Gig Review: Shady Wade, ‘Damaged Goods’ Single Release at Darkroom, 10/4/2025
All photos taken for the use of Welcome to the Gig on the Sony A6000. Please credit Welcome to the Gig if used.
Last Thursday, the very talented Shady Wade held a single release show for his newest single, Damaged Goods, at Christchurch’s well-loved venue Darkroom.
Shady Wade is a high-spirited, in touch with his emotions musician who shares with his audience that there is nothing that he would like to hide away through his musical journey.
From songs about being a bad boyfriend, to songs that will hit you right in the heart, Shady covers every single aspect of what listeners like to consume, making his Damaged Goods release show one filled with passion and enjoyment.
Shady’s friends alongside strangers gathered into the small Darkroom to create an atmosphere filled with supportive representation, showcasing that no matter how many, or even how little, people show up for you, it’s the ones that actually do show up who are the keepers.
What set this show apart from other live gigs is that Shady played the first half of his show completely solo. Just himself, his countrified-vocals and his acoustic guitar, which filled the room and projected his mesmerizing workings to anybody who decided to walk through those doors.
The second half of the show was the first time with his full band, and it was, to put it simply, very good. The blending of both Shady and his band stood out as much as the first half of the set, a fantastic idea to throw in something unique into the mix, which isn’t overly common, especially at local shows and I liked how it was all placed to come together the way it did.
Shady bought a few new songs to the party, as well as creating an atmosphere for listeners that are familiar to his older music, with an older song in each set. Something Shady touched on was that a lot of songs that are from the past are quite often forgotten about, and in my personal opinion, a lot of the time, those songs are the ones that drove the artist to create their music and shows the artist in their truest, raw form that once upon a time meant a lot for them to create.
It’s also been said by a lot of artists that they do not like their older tunes, so to have Shady bring light to a couple of his own in this setting was really nice to hear.
With tracks performed such as Headspace, that steers a little more away from the country taste to Stolen Moments, which was a lockdown song (and also my favourite) to Live a Lie, which is fairly upbeat, the Damaged Goods release show was very memorable, to say the least.
Now, to the main event that we’d all been waiting for: the performance of Damaged Goods. A song that takes you through the forest of a relationship that seems to bring you to the realisation that maybe the relationship has not succeeded, but the learning from it has been exponential.
Damaged Goods speaks on how this other person has taken the time to throw out the flaws of the other person, and this person’s perspective has made them realise that they’re just Damaged Goods now and maybe it’s time to understand that loss of the relationship and move on.
Overall, the Damaged Goods release show was a wholly calm evening. Thank you, Shady, for the invite to review your show. I had a blast.
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