After forgetting our Grimey’s purchased tickets at home, Cause a Scene made it to the Cannery Ballroom, pumped for our first Tallest Man on Earth experience, in time to catch the last two songs of openers Strand of Oaks. Strand of Oaks presented themselves as a rocking duo with heavy drum rhythms, consistent guitar riffs, and the potential for an energetic set of creative and original songs. We were disappointed to have seen such a small sampling of their music, so we’ll keep an eye out for their next Nashville appearance, but we couldn’t wait for Kristian Matsson to take the stage.As you probably already know, Kristian is not the world’s record holder for vertical growth – he’s not even close to the tallest in the room (no, the tallest in the room managed to find his spot directly in front of us) – but without a full band and no light show or smoke to enhance the stage, it’s not the visual performance that brings one to a Tallest Man on Earth show, it’s the opportunity to see a man and his guitar as a single entity, a simple pairing that rarely fills the Mercy Lounge, let alone the packed Cannery Ballroom on a Monday night.
From the time he opened with To Just Grow Away until he closed his encore with The Dreamer, Kristian kept the crowd focused on every single note. With his quiet demeanor, his light banter with the crowd between songs led the bustling crowd to a near roaring wave of conversation, but no soul in the room dared to speak over the Dylan-esque voice of our Swedish friend. The attention of the crowd wasn’t lost on Matsson, as he graciously stepped aside as the crowd repeated the final lines, “in your eyes, babe” from the chorus of The Gardener.
While Kristian’s show was certainly minimalistic – he only briefly altered the visual experience by sitting at his baby grand for two of the fifteen songs – the soothing, rhythmic sounds of man and guitar and his enchanting lyrics could transport the blind from the running of the bulls in Pamplona to dealing with the loss of a loved one amongst the roses and jasmine.
Matsson would again graciously accept the admiration of the crowd with deep bows at the edge of the stage more likely found after a show at TPAC than at Cannery as he left for the night, but it was Cause a Scene and a thousand of our friends that couldn’t have been more appreciative.
No video from the concert, so here’s one of our favorites, King of Spain, on Later with Jools Holland from last year:
(I (Larry) am proud to introduce our latest contributor to Cause A Scene, Brad Hughes. As one of the very few people I know who attends as many or more concerts than I do, it’s no wonder that Brad will be handling show reviews for the blog. You can pretty much guarantee that if there isn’t an Atlanta Braves or Vanderbilt Commodores game on TV, Brad will be out seeing live music. Welcome to the team, Brad. We’re glad to have you on board!)
About halfway through Joe Purdy’s set at the Mercy Lounge on June 25th he declared that he’d “like to play a song I haven’t been able to play, like, ever. I found the right band for it.” He’d follow that statement up with an impressive rendition of “Death of a Maiden,” from his ‘Last Clock on the Wall’ release backed by an impressive 7-piece outfit, The Giving Tree Band, that can more than handle their own on stage. The group, spilling off to either side of the large posts of Mercy Lounge’s small stage, backed Joe’s gritty vocals on the elegy with energy, depth, and to the delight of the sparse – yet loyal to Purdy – crowd, a ton of talent.
Purdy’s lyrics and voice paired perfectly with The Giving Tree Band’s country bluefolk roots rock, a genre I can only hope catches on so that someone can give it a better name. The Giving Tree Band opened the show themselves shortly after 8pm playing songs from their library for about an hour. With banjos, fiddles, slide guitars, organs, and drum rhythms that sounded right off of the fields of the Battle of Nashville, the band developed quite a relationship with the crowd, pulling more and more of the attendees to the stagefront as the show progressed. Each member had standout moments throughout their set, including approximately 57% of the band taking lead vocal responsibilities on various songs, but it was lead guitarist and fiddler Phil Roach’s passionate solos that swelled within the venue and prepared us what the headlining act would deliver.
The crowd reacted with delight as The Giving Tree Band returned to the stage for Purdy’s set, lasting nearly 2 hours, covering hits and deep tracks, and once again allowing each of the band’s 7 members to strut their stuff on their respective instruments. None of this is to say that Purdy himself took a back seat to his band on this night. Instead, his vocals seemed even more energized. You could feel the passion in the lyrics that he wrote, especially apparent as the group shouted “I got you now!! Down, down down!!” during a raucous version of ‘Walking Down’ to close the set.
Purdy found ways to satisfy both his longtime fans and win over the newcomers on this night as he slowed down and played a sing-along of ‘Outlaws’ by himself on the keys during the encore after shocking some in attendance with the darkness of songs like ‘Angelina’ during his primary set. As the band would join him for a final two pieces of the encore, Joe and The Giving Tree Band had everyone rocking back and forth on ‘San Jose’ and sent the crowd out into the cool night delighted.
I can only recommend to anyone in St. Louis, Chicago, Columbus, and New York who might be reading find a way to catch Purdy and The Giving Tree Band as they ride through town in the coming weeks. Leading into ‘Brooklyn, I Called,’ Joe proclaimed to the crowd “I hope you don’t hate it,” but there was nothing to fear for Purdy on this night. Cause a Scene and the several other hundred in attendance at The Mercy Lounge loved it.
(Cause A Scene contributor Molly Williams made her first trip to Bonnaroo last weekend, and, well, she had an absolute blast as you might expect. Read her wonderful account of the weekend’s happenings here!)
Once a year, in a 700-acre field in middle-of-nowhere Manchester, Tennessee, tens of thousands of people come together for all corners of the country to experience music in one of the most unique ways you could imagine.
Days at Bonnaroo are packed with people from every corner the country (even some international visitors), hot sun, tightly packed camping, dust and dirt (and if you’re lucky, some mud), food trucks, lines for just about everything, and your choice of 150 impressive performances spread between 10+ stages. Add to the list art, green grass, a mini film fest, dancing, comedy acts, meeting and bonding with complete strangers, some of the best people watching you could ask for, lights, a water slide, crowd surfing, and did I mention music? Yeah, there’s some of that.
This past weekend I joined 79,999 other music loving Bonnaroovians for the ultimate bucket list event. Personally, I never dreamt of going to Bonnaroo until the day I got an invite to volunteer a few hours each day in exchange for a free pass. (Advice: if you have never gone, or even if you have, consider volunteering. There are tons of options/times so you can manage to get in free and still see all the performances.) The idea of 80,000 people in that kind of environment wasn’t at the top of my list, or even on my list at all. Boy was I proven wrong – well played Bonnaroo, well played.
The performances I saw in just two of the four days included some of the best I have ever seen. Blind Pilot, Punch Brothers, The Roots, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Gary Clark Jr. – each and every performance was an impressively energetic display of amazing talent. I found myself grooving and singing along to some while others left me literally speechless (in the best way possible).
The undeniable power of music is something that I’ve always loved and been extremely aware of, but Bonnaroo took it to a whole new level. Whether it’s bringing thousands of strangers together to watch one band on a stage in the middle of a field, silencing a crowd with raw talent, or motivating a girl to crowd surf across hundreds of people for the first time, Bonnaroo is a place where music overwhelms you with a feeling of freedom and energy. There’s something about getting away from the normal day-to-day and being surrounded by limitless music that will give you a new appreciation for the songs you hear and the life you’re living.
Even though I missed two days of incredible lineups on Thursday and Friday (including Radiohead, Feist, Needtobreathe, The Avett Brothers, Dawes, and more), my favorite performance from Saturday and Sunday hands down was Bon Iver. It’s hard to sum up with words what I saw and felt at that performance. My friends and I were lucky enough to secure a spot in line for the main stage that guaranteed we would be front and center on the fence. I knew it was going to be a great show, but I had no idea how incredible it would ultimately be.
The talent of the nine musicians on that stage literally left me, and at points the entire audience, silent. There was a giant grin spread across my face the majority of the show hoping that Justin Vernon would play through the night. Each member of the band was intriguing. Two drummers, some band members switching between multiple instruments, the tricks behind some of the sounds you can so easily overlook when listening to Bon Iver’s album – all these things made for a phenomenal display of beautiful music in a completely real form that I won’t soon forget.
When Bon Iver left the stage I was tempted to end my Bonnaroo experience there. There was one more show I planned on going to and I suddenly felt like nothing could top what I just witnessed. But, my friends convinced me that fun.’s show would be the perfect energy-packed performance to wrap up our epic weekend. They were right, and the show had a few surprises of it’s own. There’s no denying the band lives up to their name with their stage presence. As the show was wrapping up, a few of my friends decided it was the perfect chance for some crowd surfing. I watched as they all took turns getting lifted up and disappearing to the front of the crowd over the hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in front of us.
Initially I didn’t think twice about holding my place with two feet on the ground, but suddenly it hit me – I was at Bonnaroo. If I was going to do this anywhere, it was here and now. When I finally spoke up and mentioned I was considering it I was convinced the band was on their last song and thought I’d missed my chance. Luckily my friend wasn’t going to let me back out that easily and when fun. started playing We Are Young I knew that was it. I threw down my bag and kicked off my shoes. “Let’s go.” Before I knew it I was floating over the crowd looking out across the endless mass of people all belting out the perfect soundtrack – tonight we are young, so let’s set the world on fire, we can burn brighter than the sun. Pretty incredible. Only at Bonnaroo would this girl decide to crowd surf for the first time. I guess music will do that to you. That’s a memory that I will never, ever forget and I can’t think of a better way to end my first Bonnaroo experience.
Thanks, Bonnaroo, for laughs, sunshine, volunteering, people-watching, dirt, mud, donuts, nature, adventures and one of the best music experiences I’ve ever had. I’ll be back and I think there might be a few first-timers coming with me.
It’s an interesting paradox when you feel like you’ve been a fan of a band since their inception. When they finally get their big break and make it into the “mainstream”, do you remain an adamant fan or jump ship, wishing to go back to the “good ole days” where you felt like knowledge of the band was a shared secret amongst a select few people. Maybe it’s just me, but when those bands come into their own and get the recognition they are so deserving of, I imagine it’s like the feeling a dad has when their kid rides away on down the sidewalk on their bicycle for the first time without their training wheels on. It’s one of those rites of passage in life that I imagine are ingrained in the minds of a countless number of people.
This past Thursday night I had that kind of engrossing experience when I witnessed Needtobreathe’s first of two nights playing at Nashville’s famed “Mother Church”, the Ryman Auditorium, in what can only be described as what rock and roll was meant to be. Displaying some of the strongest musical chops to grace the newly refurbished stage, the boys from Possum Kingdom, South Carolina, left every member of the packed-into-pews audience spellbound, seamlessly moving from heart-pounding, foot-stomping rock and roll to hear-the-pin-drop-quiet ballads.
The night’s opener, Ben Rector, probably deserves a post all his own after captivating the audience as the opener, with his up tempo brand of piano-driven pop rock. It’s been said that going to the Ryman for a show can be a worship experience all its own, and with Rector as the worship leader for the evening, you might as well have been in a church in the Deep South, swaying to-and-fro, hands clapping and toes tapping along to every ebb and flow of the music. There may or may not have been hands raised from some of the more charismatic of the night’s patrons. Rector along with his backing band mixed in some of his best songs from his two albums, but probably brought the most joy to the audience with his superbly original take on Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance With Somebody”. The video he recorded of the song was actually made back in January, prior to the queen of soul’s untimely death, and his version at the Ryman could not have seemed any more apropos.
So much could be said about any one of Needtobreathe’s songs on that uncommonly warm February night, and every song seemed like a highlight in and of itself. Their opening rendition of “Oohs and Aahs” could not have been any stronger, with the typewriter lighting in the background spelling out “The Reckoning”. My comment to my friend Josh who was at the concert helping run lighting for the band was “now THAT is how you start a rock concert!”
Perhaps the highlight of the night was Needtobreathe bringing out a string quartet and playing an all acoustic version of “More Time” midway through their set. It was another wrinkle to the live repetoire that they have developed over the last eight years, and for the fans who had been with them since the very beginning, it was a poignant tribute to the band’s past and a signal of just how far they have come in a short period of time.
Discussing the February 23 show would be incomplete without mentioning the near-perfect encore of the 1-2-3 punch of “Something Beautiful”, “The Reckoning” and “Slumber”. The crowd favorite “Something Beautiful” brought any late adopters to their feet before the band put forth a convincingly gritty rendition of “The Reckoning”. Transitioning from that to “Slumber” showcased both Needtobreathe’s range and their famous propensity for bringing crowds to a hushed silence at the end of a show, as they unplugged their instruments and all gathered at the front of the teakwood stage to put their stamp on what was the best show of theirs I have seen out of the 15 or so I have seen in the past.
By the time they reached the climactic conclusion of “I wanna sing like we used to / I wanna dance like we want to / Come on darlin’ open up your eyes” the crowd had responded in kind, with eyes open wide to the wonder of the way live music can transform you. And in a lot of ways, Needtobreathe had undergone the same transformation that night, going from the boys they had been playing at fraternity parties throughout the Southeast to men with a commanding presence on one of music’s grandest stages.
