STRAWBS TOUR USA/CANADA IN 2004!
Classic 1974/1975 line-up of Strawbs hits the road in June/July 2004!

John Hawken, Chas Cronk and Rod Coombes re-unite with
Dave Cousins and Dave Lambert for USA/Canada Tour!

For tour details, chat and more, please visit the official Strawbs homepage at: http://www.strawbpage.ndirect.co.uk

Review of Strawbs in Cleveland, Ohio June 25, 2004 Magic descended upon The Winchester Theater in Lakewood, Ohio (just west of Cleveland) as the reunited electric lineup of the Strawbs took the house down with a night of hall-of-fame quality prog-rock. This was the second show of the all-too-brief Strawbs US Electric tour, which is only scheduled through July 2004. The band featured the ever-present sage Dave Cousins (vocals, acoustic and slide guitar) and Dave Lambert (electric lead guitar and backing vocals). Others in this current touring lineup were the bandmembers with the Strawbs in 1974-75: John Hawken (keyboards), Chas Cronk (bass, 12-string guitar) and Rod Coombes (drums). This line-up proved to be the one associated with the greatest band success in North America. The band’s line-up will change when the “electric Strawbs” tour Europe, in which Hawken, Cronk and Coombes will step aside, and Blue Weaver (keyboards), John Ford (bass), and Richard Hudson (drums) will step in.  Again, the line-up with Weaver/Ford/Hudson is the line-up that was the most popular in Europe during the early 1970s (specifically the “Grave New World” and “Bursting at the Seams” classics), while the 1974-75 line-up achieved the band’s chart peaks with the albums “Hero and Heroine” and “Ghosts.” Hero & Heroine was recently certified as a Gold album. After the show, Dave Lambert commented on how the band continues as a brotherhood 30 years later because the Strawbs as an entity has a heart and a soul. On stage, the band showed a friendship reflecting a recently-reunited family, and the members’ interplay on stage was both well-rehearsed and wonderfully spontaneous. After opening with Hero and Heroine’s “Out in the Cold,” Hawken entered with a climactic heavy-synth segueway into “Round and Round,” which concluded with animated spoken verse by Dave Cousins with arm gestures that would remind some of Joe Cocker or Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson. Cousins’ dramatic flair with sung and spoken word and free-form gestures was indeed spellbinding throughout the night. Other highlights from their 1974 album included the classics “Shine on Silver Sun,” the title track “Hero and Heroine,” and the breathtaking “Autumn” sequence, which could have easily served as the showstopper after the sing-a-long “Winter Long” coda to the Autumn trilogy. Their catalogue’s earliest representatives were 1972’s “Benedictus” and title track from the “Grave New World” album. 1973’s “Bursting from the Seams” was represented by the two-fer “The River” and “Down by the Sea,” as well as the encore song “Lay Down.”  The other most audience-exciting tracks covered were “Ghosts” from 1975 and two new tracks from their forthcoming release (called “Deja Fou”), “This Barren Land” and “Here Today Gone Tomorrow.” Dave Cousins was in perfect voice for his uninhibited covers of the classics, while his 2 new songs seemed to be more reflective and restrained vocally, providing the audience an effective contrast of past visions and current views. Dave Lambert provided occasional lead vocal relief for Cousins on a few songs such as “Down by the Sea.”  In an effective “coming full circle” of the over-90 minute set, the band concluded with another heavy-synth reprise with John Hawken on “Round and Round.”  Most every song led to a standing ovation from the appreciative sold-out audience of perhaps over 300.  During the encore, Cousins dead-panned that “Well, maybe we’ll come back in another 20 years instead of 30…”  This fan is counting the days. Brian Williams Renaissance-Illusion-Stairway Yahoo! Discussion Group http://launch.groups.yahoo.com/group/RenaissanceIllusionStairway