Hayden Lloyd at The Night Owl - 17/10/2024

On the 17th October, For the Record Promotions held Hayden Lloyd’s headline gig at the Night Owl to promote his EP ‘Scoop’, which saw support from Ethan Hopwood and Kid Charlemagne. This was a night of powerful performances from incredible performers, and demonstrated the authentic talent possessed by grassroots artists in Birmingham.

Ethan Hopwood

Ethan Hopwood opened the show with a simple set up of lead vocals, 1 backing vocal and an acoustic guitar. The simple instrumentation allowed Ethan’s powerful and emotional vocals to be fully displayed. His songs are catchy and dramatic, and Ethan uses them as an opportunity to demonstrate the versatility of his voice, a voice which can switch from a delicate falsetto to an aggressive rasp effortlessly and can hold the audience’s attention throughout his set. Another key factor that held the audience’s attention throughout the set, was Ethan’s warm, welcoming, friendly, refreshing personality. He frequently broke the 4th wall and spoke to his audience between songs, and his humble, charismatic sense of humour made people laugh and enjoy his set even more. Although instrumentation was simple, the guitar featured a mix of rhythmic chords and melodic lines, which created subtle movement, without being too erratic and complex, and the vocal harmonies added texture and created a smooth tone, which complimented Ethan’s lead vocals well.

I’m excited to see how Ethan develops as an artist, perhaps by further developing his already incredibly strong stage presence, which could be done by taking advantage of not playing an instrument himself, which will allow him to move around the stage with the microphone. Ethan is a talented artist, and I’m excited to see what he does!

Kid Charlemagne

Kid Charlemagne can be identified by their intricate fusion of multiple styles, which is balanced perfectly. You’re a fan of jazz? You’ll like Kid Charlemagne. Funk? Yep. Rock? You bet. Their performance was a dazzling combination of loud drops, impressive lead guitar lines and induced, discordant guitar feedback that was well-placed and received extremely enthusiastically by the audience. All members of Kid Charlemagne were involved in vocals as either a lead singer for some songs or backing vocals. This allowed the focus to be on all members of the band at different times and create a sense of even unity among the band members. The band’s chemistry on stage demonstrates a sense of authenticity that is vital to grassroots artists. This, paired with a good amount of movement on stage, created a welcoming and engaging stage presence for the audience.

I would love to see Kid Charlemagne use their strong songwriting and excellent technical skills to potentially include more instruments in their set to create more texture and a wider variety of tones to suit their wide variety of styles. This is a band that is definitely worth watching and following to see how their genius creativity develops.

Hayden Lloyd

Hayden and his band took to the stage one person at a time, ending with Hayden himself, who entered to a drums and bass jam, before plugging his guitar in and starting his set, which soon led to audience members head-banging to his music. One thing that stands out about Hayden Lloyd is his immense skill on the guitar, which consists of fast and emotional solos and riffs and the use of more complex chords (than simple triads). This makes his music more unique and his songwriting more recognisable and gives him the technical flexibility to achieve his desired style. Hayden’s style is blues rock, which is considered quite niche in Birmingham, as a grassroots artist. This gives him the opportunity to start making this style popular in Birmingham and do something unique.

While Hayden’s signature sound is a distorted garage/blues sound, he can also break from intense guitar solos and play more relaxed and emotional songs. Some covers were also included by artists that inspire Hayden, such as Jimi Hendrix. It is important for grassroots artists to have a level of versatility and flexibility in their tone/mood and mix of originals and covers, which is something Hayden achieves well.

However, I would love to see Hayden develop this versatility even more, especially in his tone and style. Whilst there is a clear distinction between more gentle songs and harder songs, it would be nice to see Hayden go even further within those 2 categories, and explore different instruments and combining genres in places, such as blues and psychedelic and blues and country, for example. As well as allowing Hayden to develop as an artist and songwriter, it would also allow him to appeal to audiences of a wider variety of genres and sub-genres.

Overall, this gig was an all-round authentic grassroots experience, with good songs performed excellently. It was nice to see some inclusion of covers to demonstrate mainstream artists that the performers took inspiration from, without taking the spotlight away from their original music. For the Record Promotions created an event that resonated well with the artists’ audiences, and everyone seemed to be having an amazing time.

Also available at TJPL News/Plectrum Magazine