Tonight’s gig at the Hi Fi Bar and Ballroom has a nice early start with only one support to enhance our tastebuds. City Escape a four piece rock/ambient group start off with guitar till drums enter and develop a pumping groove. The music is joined by high vocals and the entire band look like they’re having fun on stage. The drummer’s guttural singing is remarkable and thankfully this style of singing is in small doses. Thumping and grinding with harmonised backing vocals – I can tell they have mastered the sheer almighty power of their heavy yet melodic, dark yet bright, rock.

Craig Owens is a diverse musician who doesn’t seem to be able to sit still for long periods of time and perhaps conditioned with a slight touch of ADD. He is best known as the larger-than-life front man of Chiodos and Craig’s repertoire of projects range from eclectic to pure pop genius to chaotic post-hardcore rock. His other projects include Cinematic Sunrise and The Sound Of Animals. Craig was here for Soundwave earlier this year and loved Australia so much it didn’t take much to entice him to return with a couple of mates and a new EP titled Με την αγάπη (Greek for With Love).

The stage tonight has an intimate feel with the curtain closed and gear brought forward. Craig enters the guys and girls that fill the room screamed and humbled by the size of the crowd started off solo with a Chiodos song, Intensity, displaying his strong, though sometimes rather feminine, voice. Enter drummer and bassist – Nick Martin* from Underminded and Brian Southall from The Receiving End Of Sirens – and we’re taken aboard the song A Letter from Janelle which brought upon more screaming punters. This is followed by the first song Craig ever wrote, when he was fifteen, the rocking Lindsay Quit.

Craig tells us he is getting rather hot and hence the jacket comes off, earning more screams. Next song is an as yet untitled attack on the industry’s double standards on wanting musicians to be one way and the other, it’s a great rock song with good beat and lots of dancing by the punters. Another Chiodos song next and Craig tells us this is his favourite song about living with an open mind I Didn’t Say I Was Powerful I Said I Was A Wizard sung with a soulful, grainy, rocky voice – a fantastic song with fantastic vocal arrangement.

Craig is a super chatty singer and he tells us about a new song which is on the latest EP and one that he wrote when he was homebound for three months. It’s about doing drugs alone in the bedroom by yourself and realising how stupid that is. Products Of Poverty begins with a synthesiser till the loud drum enters and we are given a stage embellished with red lights reminiscent of certain Twin Peaks scenes.

Next Craig tells us about his childhood, growing up poor and hiding in the car and listening to the rain on the roof when his parents fought when he was about six or seven years of age. He would write songs later in life about this time in his childhood. Following this is the song You Told Me That You Loved Me where Brian switches to bass and Nick heads to acoustic guitar whilst Craig holds a beer. This song is a low passionate tune that displays more strength in his live vocals, especially holding long notes.
For a change in pace, Craig asks us all to come closer and sit down and as we do so, he sits on the edge of the stage with his acoustic guitar with no microphone. This takes on a very intimate edge indeed and it’s eerily quiet for a gig. Craig wants us to feel like we are sitting around a bonfire and the crowd hushes as Craig, with his feminine mannerisms, starts singing Baby You Wouldn’t Last A Minute On The Creek followed by a cover of Counting Crows Bright Eyes. Brian sneaks out onto the stage during this song and attempts to play bass without being plugged in which draws chuckles from the crowd, but then he leaves and Nick comes out instead bringing his acoustic guitar.

Craig – ever the storyteller – tells us about his girlfriend who he loves and misses and how hard they find living apart whilst he is on tour. He wrote the next song Joanna for her and he tells us at one point he actually played it to her family and thankfully the family loved it. Last song was a cruisy tune called El Dorado with lovely guitar plucking from Nick. Craig tells us all to hang around because he wants to meet every one of us this evening and he may well still be there talking to each and every punter who came out for an evening of acoustic storytelling musical treats.

CHECK OUT THE PHOTOS FROM THE GIG HERE