7.25.2010 - Brandi Carlile and Good Old War
July 31, 2010
The Kent Stage
Kent, OH
The Brandi Carlile show in Kent was hands-down one of the best we've ever seen. The Kent Stage is an old converted movie theater - really a pretty small, intimate place for a seated show. This show had been sold out for a few weeks, and even a capacity crowd of 600 felt pretty minimal.
We got there a few songs into the opener, Good Old War's set. These three guys played some good music! Their vocal harmonies are really great. I'd call their sound something like folky/country/rock. I saw quite a few people sneak out in between sets to grab their CD, so we weren't the only ones who enjoyed them. Really a great band to get the audience prepped for Brandi's set.
Then a very special treat - Brandi opened the show with "Again Today", a hidden track from her 2007 album "The Story" (and the song behind the name of her unofficial fan club - you probably remember the mention of ATers in the previous post). In the 15+ Brandi Carlile shows we've been to, it's one of the few songs we haven't heard live - and it was perfect (even given the fact that I had to block out the girl next to me singing every word - good for you, you know the song, but I didn't pay to hear you sing it!). Brandi then mentioned that she spent extra time putting together the set list since they had been to Kent just over a year prior, and didn't want to play all the same songs. She also apologized if she was wearing the same outfit, since she couldn't find any video on YouTube to verify.
They also graced the audience with the completely unplugged version of "Dying Day", which is one of my personal favorites, and the outdoor setting for the Symphony show the night before didn't lend itself acoustically to performing that song. The band also did "Shadow on the Wall", which is a rarity as well. Somewhere in the middle of the show, she also told the story about how she was a superstar in Portugal for a while because "The Story" was the music in a beer commercial. She was playing a giant festival, and one guy held up a sign stating "The story of my life is I make you baby". Hilarious!
And if all that weren't enough, we also had the pleasure of hearing "Way to You", from the "XOBC" EP. The band doesn't play these songs live very often, and it is one of my favorites. We also got to hear the twins, Tim and Phil Hanseroth cover Simon and Garfunkle's "Sound of Silence". Their harmonies in that song are impressive - and it was amusing to watch them try to be serious through the whole song while singing so close to each other.
After that, the mad rush of people toward the stage began - I'm honestly surprised most people waited that long! Throughout the whole show, there was more of a conversational atmosphere in the theater - people really just saying whatever they thought of loudly from their seats. Certainly not 100% the rowdy bar crowd, but not the usual super-subdued theater crowd either. Could have something to do with the fact that it felt like The Kent Stage had no air conditioning...it was hot and stifling in there the entire time - thank goodness for a surprisingly cool and refreshing Midwestern evening outside!
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