Dave Fuller writes;

“Phenomenal doesn’t even come close!”

We had an absolute blast last night with the first of our Sunday Service pilot gigs, featuring the Urban Soul Family. As we don’t do tickets, we had no way of knowing how well supported our new soul, gospel and RnB night would be until we opened the doors, but on this bright and sunny bank-holiday weekend, Worcester got behind it and brought their party attitude to boot!

It was indeed a “Lovely Day” as the seven-piece band kicked off the party with this Bill Withers classic and took us on a journey with over two hours of soul, gospel, RnB and reggae covers featuring songs from Chic to Chaka Khan, Emeli Sandé to Candi Staton and even some re-arrangements of The Police, Oasis and Fleetwood Mac thrown in for good measure!

Highlights for me were the Ronnie Laws anthem “Always There”, (covered by Incognito in 1991 with vocals by Jocelyn Brown, but tonight featuring Janita Butler), “Optimistic” by Sounds of Blackness and a soulful arrangement of Cindy Lauper’s “True Colours”. We were taken to church with the Edwin Hawkins Singers’ gospel masterpiece “Oh Happy Day” and enjoyed a fantastic arrangement of “Message In A Bottle” that featured the delectable soprano sax of Anne Tinsley.

The second set got everyone up and dancing with bangers including “Superstition”, CeCe Peniston’s “Finally”, Bob Marley’s “One Love”, Luther Vandross’ “Never Too Much” and Candy Staton’s “You Got The Love”, which even got saxophonist Anne Tinsley down on the dance floor playing among the dancing crowd! The set ended with “Wonderwall” - it should be known that bands on the Music Spoken Here program need special dispensation to play this one, but they did a great job with it and featured Liam White with a drum solo at the end.

This crowd weren’t ready to leave it there though, and their whoops and yells for more were rewarded with a double encore of “Proud Mary” and “Simply The Best” - a fitting description of this incredible evening! The feedback was great all round “Phenomenal doesn’t come close!”, “Absolutely off the scale!”, “Inspirational Happiness”, “It was a great show”, “What an afternoon!”

The Urban Soul Family will be playing at the Genting Casino in Wolverhampton on Saturday 28th June, and saxophonist Anne Tinsley is appearing in a new all-female band Phoenix, featuring three incredible vocalists Vicki Ann Nash, Lindsay Bulter and Elle-J Walters at The Jam House in Birmingham this Friday.

We’ll be back with our second ‘Sunday Service’ show on Sunday 29th June, with another 7-piece band featuring vocalist Danni Mayers, playing covers and some of her own songs. We’ve set the bar high with our first one, but as you know from our Thursday night program, we can pull it off for as long as you want. It just needs your continued support, so make sure you get down for the next one if you want to see more of this in Worcester after the summer.

DAVE FULLER