bigcoolguy.com

After sitting around for 45 minutes after the doors opened at Canberra's Royal Theatre (13 April 2005), waiting for something to happen, David Ross Macdonald took the stage and stated "I'm not Missy Higgins." I think I was amongst a vast majority of people in the audience who had no idea who he was. When looking for information for this review I was surprised to find that he is the drummer for popular Australian band The Waifs,

Macdonald played some incredible fingerstyle guitar. He sang well. His songs were interesting and reasonably varied. He just didn't put on a strong performance.

I started to get into the set during the last few songs. The 3rd last song Serpentine was one of the better songs, and the last 2 songs were the strongest he played. I toyed with buying one of his CDs - he'd mentioned that his vocal/guitar album goes well with whisky and his album of instrumental guitar pieces goes well with herbal tea. However, I just didn't feel inspired enough, even though I thought he might come across better on album. After his set it occurred to me that he might be interesting as part of a band but, unbeknownst to me at the time, I'd already seen that, just not in the format I was imagining.

Still, I wouldn't mind seeing David Ross Macdonald again, preferably in a smaller venue...