Perth’s suburban kid, Bob Evans is currently on the road to promote his new album, Goodnight, Bull Creek! On tour he finds himself joined by a fantastic band, the flu and an eccentric US singer by the name of Steve Poltz.

Last Saturday night saw ANU Bar fill up, but only at a slow speed. San Diego’s own, Steve Poltz, at first didn’t look like one to leave an impression… but once he began, you couldn’t help but become intrigued. The song Dicks’ Automotive was probably Poltz’ best song. He couldn’t help but unplug his guitar and jump into the audience and sing from there.

Many songs were played in different styles: almost all of them having hilarious lyrics. An audience soon learnt that, Poltz aside from being crazy appeared to be a very interesting man.

Each of his songs had a story, and one very special song in particular song, titled You Were Meant For Me (made famous by Jewel) was one that he’d co-written. Apparently inspired by a Mexican drug bust with cops, boats, lots of weed and a hot waitress (Jewel) with a rifle. What a story! What a performance and an excellent song to close the set on.

As Bob Evans and his remarkable band came out on stage the crowd cheered. Evans stood before the crowd with fairy-lights on his guitar. “I love your fairy lights” screamed an adoring fan, “I love yours too” replied Evans (no sexual innuendo implied).

He was charming, engaging with his audience. His hair looked great and despite what he said about the audience thinking his music was ‘fucking awesome’ (which is above sex) being concerning, it was.

Opening with Someone So Much, followed by many fantastic tunes from the Bob Evans’ discography including; Brother O Brother, Friend, Nowhere Without You and more. It was Power of Speech which saw a young research student receive a cup of red wine, pampering from stage crew and bossa-nova style serenade by Mr Evans himself. Lucky girl!

The band was so involved, full guitar, bass, keys and drum solos. Oh yeah!

Evans then treated his audience to an acoustic cover. He said that many people had requested he play it, “It’s a song everybody should cover,” going on to play a very folky version of Lily Allen’s Not Fair. He played a few more songs before finally closing the set with We’re A Mess.

Poor Bob left the stage looking very sick. He did a great job at hiding it though, as the set was awesome! Someone please hand him (as well as the sick members of his band) some tissues and a pack of Strepsils. Get well!

We hope to see him back towards the end of the year.