to witness him relearn all those classics in such a short space of time. He and the band appear to practice the songs on the day and do a different one every single night. Some of the songs are more challenging to learn than others so he’s saving those for later in the tour, when they’ve had more time to practice them. There’s a lot of speculation he’ll do ‘Russian Farmer Song’ at the final show in London. Fingers crossed. Hopefully it won’t be long before another TC event of any sort is announced. EU dates, perhaps? We can live in hope.

I never do this but I waited outside the stage door with other fans in case he would come out and greet us. I wouldn’t have done it if he didn’t Tweet about maybe doing so beforehand, apologising to fans he’d missed the previous nights due to his illness. It took about an hour and a half waiting for him in the cold but it was worth it. It’s all a bit of a blur but I managed to get my copy of ‘Midpoint’ signed! I was too nervous to ask for a selfie (I probably only managed to utter about five words) but maybe next time. I didn’t like taking up much of his time but he was so lovely and it’s obvious he cares for his fans and is eager to make them happy. Everyone was very respectful and didn’t ambush him. I’m so thankful to get my CD signed and will remember this night and venue fondly. Anyone who still has a chance to see him live, I highly recommend you do so.

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GALLERY:

Sage Gateshead across the River Tyne

View from the venue in the evening

Such a quirky building

Edie Bens

Mid-song

Best full band shot I could get

‘Gravitational’ on the keyboard again

Love how happy the band members always look

Spotlights again

Zoom

Signed CD!