Vance Gilbert ~ 2026 April 4 ~ Bull Run Restaurant ~ Shirley, MA
Vance Gilbert, vocals and guitar
Set List (some titles probably wrong, and missing a title or two)
Goodbye Pluto - Pie and Whiskey - Sitting on the Front Porch With You - Simple Things - Black Rochelle - Hand Back the Keys - Unfamiliar Moon - Time to Climb the Hill (?) - Old White Men - Those Tears - Danny Boy - Amelia - Better This Time (?) - VW Bug song - Wingman - What Were You Thinking - 'Round Midnight {Billie Holiday} - King of Rome {Dave Sudbury} - Walk Slowly
Video
Those Tears
Review
Vance Gilbert played a two hour show at The Bull Run Restaurant in Shirley, MA. Vance is a brilliant songwriter, guitarist, and singer comfortably fitting in the acoustic folk realm. He's got more than a touch of jazz and a big whopping helping of good humor. He does find humor in being of a certain color in a room full of white folks (of mostly a certain age). Because he's a folkie, he talks about having to do a political song or two. He's been doing this acoustic folk thang for a couple of decades, but in his spare time he also loves tinkering with airplanes. Vance was dressed in a very stylish white suit, but underneath he had a tshirt with a picture of an airplane, showing his love of aviation. He also was wearing a colorful pair of shoes that matched his capo. When Concert Going Partner noticed this he whispered a comment to me, but Vance, always on the lookout for someone in the audience to tease, demanded to know what we were whispering about -- and when I told him, he said "That all you got?" Hey, we were complimenting his sense of style, to a laugh of appreciation from the audience! When you go see Vance, if you sit up front, be ready to get involved in the show!
His song topics talk about planets, moons, advice from his elders, tributes to songwriters gone before ("Simple Things" is an ode to the immortal John Prine), racing pigeons, living serious or maybe not so serious lives, and other topics. He has an outstanding singing voice, recently preserved from a nasty cancerous growth in his throat by a skilled medical intervention, which also led to a humerous story when Vance presented his Asian-American surgeon with a portrait of a very Caucasian superheroine chasing away a bad guy and she (the surgeon) was joyful in claiming the superheroine identity and that the bad guy was the tumor being chased away. We love modern medicine! Vance ended the show with his tribute to old time jazz in which you'd swear both Billie Holiday and "Satchmo" were in the room with you. Then "King of Rome," which he sings a cappella, is the tale of a man in early 20th century England who bred a racing pigeon which was the only pigeon to survive the bad weather on race day, and who rescued his owner from a life of drudgery. The more I hear Vance perform this particular song (written by Dave Sudbury) the more I enjoy it.
This concert had originally been scheduled for the main downstairs room at the Bull Run, the Sawtelles Room, but as it was the evening before Easter, only about 70 tickets were sold and the Bull Run moved the show upstairs to the Ballroom. The Ballroom is a smaller, more intimate space, actually a lovely place to see a show, but it is only reached by a narrow flight of stairs dating back to the 18th century (when this building was a stagecoach stop) long before there were building codes about treads and risers in staircases, and if there are any mobility issues in anyone in your party, you might want to think hard about going to a show at the Ballroom. As there is no elevator, this room is not accessible to wheelchair patrons.