Fran Healy Tickets

Fran was in great voice tonight. He greeted and signed Cd's for fans.

An unassuming guy ambles onto the stage in this intimate, casual venue, picks up a guitar and starts playing. But he's not just any guy with a guitar, he is Fran Healy, singer and main songwriter for the band Travis, who have been around since the 90's. Thus Healy is a seasoned veteran of the stage and it shows. As a seasoned concertgoer, I must say that Travis shows have always ranked among my favourites because they can make any size of venue seem intimate and they can connect honestly with their audience like so many cannot. Healy is so comfortable onstage that it's kind of like being at a house party, with a particularly gracious and obliging host. He banters easily between songs, and even allows his four-year old son to stay up past his bedtime to watch the show and have some vocal input from the sidelines, which makes for some humourous asides. The music is classic Fran Healy, with plaintive melodies, a brooding sound and touching lyrics, set to his ever-marvellous voice. Overall there's a bit less rock than in the Travis sound, but the edge is still there. The songs stand up well to the lack of any other instrumentation besides the guitar, mostly because of the sincere, emotional way in which they are sung. The crowd was clearly full of dedicated fans, as evidenced by the requests of rarely-played-live tunes made during the segment of Travis songs, like "The River" and "Slideshow". I don't think any of us were disappointed! Wonderful, wonderful night.

About 200 people made the early trek to the Mod Club to see Travis front man, Fran Healy, play songs from his new solo album wreckorder. Due to Mod clubs regular Friday night club happening later, doors were very early @ 6:00pm. Fran took to the stage at about 8:15 and played a 75 minute stripped down set of new songs and Travis favourites (as requested by the audience). Frans voice was in fine form, and he had no problem filling the Mod Club with his sweet sounds. The audience were a bit stiff, only engaging when Fran asked requests and singing along when he played the Travesy version of Britney Spears, hit me baby one more time. The banter, as is always the case with FrAn, was engaging and thorough, Fran's four year old son even got in on it from the upper balcony. Helping Fran with the set-list pre show, he helped his Da with the lyrics to a song he's collaborating on called, Teddy Bear. It was nice to see Fran take on the lesser played Travis requests towards the end, having a hard time remembering the chords and lyrics to some. All in all a good show, hopefully he'll come back with a full backing band to play the songs from Wreckorder.