David Gray celebrates 'White Ladder' with swagger at Greek Theatre

After two years of postponements from the Covid-19 Pandemic, British folk-rock icon David Gray finally played the Greek Theatre on Saturday night. Gray is no stranger to the Greek Theatre as he’s there nearly annually. Next year will be the the 30th anniversary of his debut album A Century Ends and began to find success with his third album Sell, Sell, Sell certified BPI Gold. Gray’s fourth album White Ladder was his first of three number one albums in the U.K. and his biggest selling album going BPI 10x Platinum.

Gray’s tour commemorates the 20th anniversary of White Ladder but with the two year postponement it’s actually closer to a 25th anniversary now. Gray had begun the tour in Europe back in 2020 but had to cancel shortly after once the pandemic began.

Gray played a total of 24 songs broken into two sets with no opener. The first set was a greatest hits of nine songs starting with “You’re the World to Me,” and ending on “Nemesis.” Gray’s band is bassist Rob Malone, drummer Keith Prior, and keyboardist Tim Bradshaw. The second set was White Ladder in its entirety and Gray was joined by drummer Craig ‘Clune’ McLune who played on the original album and was Gray’s drummer for a number of years. White Ladder was played beginning to end starting with “Please Forgive Me” through “Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.” The second song of the album is Gray’s biggest hit, “Babylon.” The lighting was great and really added to Gray’s soulful vocals. After White Ladder, Gray played a five song encore four of which were covers ending with “Shrine.”