Swap Places LIVE at Les Vinzelles, Volvic, France

From The Apartments FB:
“I went to Portugal for the first time last October to perform, thanks to the good people of Raw Culture Bairro Alto in Lisboa. I wore shades on stage for the first Lisbon show at Raw Culture in the old town, just as I’ve worn shades on stage for a long time now, though in this century it dates back to 2009 when I first started playing songs that would appear on ‘No Song, No Spell, No Madrigal’.

I just could not find a way to sing some of those and was terrified people might see how I was struggling. Sunglasses helped cover any emotion. For someone who wanted to disappear, shades were perfect, a place to hide.

The second Lisbon show was in a different part of Lisbon, a different kind of room—it had a huge red spiral staircase from dressing room down to the stage—and a different vibe. I thought in this space the show might work better without shades. So I went on without them and I didn’t miss them at all that night.

The show went down really well and afterwards a woman introduced herself. She said her daughter had got her to listen to The Apartments and that they’d both been to the show the night before in Lisbon and were determined to see me play again. She said that while they’d loved the first show, the second was their favourite because without sunglasses, there was no longer that distance between myself and the audience. The songs came to life far more intensely for people when they could see my eyes.

I took that lesson from Lisbon—to play without disguise—to Volvic in France for another show in another beautiful room, Les Vinzelles. My good friend Antoine Chaperon joined me on guitar.

Shows are like snowfall—they vanish, but luckily that night, the great filmmaker Sébastien Faits-Divers @FDsessions turned up to shoot the show. This is a track from the show without sunglasses that night—Swap Places.”