Brian McKnight Gives Intimate Performance … At LIME All Access

Lime All Access was certainly an intimate experience with international R&B star Brian McKnight, as he sometimes seemed to be doing a comedy show during his mostly acoustic set.

The event, held at National Indoor Sports Centre in St Andrew last Saturday evening, saw the likes of The Nomaddz and Romain Virgo offering credible, entertaining sets before making way for the man of the night, Brian McKnight.

With his performance starting at exactly 10:10 p.m. as promised, McKnight got the crowd rocking to Don’t Stop Moving, with many females gathering at the front of the stage to take pictures and touch the singer. He then moved over to the piano, where he played I Want You Now.

“I left my band at home ’cause I wanted to be up close and personal,” he said.

The singer included quite a bit of comedy into his set as he spoke at lengths with the audience, even making funny faces in some instances. Despite the sometimes lengthy talking, it seemed as if he could do no wrong, as he had the audience all wrapped up in his performance.

McKnight then went on to do songs from some of his favourite singers like Nat King Cole, Mike O’Donnell and Stevie Wonder.

INTENSE PHASE TWO

Moving on to what he said was phase two of his performance, he searched the crowd for his “soulmate” with his guitar in hand. And with an excited female fan on stage with him, he sang She Gives Me Love.

Come Back To Me was another song that he did, but this was not before he unintentionally touched a sensitive topic. In what McKnight may have thought to be innocent, he spoke about love and the fact that there were many couples in the audience, even gay men, as “it is 2013”. Despite what was meant to be a harmless comment about love, McKnight had to quickly change the subject as some persons in the audience started to boo.

Nonetheless, he continued with songs such as Let Me Love You, Love of My Life, More Than Wonderful and Still In Love that was met with screams.

When he performed Still The One, however, the prior responses from the audience seemed lukewarm compared to the screams, claps and whistles he now received, proving that it was certainly one of the more popular songs for the entire night.

Other huge favourites like Anytime and Back At One had the entire audience singing along.

Although a more mature artiste, who has been in the music business for over two decades, McKnight showed a hip side by doing the ‘Dougie’ dance move as he sang a more uptempo and relatively recent Fall 5.0.

In predictable fashion, he left the stage and was called back for an encore, and responded with One Last Cry.

Earlier in the night, Nomaddz did an entertaining set with Rise Above Profanity, even giving away tickets to an upcoming concert.

Following the band change, Romain Virgo took the stage in a colourful outfit and, in quick succession, he reeled off songs like Rain Is Falling, Taking You Home and Caan Sleep.

He then went into a romantic segment with Way Too Beautiful.

“Ladies, are you ready for me to get sexy?” he asked before doing When A Woman Loves, Let’s Get It On and Don’t You Remember.

With his set moving rather quickly, the energy in the venue seemed to rise as he did Rich In Love before making way for McKnight.

 

For the original report go to http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20131104/ent/ent1.html