18 June 2026, The Hug & Pint
Billy Fuller
Billy who? You may be asking. I would probably have said the same until I saw him a couple of times playing with Beak> a year or so back. What I remembered about the gigs was the laid back we he approached the music and the rapport he and the band had with the audience.
And so, I found myself in the basement of the Hug & Pint. By the time he had stepped onto the stage with Andy Sutor on drums & synth and Joe Charsley Smith on keyboards & guitar the intimate venue was very intimately filled.
Over the course of the next hour or so I close enough to see, hear and be educated by the sounds he could eek out of his two bass guitars. There may have been a lot of pedals and gizmos to change between and during the tracks played, but there can be no doubting as to how he used the electronic accessories to provide a soundscape that held everyone in the room’s complete undivided attention.
The setlist was made up almost entirely of the tracks off his recently released album Fragments, though he did give a nod to Beak> early on with a favoured track. While it might have seemed on stage that it got the loudest applause, it was one of the first tracks played and if anything, it just encouraged the same level of appreciation to be gained as the night wore on.
There’ll be no encores he announced. So don’t hang about and shout for more. There isn’t any he told us.
Well thanks for the warning! It just made the final applause all the louder and more heartfelt.
As for Andy and Joe? Definitely a pair who provided the backdrop to the bass work of Billy. Both were comfortable interchanging between guitar work and keyboards or in the case of Andy, drums, keyboards, and guitar.
It was that versatility, combined with Billy’s virtuosity that made the sound coming from the stage seem so big.
Il eft the Hug & Pint while there was still plenty of light in the sky, but I also left with a much greater appreciation of what a seasoned bass player can bring to his audience.
To all three of you, thank you. Until the next time as they say.
