Yesterday night was the one and only Woven Hand show in France. No doubt that the 400 to 500 very respectful and impressed people at the Café de la Danse would have loved a few other shows in France.
Since the album is pretty expensive in France, and since I'll see the band several times, I decided not to listen to the tracks before going to the show, so as to see the different shows under different angles (discovery and "expert"), and I bought the CD after the show. Nice option, since the CD was much cheaper there :-).

After meeting up with a few friends before the show - yes, I recommended the show to some people without even knowing the music, but hey, it is David Eugene Edwards plus a Denver Gentleman and a former Slim Cessna's Auto Club member - we listened to the opening act SPOR. No surprise since I already saw the band playing once. Nice opener. I wouldn't buy the CD, but they're really nice to see onstage, and they have a very good sound. They're former members of the once famous French band "No one is innocent". Alternative repetitive rock sound, with indian-like sounds sometimes. Way more violent than Woven Hand, and very different, but there is some kind of connection between the two. After 45 minutes and a long interruption (so as to change every single thing on stage), it's time for Woven Hand.

Bad news : they started at 21:30, and given that the venue has a very early curfew (22:30) and they usually stop the band at that precise time, it means the set might be very short.

Anyway, this factor is quickly forgotten by everyone as soon as David enters the stage. All the other members come along but David plays the first track solo (Phyllis Ann). First impression : it sounds a lot like Phyllis Ruth, but it is not. David sings a Plyllis Ruth verse in the middle of the song, and the words are quite different from the ones you can find on http://www.16horsepower.com/lyricswhother.html. The sound was very good, and as I said, the venue is probably the nicest in Paris, with a brick wall and black curtains behind the stage. However, quite a few technical problems could be noticed, and the very talkative sound engineers were quite slow to stop them (the band was rather angry about them being slow, btw). David also had many problems tuning his instruments "because they're very old", and even had to stop after the intro of a song to retune the banjo.

The setlist was about the same as in Nijmegen the night before, but with an extra track, Wooden Brother. The encore was played after the curfew. Thanx to the venue for that.

I was standing in the front so I couldn't hear the organ and keyboards a lot. My favorite tracks of the evening were Glass eye, Blue pail fever, Arrowhead and that wonderful and chilling solo version of 16HP's Golden rope.
I can't compare it to the CD yet since I listened to it only once so far (so as to give you the setlist), but it seems that the way they play the tracks live is completely different. Yet I was pleasantly surprised to see that Woven Hand is definitely not like 16HP. Almost a hundred per cent acoustic instruments. Though so far I like 16HP better, I would have been quite disappointed to hear a 16HP-copy just with other members.

The contact between the band and the audience was very weird. David's new look surprised me quite a lot. He was dressed pretty classy with dark red. His new moustache makes him look older, IMHO. He was very concentrated as usual, and sitting on the side on a lower chair than usual. That seemed a bit odd to see him on the side. It gives more "room" to the other members (though many looked in his direction a lot anyway) but I think it makes him lose a little of his charisma. He also looked "nicer"... I mean, just as convinced as usual but without these dark expressions in his eyes.

I didn't look at Daniel McMahon too much. It's very nice to see him play, he's definitely got something, some sort of charisma, but since I didn't hear him a lot and he was on the opposite side of the stage, I tended to look at the other members.

Paul Fonfara seemed a bit more distant. He was probably not in a good mood since he had problems with his onstage sound. Nice style anyway, with black and white shoes and an old hat.

Ordy Garrison impressed me a lot. He was between David and Paul Fonfara, almost not behind them. Being in the front, I could hear him pretty easily! His drumming is absolutely great. Not better than Jean-Yves Tola but different. Very creative too, I thought. He seems to enjoy playing a lot.

By Arnaud