Mellowtone at the Shipping Forecast

Last night I headed down to the Shipping Forecast with Dan to attend the Mellowtone night, courtesy of the guys at the excellent Liverpool blog 7streets. I managed to win the free tickets from the competition in their recent interview with the Mellowtone nights’ promoter.

The Shipping Forecast is fast becoming one of my favourite bars in Liverpool - a good range of beers, decent food and a relaxed, indie vibe. I’d been a few times before for drinks (and sometimes food) but yesterday was the first time I’d ventured downstairs to the gig venue.

It follows the great tradition of Liverpool music venues by being an old warehouse basement - brick walls with reasonably low (but not so low as to be a problem) vaulted ceilings. It’s a fairly intimate venue, and they’ve done a good job (to my untrained ears) with the sound system - all the acts sounded great.

Neither of us had heard of any of the performers before but the quality bar was set surprisingly high. I’d quite happily go and listen to any of the bands again, and have been enjoying a re-creation of the night as I’ve dug out the myspace links for this blog post.

In order that they appeared, we had The Mountains and the Trees, then Karima Francis, followed by Ragz and finishing with The Wilderness of Manitoba. All worth a listen.