A few weeks ago I was at Summer Madness helping out with Guest Hospitality which did not do my still-dodgy hip any favours but, as they say in the country, the craic was 90 and therefore the pain was worth it! I didn’t get to attend a huge amount of the event itself but the one gig I got to was really good – the Paul Colman gig. He’s an Aussie singer/songwriter who did a stint with the Newsboys a few years back and apparently is Grammy-nominated with about 15 albums to his name. Fairly successful then but no-one here has really heard of him, so this was his first gig in Ireland and he was flippin’ brilliant, in fact I hope he comes back! He had just been headlining an event in Norway and his bus off his flight to Dublin came in pretty late but he came on site anyway to check things out and ended up spending a good hour and a half talking to the rest of the Hospitality staff - a really genuine and down-to-earth dead on bloke. He was playing in one of the smaller venues and at the start people were just sitting around, drinking their coffees, chatting etc but Mr C has a very easy-going, inclusive way with him – halfway through songs he was making a point of welcoming anyone who wandered in, he did a few covers, a bit of karaoke and sing-a-long stuff to the extent that after about half an hour the room there were loads of people and everyone was totally into the gig. He even got a couple kids up to perform a song (and they were brilliant too!) whilst he stood at the back and listened. He’s probably one of the best performers I’ve seen in terms of generating crowd participation, really funny guy too – his impersonations of Bob Dylan singing Paul Baloche and Third Day were priceless! And he didn’t hold back from being a bit vulnerable and taking the opportunity to make room for a God-moment and share some of the God-stuff of his life. Obviously not in the same league as the 4 boys of the previous post but nonetheless a great gig!