This was definitely one of the best gigs of the tour (don’t you just love it when a guy climaxes perfectly at the end?)

I think that this was Kasim’s largest New York crowd out of the four gigs that he’s played on these two tours. Within a few minutes of the doors opening, the front two rows of tables at The Bitter End soon filled up and the bar area got quite chocker too.

Kasim came on stage quite promptly at 8.30 wearing black trousers and T-shirt with a casual denim jacket over the top. His voice was just brilliant tonight (although it probably helped that his brother was doing the sound too) and Kasim was obviously in a great humour as well!

Kasim unplugging his guitar (with his mother in the foreground of the photo)

When Kasim first walked on stage he remarked that probably most people knew how he played these shows so he almost went straight into Don’t Hold Me Back after warning the people at one of the front tables that he had some candy in his mouth so a missile may arrive at them at any point! (He sang a really strong “strong” tonight so I knew that we were in for a great strong show!)

Kasim next went straight into Afraid Himself To Be and only slowed the pace down slightly to tell one of his stories about how Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing came to be written. As there were lots of children at the show he joked that not only dos he attempt to write songs for Meat Loaf but he’s also written all of Britney Spears, The Backstreet Boys and N’Sync’s songs! Kasim reckoned that Meat Loaf had told him to write a song with a country feel so he thought that he’d have to include trucks and dogs in it! Before Kasim started the song, the next band on the bill carried their drum kit through the club so when Kasim got to the music part of the song and he turned around to his imaginary band saying “Take it boys…”, he joked tonight that he knew the drums were in the club!

As part of Kasim’s intro into Set Me Free, he told us that some good songs can takes ages to write (paining over every line) but that the best songs are the songs that are written quickly, that just flow out. He said that he read an article recently about John Lennon spending five or six hours trying to write a song and being unable so he slept for a couple of hours, woke up and wrote Nowhere Man in about ten minutes! Kasim then joked that he’d spent the last month and a half sleeping to try it out! He then seriously told us that it had only taken him about fifteen minutes to write three quarters of Set Me Free.

Kasim went straight into his new two-story-no-secret Alone before (to great applause) telling us that his “forthcoming” CD Quid Pro Quo will be released next month and singing his beautiful The One Sure Thing from it. (He said that he is still “inking the deal” with his record company.)

Kasim and Doug Kennedy

The next part of the show was hilarious (if you knew that Kasim was joking!) as Kasim told us that he believes in giving back to the community and that he had joined a Big Brother programme to help a young guy who had been in trouble with the law by acting as a brother to him and taking care of him! Kasim said that when the guy wasn’t inside jail, he would spend the weekends with him and had even managed to teach him to play the guitar! He then invited him to come on stage and, of course, six foot tall Doug Kennedy walks on! Doug played along well by immediately cuffing his sleeve so Kasim asked him if he needed a hanky! Kasim next joked that they were going to play the song they learnt earlier that day and started playing Old MacDonald Had A Farm! Someone called from the audience that “crime does not pay” and Kasim joked that neither did he! It was just hilarious!

After Before She Was Gone, Kasim and Doug played Cliché and their wonderful version of Back On The Street before starting the intro into I’m Looking Through You (as Kasim said “what acoustic show would be complete without a Beatles song?”). As someone correctly guessed which intro they were playing, Kasim started singing the first verse of Hey Jude to it instead! He next sang some of Help and then Nowhere Man before singing the song proper (and he mixed up the words!). For only the second time in these concerts Kasim managed to break a string during that song but, unless you were watching, you wouldn’t have known as he covered the notes perfectly!

Next to everyone’s surprise (including hers!) Kasim brought Amy Decotis onto the stage to play One World again with him and Doug Kennedy. (Unfortunately she was sitting on a very low stool so I was unable to take any photos of her on stage.) Kasim deliberately started the tune VERY fast a couple of times before playing it properly and he included the lines “And there’s Amy from Rochester who plays with me on One World” and “From Berlin to San Francisco, From New York to Anywhere!”. During the clapping part Kasim kept getting Amy to clap over her head and he ended up having to hold her guitar to steady it!

After Doug and Amy left the stage thankfully the club allowed Kasim to play one more song so he chose his great quieter new version of Across The Universe as his encore.

And with a “We’ll see you in September” the Have Guitar Will Travel Tour was over!

Nineteen brilliant concerts! Roll on the next Kasim Sulton Tour…..!

Video Clips
These are 15 second video clips which will take about 5 minutes each to download on a normal modem.
Kasim singing Don't Hold Me Back
Kasim singing Afraid Himself To Be - just listen to that voice tonight!
"Take it boys.....!"
Kasim singing Set Me Free
Kasim singing The One Sure Thing
Kasim singing Todd's Cliche
Kasim playing Back On The Street
Kasim playing more of Back On The Street
Kasim playing yet more of Back On The Street
Kasim playing even more of Back On The Street
I like their version of Back On The Street!
The gunshots in Back On The Street
Kasim singing I'm Looking Through You
Kasim singing One World - Amy was there, honest!
Kasim singing Across The Universe