Ian McNabb, Birmingham 2014. Photograph by Ian D. Hall

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

When worlds collide…the sound of an audience seemingly made of people from all over the Midlands’ city centre and its outlying areas such as Kings Heath, Selly Park, Edgbaston and Harbourne, their distinctive and homely twang ringing out inside the hall of the South Birmingham College called The Crossing declaring with an assuredness that you would only expect to hear in the venues of his home town that there is only one Ian McNabb, worlds don’t just collide become a brilliant hybrid of Birmingham audiences natural love of rock and the pure music devotion and Scouse allegiance that Ian McNabb brings to every show.

Whether you are fortunate enough to see him play on the steps of St. George’s Hall, in the Cavern Pub alongside another great from the city Ian Prowse on a Monday night, joining in with him in a local bar on a Pink Floyd track or two or even at one of the many venues in the capital of artistic culture, there is nothing quite prepares you for seeing one of the most naturally talented musicians from Liverpool thrill a crowd in another city. The sheer admiration from an audience at watching Ian McNabb and the guys who make up Cold Shoulder perform on stage inside the old South Birmingham College, an audience that are used to the best that a city can offer them and in which many ways is perhaps the only true rival to Liverpool in music terms, is nothing short of jaw-dropping wonderful.

On a night though where the rain was making the streets of Digbeth flow like the many canals that run through the Midlands’ city, there was only one thing to do and that was take in the sound of a man who goes out of his way to make sure that audiences don’t ever forget that rock is in his blood, it breathes, lives happily in his veins and with a guitar that makes the type of sound you would expect to be heard only in your dreams, nobody should…or ever could complain.

With a set list that included Prepared To Dream, the outrageously superb Smirtin, the brilliant Fire Inside My Soul, and the timeless command of Evangeline, there was no-one leaving the venue with any other thought of trying desperately to get him to come to the venue again. In many ways this was a consummate performance by Ian McNabb, supremely played, the cold steely eye fixed on the crowd that hid the beauty of Liverpool humour surveying all that he could see and the dynamism that goes hand in hand with an artist enjoying themselves.

Birmingham city centre has witnessed thousands and thousands of great nights of music in its past, Ian McNabb and Cold Shoulder added to that list with aplomb and further cemented the ties that bind the two cities musically and creatively.

A fantastic night in the heart of one great music city given by a true ambassador of another, it doesn’t come much better than this.

Ian D. Hall