Live Music – The Live Room

Nov 23 2025

Cua 2025

Friday 31st October 2025

Photos, review and videos by Keith Belcher

Friday 31st October 2025. The return visit of CUA, just a few days short of 3 years since their debut at TLR (13th November 2022). CUA are: John Davidson (fiddle, percussion, vocals) Shane Booth (guitar, vocals) and Ros O’Meara (bouzouki, guitar, percussion, vocals).

Usually bands progress from standing during a gig to sitting as the years pass. CUA seem to have gone the other way, 2022 found them all seated but 2025 was definitely all standing (the band, not the audience). The penultimate gig of their tour, they certainly gave an inspired performance.

The conversations I heard (and read) were all praise. Praise for their musicianship, praise for the quality of their songs, praise for their adaptation and interpretation of musical genres and especial praise for their outstanding harmony work.

Acapella songs opened and closed the evening. The first , one of their own compositions , “The Other Man”, a very hard hitting and political song. I imagine it would have been greatly approved of by the author of their final song , another acapella ,“The Tunnel Tigers”, a Ewan MacColl song about the dangerous and difficult work of constructing tunnels, specifically in the tough clay soil found beneath London.

The delivery of the show was really well paced mingling quiet reflective songs like “Sail Home With Me” with the very fast “The Guisers Fancy”, very apt for Halloween. It featured some extremely interesting and quite unusual time signatures. To my old ears leaning very heavily towards Eastern European music. I’m biased, I saw them twice last week . They are very good.

Many songs tonight were from the new EP “WILL YOU BE OK” .All songs were CUA compositions with the exception of “The Tunnel Tigers” and a really superb version of “The Auld Triangle” I’m sure they’ll be welcome back for a 3rd visit in the (hopefully) not too distant future.

videos by keith belcher

Wildflower

The Auld Triangle

Hot Blooded

Nov 23 2025

Courtney Marie Andrews

Thursday 26th October 2025

Photos Richard Leach, review Mike Latham, video courtesy CMA fans Facebook group

It was magical.

An intimate show with Courtney and her guitarist, Jerry Bernhardt.

Her tales of events and experiences were also very intimate in feel, the revelation of some very private feelings or observations, underscored with the great meshing of voices and music.
It was clear that there was a lot of expectation in the room and we were not disappointed.

The evening began with another excellent, albeit short, session from Chris Helme.

Video

Table For One

Jul 8 2025

Demi Marriner Band

Sunday 8th June 2025

Photos, videos & review by Keith Belcher

Sunday 8th June 2025. The Live Room Saltaire. Demi Marriner & Band.

Opening for the Demi Marriner band were The Steady Habits fronted by Connecticut born Sean C Duggan. The Steady Habits can be a duo, trio or quartet, (occasionally a quintet). Tonight they were a duo of Sean C Duggan, main vocal, guitar and harmonica and Cathy Ife on vocals and guitar. Joe Coombs who was playing guitar tonight for Demi Marriner is also a member of Steady Habits along with Jamie Dawson. Both Joe and Jamie are very familiar to TLR regulars.

Sean has a truly excellent voice, very reminiscent of Jason Isbell when playing solo. Excellent harmonica. Great songs and music. On the performance tonight, I, for one, would like to see the entire band at TLR in the future. Ron and Hilary have plans afoot, watch this space.

Demi Marriner Band is Demi, main vocals and guitar, Joe Coombs, vocals and guitars, Garry Kroll , drums and percussion and Scott Warman vocals and bass.

Wow!! immediately sprang to mind. I have been to a lot of great TLR shows since the venue opened in 2012 but I was staggered by the sheer energy of this performance. Demi and the band were on fire and it really showed. All the stops were pulled out. They were really enjoying playing, the audience were enjoying hearing and seeing, and the energy cycled between the stage and the floor and it just kept feeding on itself.

There are a couple of shots I’ve used just because of what I thought at the time. It was very difficult to pick a selection of shots to use, there were so many great ones.

On one shot Scott (bass) is laughing and for some reason when I saw that I started hearing the tune to ‘Start Me Up’ by The Stones but was hearing ‘You make a bass player Smile’ instead of the usual lines about grown men crying .

I’ve photographed Joe quite a few times and have never caught outright laughter when he is playing , the shot is out of focus but to me it just captured the mood. Likewise the final shot of Demi is heavily cropped but seemed to capture Demi’s feelings at the end of the show.