Kershaw takes No Glitz, Just Hitz! back on the road

The 11-date run opened in Leeds and finishes in Exeter on 7 October; the set is built around his mid-Eighties singles after more than a decade without a full-band run.

Nik Kershaw is under way on his first full UK tour with a band in 11 years. Titled No Glitz, Just Hitz!, the 11-date run opened at Leeds Brudenell Social Club on 27 September and played Gateshead’s Sage 2 the following night. It reached Glasgow’s Oran Mor on 29 September before continuing through the first week of October.

The dates still ahead are Birmingham O2 Institute 2 on 30 September, Chester Live Room on 1 October, Manchester New Century on 2 October, Bury St Edmunds The Apex on 3 October, Frome Cheese and Grain on 4 October, London O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on 5 October, Brighton Concorde 2 on 6 October and Exeter Phoenix on 7 October, where the run closes. Tickets went on sale at 10am on 17 February through nikkershaw.net.

Kershaw has described the shows as “up close and in your face”. The set is built around the singles that fixed his mid-Eighties profile, among them “Wouldn’t It Be Good”, “The Riddle”, “I Won’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me”, “Dancing Girls”, “Wide Boy”, “Human Racing” and “Don Quixote”.

From Human Racing onwards

Nicholas David Kershaw emerged as a singer, songwriter, musician and record producer with the album Human Racing in 1983. The Riddle followed in 1984 and carried the run of hits still at the centre of these nights. Radio Musicola arrived in 1986 and The Works in 1990, after which the catalogue moved through compilations and later studio work at a quieter pace than the years that first put him on national radio.

Recent releases have kept the writing in view without chasing the scale of those early albums. The EP These Little Things appeared in 2020. In 2022 he issued the album B-Sides, Extended Versions, the single “Paranoid” and Songs from the Shelf, Pt. 1, with Songs from the Shelf, Pt. 2 following in 2023. The tour title points the other way: back to the records that first filled rooms of this size, played without the spectacle the Eighties sometimes demanded.

That framing sits beside the band show: shorter stages, the hits pressed close.

What the remaining nights hold

With Leeds and Gateshead already played, the weight of the run now sits on the stretch from Glasgow to Exeter. London’s O2 Shepherds Bush Empire on 5 October is the largest marker on the list; Brighton and Exeter close the fortnight. Eleven years without a full-band tour of this kind makes the present run a return to a format left alone for a long stretch, even as the catalogue and the occasional release continued.

For an audience that still knows those singles from the original albums and from the radio, the promise is plain. The songs that broke through between Human Racing and The Riddle sit at the front of the set, delivered in rooms chosen for proximity rather than scale. That is the bargain the title names, and it is what the remaining dates are there to deliver.