For Ray Cooper, this is his 41st solo tour and it follows the release of his 5th album. The album and the tour have the same title.
The first gig for Ray was a house concert in Copenhagen. He drove down from his home in Sweden and over the Oresund bridge. It was a long journey with an overnight stop. Although called a house concert, it was held in the communal room of a block of flats. The residents all eat together there on Mondays to Thursdays, taking it in turns to cook. This was the first time they have had a music concert and it worked so well that Ray has been invited back for next year.
I flew in to Copenhagen the same afternoon/evening (but too late for the concert) and spent the night at an airport hotel, the GO hotel. Just 43 minutes walk from the terminal on a warm sunny evening. It was almost perfect for a one night stopover. It was clean, functional, friendly and inexpensive. However, no kettle in the room for making a cup of tea!
Ray picked me up the next morning and we drove over to Silkeborg in Denmark for the next show. Rather than make the long drive shown on the map above, we drove to Sjaellands Odde, a ferry port at the end of a peninsular pointing towards Aarhus which is only a short drive to Silkeborg. There are very many bridges and ferries in Denmark which are necessary to link together all the islands.
The drive from Copenhagen to Sjaellands Udde took us over very flat land but while driving from Aarhus to Silkeborg the land began to undulate a bit more. This area is called the Silkeborg Lakes. It is very forested and is lovely to drive through. The modern town started to grow around a paper mill in the mid nineteenth century. The mill closed in 2000 and the city centre was redeveloped. The main industry now is car dealerships with Silkeborg also being the headquarters of Jyske Bank, Denmark’s third largest bank.
Silkeborg is also the home of 3F, a trade union trading centre and this is where Ray was to play. He has played there every year for the past 10 years.
It’s an unusual venue:
Click here for a short (41 secs) clip from the sound check of Going Underground.
Not only was this an unusual venue, it was also an unusual audience. They were there for a week of training and most had never met each other before. This was the Thursday evening and they would be going home the next day. The concert came after dinner (with beer and wine) and so the audience were in a good mood. They talked and laughed while Ray sang but still managed to pay attention to the music.
This was Ray’s third live performance this year and he was in good voice. It’s a good opportunity to play his new songs. He began with Even For A Shadow followed by Falling Like Thunder which got such a good reaction he followed it with The Beast (which was not in his set list). Playing live is so very different from recording and Ray is trying variations on how to present the song Falling Like Thunder which already has three versions: the Festival Mix produced in England by Al Scott; the folk/punk mix produced by Henning Nigel in Germany; the version on the album.
There is generally a good understanding of English in Denmark and they liked Ray’s introductions and jokes. Perhaps the beer and wine over dinner helped. They cheered when Ray introduced Black Is The Colour / En Vacker Van and he said he would sing in Swedish.
This was the first time I had seen and heard Ray play his version of Sir Patrick Spens where he has used a “rockabilly” style. Both here and at subsequent shows, this is proving very popular.
Both the trade union training centre and the GO Hotel in Copenhagen were very pleasant places to stay, confirming to me what I had heard about Denmark being a very comfortable place to live.
A Visitor On Europe’s Roads 
Leave a comment