This is a photo I took during the show. The left two-thirds of the image is "MARO" in large, pale blue, block caps on a dark background. On the right, Maro sings into a microphone. She has long, curly brown hair, she's wearing a pale blue button-down shirt the same colour as the letters, and wide-legged blue jeans. She's holding and playing an acoustic-electric guitar. At the extreme right, a yellow-orange light shines into our eyes over her left shoulder, setting off the haze in the air.

I went to see Maro - a Portuguese singer I first encountered during Eurovision 2022 - at The Mod Club in Toronto last night. And what should, by all rights, have been a disaster became possibly the most magical concert I have ever seen.

Maro's tour bus broke down in Montreal yesterday morning. She and her sound guy flew to Toronto thinking they might be able to throw together some kind of acoustic solo show? Maybe? Fingers crossed? But with no actual plan.

The tour bus was fixed and got underway with just enough time to get there for the concert. And when I say "just enough time," I mean, the concert was meant to start at 8pm and the bus pulled up at 7:45. (Doors were supposed to open at 7, but we were all still outside. We watched it pull up.)

We also watched them open the undercarriage and the trailer the bus was towing in a kind of horror. Like, oh god... are they going to start setting up now?

The answer, it turned out, was no. They pulled out a couple of guitars and some personal bags and that was it.

Like, that was IT it. When we got inside, the stage held exactly three mic stands and three guitar stands. Not even a drum kit.

They re-envisioned the whole show as guitar-only, semi-acoustic, on the fly during sound check. And they had to borrow a couple of guitars from a local friend to make it happen.

Even their DRUMMER played the guitar - by which I mean he played a rhythm on Maro's guitar WHILE SHE WAS ALSO PLAYING IT. It was AMAZING.

In the end, the show started at 9:15. Over an hour late. But Maro and her team handled it all with so much humour and so much grace, the whole crowd was absolutely on her side. What we got was a magical, unique experience, that was only - and could only ever be - shared by the people who were there on that night.

It was so wonderful to see how much her band and her team loved and supported each other and were willing to roll with the situation. Despite what must have been a really fraught situation, they were having fun. And we in the crowd all loved them for it, and wouldn't have traded that night for the most polished performance in the world.

Such an amazing night. ❤️