It's always good when #TEAMw21 catch up with an artist that they've yet to see and meeting Thomas Kavanagh was not a disappointment. As we approached the ICON stage he was midway through "The One" which seemed a passionate love letter with Thomas promising
"I'll be here now and forever -
I know that you will be right here by my side"
Followed by the equally good "Other Side Of You", thomas prvoded to be pretty endearing with a soulful sounding voice that has just had the edges slightly roughed up a bit that gave it a little edge. By the time of this third song - a new one - "Coming Back To You" something else had also become apparent - although Thomas was playing on just an acoustic guitar, these were not stripped back introspective versions of his songs he was playing. these seemed to be ready made for the full band to be playing behind him - as he played it was easy to imagine the as big production numbers.
This continued with "Changing" which features his one of Thomas's recurring themes which is "relationship awkwardness" - it was another big strumming - high production sounding song - so much so that post C2C we checked out the recorded version and it was remarkably like this ICON Stage performance just with more instruments.
Depending on when you caught Thomas, you may have found him duetting the next song "Who Am I Gonna Love" with Kirstie Krauss - and although we have photographic proof of it happening sadly it wasn't the version we witnessed. Instead we had Thomas playing both parts on this song with a slow brooding intro and verse that led into what we imagine will be a big Nashville style country chorus!
Even solo it was still highly entertaining!!