Kiefer Sutherland: SWX
22nd July 2019
LIVE REVIEWS- BRISTOL
Matt Back
It's a hot Monday night in late July, we're at SWX in Bristol with an at capacity crowd to see country star Kierfer Sutherland(and yes he has had a few movies and TV shows too).
He enters the stage with what his becoming his trade mark white wide-brimmed hat. Singing in a thick gravelly voice, Kiefer offers the audience a quintessential country music tone.
As you would expect the set comprised of a lot of songs from his latest work "Reckless & Me" (2019), but he also made time for tracks from his debut album "Down in a Hole" (2016), which he describes as the closest thing he has to a journal.
Kiefer offered the audience the back stories to many of his songs throughout the gig, one thing which was clearly striking was his sense of humility about his own life and the passion he has for the stories he sings about is self evident.
The song "Saskatchewan" talks about going back to see his mother in Canada, not knowing if she would still be alive when he arrived and illustrates the honesty in his song writing and clearly moved the audience.
Whilst most of his music is clearly undeniably country music, Kiefer does conjure up a wider sense of Americana with songs like "Agave" and the "This is How it's Done", which both rocked the house.
The 52-year performed with energy throughout the gig, and at times (whilst performing some of his guitar rifts) bent his body like he was a character in The Matrix.
Kiefer recounted the story of how as a kid his father (Donald Sutherland) won a Ferrari in a poker game, and the only record in the eight track player for 10-years was a Bob Dylan album. We were then treated to his version of "Knockin on Heavens Door".
My personal favourite song of the night is a track from the first album, "Not Enough Whiskey", maybe it's because it's a theme which perfectly evokes country music, richly exemplified with songs from other artists like "Tennessee Whiskey" and "Whiskey Lullaby". At the end of the song Kiefer toasts the crowd and everyone raises their glasses!
Overall a solid energetic and at times heart felt performance, the crowd loved every second of it!