Concert Catch-up (3/12/06 - 4/1/06) 4 Shows



Teddy Thompson (3/12/2006)

This was my first show at Pittsburgh's Club Café. I was excited to see a show there because some of my favorite acts perform there before/after their appearance in Cleveland. However, since Teddy didn't make it this way, I was happy to go where he was. Of course, any reason to visit Pittsburgh and stay with my friends John & Bill is a good one. Club Café is not at all what I expected... a little more restaurant-ish and less Grog Shop-ish that I figured it would be. When you walk in, you feel like you just walked on stage with everyone looking at you... The crowd was also older than I expected, which I attribute to him being the progeny of Richard & Linda Thompson. I also would have expected more of a gay following - 1) because he's *sexy* 2) because of his contribution to the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack and 3) because he's good friends and often tours with Rufus Wainwright.

On stage he was calm, witty, and quite chatty. Though his bassist (who he made the record with) seemed agitated and tried to rush him through his inter-song banter (which was highly entertaining). Did I mention how sexy he was? Sporting a deep, smooth voice... and the British accent only made it better. I like his new CD, but I loved him in concert even more.

Coldplay (3/20/06)

As you can tell, we were in the north 40 for this show. I've seen Coldplay several times before, in much smaller venues. I didn't have much interest to see them at the Q, but my sister was really excited to come to town and see them so we went. They were good. I haven't paid much attention to their new album... I'm kinda Coldplayed out (as I think a lot of people are).

This show only solidified my distaste for massive-venue shows. Other than seeing Madonna (an upcoming entry), I will refuse to go to a venue like this again unless I can get close seats for less than $100 (and that's pretty unlikely).

Cleveland Country Band / Roger Hoover & the Whiskeyhounds / Deadstring Brothers (3/29/06)

Again, another night to see Roger Hoover & gang at the Beachland Tavern (Freddie Hill's birthday). The show was only $6. The Cleveland Country Band opened, and in no way did they give off a professional touring band feel. True, they are from Cleveland, but it felt like just a couple friends got up there and played without practicing. They even called themselves out on this as they neared the end of their set and struggled finding songs to finish. This is not to say that it wasn't a great show... I liked them. The lead singer could pass for Matthew Broderick's younger hillbilly brother, and the lead female expressed everything she was feeling through her facial expressions. It was already at this point that I realized this was the best $6 I ever spent.

The Whiskeyhounds got on stage and just rocked out. In the past I've been partial to their more acoustic sound (just Roger & Freddie) but tonight the whole band was on fire. Roger then swore by the Deadstring Brothers, and when they took the stage, they returned the compliment by saying that the Whiskeyhounds were the best thing they've seen on tour ,and Cleveland should really appreciate them... which I think I've been saying for the past couple years. I was so burnt-out (in a good way) from the previous two acts that I didn't have much to say about the Deadstring Brothers... They didn't have a lot of personality, but they definitely had some soul on stage.

Strays Don't Sleep / Josh Rouse (4/1/06) in Atlanta, GA

In going back and catching up on this show and digging back through photos that I took, I was surprised to see a picture of Matthew Ryan where I was expecting Strays Don't Sleep, but then I quickly realized that he is in that band! Now this may not come as a shock to you, but I've known about Matthew for a while and had just seen him in concert (another upcoming entry)... but I had no idea at the time that this was him. How cool! But at the time of this show, I thought they were decent... kind of Death Cab-ish.

I was really excited about this show because I've never seen Josh Rouse come to Cleveland and I've been dying to see him for some time. So when I realized that his show in Atlanta coincided with our trip, I about jumped through the roof! I also knew that we'd be visiting people, so it was setup that D's friend Laura would be joining us for the show. She missed the opening act but arrived just in time for Josh. As excited as I was for this show, I was also exhausted because I had been up the entire previous night while partying in Augusta, GA (great times). But nothing was going to stop me from enjoying it, except until Laura finally showed up. Something between her and D wasn't clicking and they started fighting. This isn't uncommon and I never get involved. But this also left us without a place to stay that night, so we ended up leaving the show early and getting on the road back to Ohio that night, finding some hotel along the way to stay at. All this left me with little to say about seeing Josh (except he's not as cute in person as he is in promotional photographs). I do know that he sounded wonderful, as good in concert as he is on CD. But I'll have to wait to see him again to see his whole show and give a better review.

Posted: Thu - November 30, 2006 at 07:37 AM           |

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