When RØRY posted the below status a few weeks ago, it almost felt like a personal invite:
“SURPRISE! My sold-out RESTORATION tour is going global, with a live stream on May 31st!
For #37clubbers outside of the UK
For those that can’t get to gigs
… and for those who want to relive the show!”
Having seen RØRY live a couple of times now, we were gutted to have to miss the Restoration tour back in March, but with my wife being eight and a half months pregnant at the time, I think we had a good excuse.
Flash forward to May 2025 and in a rather COVID era feeling we find ourselves tuning into a livestream gig. Only this time we aren’t in our living room surrounded by face masks and hand sanitizer, but a hotel room at an all inclusive resort in Menorca with our two month old baby, how times change!
Tuning in a couple of minutes late, thanks to a terrible WiFi connection we caught the end of ‘If pain could talk, what would it say?’ to start the evening of fantastic emotionally charged music, which no doubt was a million times better than the karaoke evening taking place just outside our room.
Without name dropping every song, the set list had a perfect balance of older tracks along with a number of tracks from the 2025 album Restoration. Although jokes were made that ‘Baby Vendetta’ might be on the chopping block for the for the following nights setlist unless the audience sang along. Of course the crowd delivered and the comments from the stream confirmed that it did indeed make the setlist the next evening in Manchester.
While the music is obviously important at any gig, what is equally important is that RØRY has created a safe space for everyone to enjoy the music at each venue on tour. With mention being made to fellow fans making each other badges to let other people know they were attending the gig on their own and increasing the size of the disabled area at the venue in order to accommodate everyone.
While the atmosphere of the gig and the pure emotion might not have been quite the same coming out of a Bluetooth speaker and tablet, it was about as close as it gets to the real thing and for those of us unable to make it to the real deal, it was a very good substitute. This really is a brilliant idea from RØRY and was brilliantly filmed by the team.
Hopefully this livestream idea will be a part of future tours too, but next tour we’ll promise to be at the venue singing along and watching it back a couple of months later.
Header image by Katie Frost Photography
