Ken's Bar and Grill was a lovely venue in the centre of Madison that holds a Utopia evening once a month so there was a great crowd of supporters there and it was packed!! Jeff Gauss was the host and really did his best to make everyone feel welcome! Even though I was at the far end of the bar and was surrounded by some drunks who insisted on talking loudly over Kasim, I thoroughly enjoyed the evening! Unfortunately I could tell that Kasim's voice was feeling the strain of last night's epic gig (coupled with him recovering from a cold) but I didn't hear anybody else mention it! I guess that Kasim's voice on a bad day is better than most other singers on a good day!

The opening act was Chad Andersen before Jeff gave Kasim a great introduction! Kasim came out wearing a white shirt and jeans and launched into his usual Don't Hold Me Back. However Kasim only got as far as the end of the first chorus when he broke a string! He switched to his other guitar and re-tuned it before singing the whole song again!

After Afraid Himself To Be, Set Me Free and Alone, Kasim sang his great Just A Little Bit / Ticket To Ride duo before explaining how Sometimes Love Is A Dangerous Thing came to be written (the Meat Loaf joke went down a storm tonight!).

After Before She Was Gone, for the first time on the tour, we had an audience participation song, Say Yeah - we all had to sing (shout!), "Say what?" which was great to hear! That was followed by Kasim's great version of It Wouldn't Have Made Any Difference and his wonderful The One Sure Thing. Even though people rarely know that song, it always receives a great round of applause!

Next people started shouting out songs for Kasim to sing so he sang a few bars of Love Alone and then the inevitable Eternal Love before Across The Universe, followed by the faster version of All The Right Reasons.

Kasim was going to end the set then but there was so much applause that he was persuaded to sing another song and opted for another first of this tour - Utopia's great anthem One World! Although Kasim last sang it on The Power Trio Tour last year, it was obvious that he didn't remember the words too well as he started on the third line and included quite a few nanas when his mind went blank! Thankfully the audience all remembered the clapping part perfectly!

And that ended another brilliant concert on the Kasim Sulton 2001 Solo Acoustic Tour! Massive thanks to Crimson Eye Productions and Jeff Gauss (a.k.a. The Weavil) for arranging this great gig!

Many thanks to Jana Z for all the photos on this page

Kasim Sulton Solo Acoustic Tour 2001