"We wait for kingdom come with the radio on": The Gaslight Anthem Live in Detroit

The Gaslight Anthem
Live at St. Andrews Hall, Detroit, MI
September 14th, 2012

(Check this out over at AbsolutePunk.net as well)

Disclaimer: This is going to be long.

The last time I saw a show at Detroit’s St. Andrew’s Hall, it was 2006: I was 15 years old, lining up for my first real concert, and temperatures had been hovering around 100 degrees all day. Needless to say, the heatwave turned that small and cramped club into a sauna, and I left the building soaked in sweat, smelling worse than anyone has the right to, and dehydrated to a dire state. But the night was legendary: I saw Butch Walker, one of my first and foremost musical heroes, give a show full of raucous antics and emotional intensity that cut through the heat and straight to the core of me. I’ve been to a lot of shows since then, big and small, from stadiums and arenas to the smallest clubs in Michigan, but that first one still has a spark about it that takes me back: my brother’s best friend making a wrong turn and ending up in some shady back alley (in Detroit, this is not a good thing); some homeless guy named Papa Smurf (who later ended up in the pages of Sports Illustrated) trying to bum a few bucks; the opening acts, which included a pre-fame Boys Like Girls and an energetic southern-rock act called As Fast As; Butch’s back-up singers spraying the crowd with hoses; and yes, one of the best setlists and shows I’ve seen by the guy who plays club shows better than anyone.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that my first appointment with the Gaslight Anthem bore a lot of similarities to that show. Over the past few years, Brian Fallon has slowly wormed his way into the ranks of my favorite frontmen in rock ‘n’ roll, and Gaslight’s latest, Handwritten, is likely to take the top spot on my album of the year list. In the time I’ve been a fan, it’s also become a joke of sorts between my brother and I that Fallon was never going to come back to Michigan. We missed out on his visits in 2010, in support of the band’s third album American Slang, and he’s spent most of the intervening years touring Europe, both with Gaslight and side-project The Horrible Crowes. When dates finally started coming out for the Handwritten tour, we were further disappointed by the fact that the band would be supporting Rise Against (along with rockers Hot Water Music) rather than going it alone. The tour included a Grand Rapids date, a short drive for both of us, but the prospect of paying double or triple our usual ticket price to see Gaslight play 12 or 13 songs didn’t seem too appealing.

Then, finally, our prayers were answered. Rise Against was taking a night off on the Friday before that GR show, and Gaslight and Hot Water Music each decided to do one-off tour dates in Detroit. So it was that my brother and I ended up in St. Andrew’s Hall, a sold out crowd swelling around us, waiting for Fallon and company to take the stage. Doors opened at 8, and with the stage already bedecked in Gaslight regalia, it was fairly clear that there was no opening act tonight. No nonsense, straight-to-the-point: the way Springsteen does it and the way I like it.

It was 9 p.m. on the dot when the band took the stage. Opener “Boomboxes and Dictionaries,” the lead-off track from the 2007 debut Sink or Swim announced two things: first, that this was going to be a concert of deep cuts and old songs, meant for the die-hard fans, and second, that the St. Andrew’s Hall sound set-up was abysmal. Fallon’s vocals were far too low in the mix, to the point where anyone unfamiliar with the songs would have had a hell of a time figuring out what he was singing about. The blend was messy at best, sacrificing clarity for sheer volume, and as the show went on, Alex Rosamilia’s lead guitar lines seemed to get sharper and sharper. All of these problems were consistent ones, a shame because the band played one hell of a setlist. Still, the atmosphere was electric, with a crowd full of people who clearly loved this band and these songs as much as I did, and with sing/shout along sessions that rocked the very foundations of the place. While I went back and forth on whether or not the trade-off was an even one (more on that later), The Gaslight Anthem didn’t disappoint.

The best songs in the setlist, almost unanimously, were those culled from the band’s latest record. Call it whatever you like, but the band was clearly the most at home with their latter-day material, and songs like “Howl,” “45,” and “Handwritten” set a high-water mark very early on in the night. That’s not to say that their earlier work fell flat, though. Classics from their 2008 album, The ’59 Sound, formed the backbone of the set, and the inclusions of “Even Cowgirls Get The Blues,” “Meet Me By The River’s Edge,” “The Patient Ferris Wheel,” “Film Noir,” and “The ’59 Sound” all gave way to triumphant sing-alongs. Speaking of those, “Keepsake” was a set highlight, with a skyscraping chorus that rang through the venue like a battle cry, and “American Slang” scorched like the anthem it is, with its massive guitar riff and yet another fist pumping hook.

But the poor quality of the sound definitely took its toll on what was otherwise a nearly spotless performance. I’ve often thought that I would like the songs from Sink or Swim a lot more if they were recorded now. The fidelity of the original recordings makes them sound like demos, but the actual songs are masterful, with more punk edge than the ones from The ’59 Sound, but very obviously cut from the same nostalgic cloth. With five of the album’s 12 songs represented here (“Boomboxes,” “Wooderson,” “Angry Johnny and the Radio,” “1930,” and “We Came to Dance”), this should have been a perfect opportunity to see those songs reborn. Unfortunately, the fuzzy and muddy sound production lent them nothing new, and while they were still fun, welcome additions to the set (especially the last two, which the band pulled out as the show entered its final act), they did not end as highlights for me. Furthermore, I don’t know if Alex Rosamilia was having an off night in general or if he just couldn’t hear his own instrument (I wouldn’t blame him), but the guitar solos were off-the-mark and strangely ineffective for most of the concert. They ranged from too quiet (the riffs on songs like “Keepsake” and “Mulholland Drive,” moments that define those songs on record but were almost inconsequential here) to sloppy and out-of-tune (the sweeping transitions in “Mae,” which disappointed live after being one of my favorite songs they’ve ever written). It was a bizarre and unfortunate enigma for the band member who really makes Handwritten what it is, and I didn’t quite know how to take it.

But overall, the great moments far outweighed the disappointments. American Slang highlight “The Queen of Lower Chelsea” was a definite treat, slowing down the tempo for a subdued moment late in the main set. Handwritten b-side “Blue Dahlia,” with its rousing chorus and perfect bridge, got the live feature I never thought it would. And finally seeing “The Backseat” live, as the first curtain call, was as euphoric and emotionally visceral as I always knew it would be. There are moments from every live show I’ve been too that I will remember for the rest of my life: looking around me as the house lights went up during “Born to Run” at my first Springsteen show and seeing the ranks of the Palace of Auburn Hills rising around me, all of us screaming along at the top of our lungs; the opening guitar riff of “Where the Streets Have No Name” echoing through a flawless summer night at Spartan Stadium a week or two before the end of U2’s 360 tour; Butch Walker gesturing to my brother and I to help him down into the audience at one of the concerts where we had ended up front and center. Belting along with “The Backseat,” shouting about how “we rode the fever out of Austin” and “dreamed of California lights,” was absolutely up there, and I realized that, ultimately, my complaints about the sound and about how Rosamilia’s guitar didn’t sound quite as pitch-perfect as it does on record didn’t really matter at all. This show was all about the atmosphere: it was about the electricity of the crowd, about the gleeful performance from the band we all loved, and about the setlist that traveled to every corner of their discography. It was about rediscovering the power of rock ‘n’ roll, and I didn’t want that last song to end because I just wanted to keep on cherishing it.

Luckily, that wasn’t the last song. Not by a long shot.

After much racket from the crowd, The Gaslight Anthem re-took the stage and rocketed into a pair of ‘90s covers (Pearl Jam’s “State of Love and Trust” and Nirvana’s “Sliver”). While I don’t particularly care for either song, the band was visibly passionate about both and Brian especially looked like he was having a ball with them. “Biloxi Parish,” despite being considered by some as one of the weaker points of Handwritten was nothing short of potent and transcendent here, resulting in one of my favorite moments of the set. And “Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts” provided a note of emotional weight and solemnity to an encore that was otherwise about big, brash rock songs. It certainly doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the best and most enduring things that Fallon has written to date.

I’ve seen artists skimp on the encore a lot of times before. A year and a half ago, Iron & Wine’s Sam Beam brought my disappointment in his live show full-circle by doing a cop out, one-song encore that wasn’t “The Trapeze Swinger.” Ryan Adams took intimacy to a new height during his show at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival last winter, but left it feeling truncated and unfinished when he departed the stage after “Come Pick Me Up” and didn’t come back. The best shows are the ones with the artists who just keep going, the ones who come back for “one more song” three or four times and act like they never want to leave the stage. Bruce Springsteen is famous for this, and on Friday night, Brian Fallon and the guys in the Gaslight Anthem channeled that stamina in spades. The house lights didn’t go up after the band’s second departure, and even though many of my fellow audience members started moving towards the exits, I was holding onto hope that they still had a little more to give. Lo and behold, after copious amounts of shouting, screaming, clapping, and stomping, the boys were back onstage one more time, for that elusive second encore.

As I mentioned before, the band kicked off their final stand with a pair of Sink or Swim songs (“1930” and “We Came to Dance”), both of which crackled with the same energy and force that they had been channeling all night. “The Diamond Church Street Choir” took one of the evening’s few trips into American Slang territory (suffice to say that I could have done with a few more), and “Here’s Looking At You, Kid” functioned in much the same way as “Blue Jeans” had – as a gorgeous, sobering torch song. When the guitar riff for ’59 Sound opener “Great Expectations” echoed through the hall, there seemed to be an agreement of sorts between the band and the audience that this was the grand finale, and both parties acted accordingly. The crowd surged forward, transforming the venue’s floor into a riotous mosh pit. In situations like this, you have no choice but to give yourself over to the insanity of it all, to go with the ebb and flow of the crowd, hang on for dear life, and hope you don’t die. But one last explosive, sweaty, communal sing-along was just what the set needed to send it off, and even though I didn’t get my choice for a closer (the latest single “Here Comes My Man,” which was surprisingly absent from the set), you can’t complain too much with a song as good as “Expectations.”

At two hours and 29 songs, with a pair encores and more memorable moments than I can possibly expound upon here, Friday night’s gig was the longest show The Gaslight Anthem have played all year. It was longer than the Handwritten album release show or any of the concerts they played in Europe. It was certainly more sprawling than all of their supporting dates with Rise Against and Hot Water Music, past or future, or any of the slots they played on the festival circuit. It was also a textbook example of the age-old rock ‘n’ roll show agreement between a performer and their audience: the band gave fans an epic marathon show that covered deep cuts and greatest hits alike, and in turn, we gave them a chance to let loose, have fun, and own the room like the rock stars they deserve to be. Five years into their career, The Gaslight Anthem are already building a legacy of great songs, better albums, and evocative classic rock traditions, and their live shows follow suit with all of that. Had the sound in St. Andrew’s Hall be a bit better, I might have been ready to proclaim this concert as one of the greatest I had ever seen; even with that, though, it’s still pretty damn close, and that’s worth an awful lot.

Setlist

1. Boomboxes and Dictionaries
2. American Slang
3. Howl
4. Even Cowgirls Get The Blues
5. 45
6. Handwritten
7. Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?
8. Wooderson
9. Meet Me By The River's Edge
10. Keep Sake
11. Angry Johnny and the Radio (with Brand New - Jesus Christ tag)
12. The Patient Ferris Wheel
13. The '59 Sound
14. Film Noir
15. Senor and the Queen
16. Blue Dahlia
17. The Queen of Lower Chelsea
18. Mulholland Drive
19. Mae
20. The Backseat

Encore

21. State of Love and Trust (Pearl Jam cover)
22. Silver (Nirvana Cover)
23. Biloxi Parish
24. Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts

Second Encore

25. 1930
26. We Came to Dance
27. The Diamond Church Street Choir
28. Here's Looking At You, Kid
29. Great Expectations

"It's days like these that keep me on my winning streak."

Butch Walker & The Black Widows

Live at the Magic Bag

Ferndale, MI, 10/14/11

 There was a moment sometime last fall when I began to wonder if Butch Walker, one of my two musical Gods and one of the guys who I've followed for ages, was past his prime. He'd released I Liked It Better When You Had No Heart (his weakest record, by miles) earlier that year, and I'd seen him live for two phenomenal nights that May, but since then, Butch's record had fallen out of my regular rotation, replaced by any number of last year's great albums, and the live shows, as unbelievably unforgettable as they were, were merely memories. For the first time since I'd become a fan, Butch did not claim my album of the year title (though he still clung to my number three spot, a position he might not still possess if I re-assessed the list now), and I was wondering if Butch would ever write a record as emotionally moving as Letters or Sycamore Meadows, or as much fun as The Rise & Fall or Left of Self-Centered.

Fast forward a year, and Butch is as safe and sound at the top of my favorite artists list as he's ever been. On the tails of a terrific rock and roll record (The Spade, which just gets better with every listen), he's on tour again with his band, the Black Widows, and last Friday night, he returned to the Magic Bag in Ferndale, Michigan for his third consecutive tour.  Ever since I first saw him (back in August of 2006, also my first live show ever), I've always thought of Butch as the benchmark against which live shows should be measured: the energy, emotion, and charisma he puts into every show make some of my very favorite bands (Jimmy Eat World, Third Eye Blind) look almost amateurish in comparison. If you go to a Butch Walker show, whether you're a die-hard fan or a newcomer, whether you get all of your setlist wishes or none of them (I was probably closer to the latter, on that one), you are guaranteed to have a great time. I've heard stories of people who'd never heard of him leaving his shows as converts, as fans that will come back to see him time and time again, and that's one of the coolest parts of a Butch Walker show: his fanbase is small, but extremely loyal, and my brother and I recognized more than a few faces in the audience on Friday night.

Butch has always done a pretty good job with the acts he chooses to bring on the road with him. At my first show, it was a dual opening of As Fast As (a terrific, glammed up rock group that has sadly disappeared) and Boys Like Girls (a pop-rock outfit that became pretty famous a year or two later). The second time, the openers were the Films, another glammy group, half of whose members make an appearance on this tour as well, one as a Black Widow (bassist Jake Sinclair, though he played every instrument at some point in the set), the other as part of an opening band. Last year, Locksley, a Beatles pop-esque group opened. This time around, Butch let his band members (all of whom have their own projects outside of the band) warm up the crowd. After three of these, Shovels and Rope, a country-rock project consisting of Films lead singer Michael Trent, who's helped Butch write songs on these past two albums, and Cary Ann Hearst, a wailing country singer. The two traded off on vocals, guitar and percussion, and played an entertaining (if a bit overlong) set, converting many in their hour of playtime, judging by how many albums it looked like they were selling at the merch table after the show. 

It was 10:30pm by the time Butch finally sauntered out and began to sing "Cigarette Lighter Love Song," the last song his previous band, the Marvelous 3, ever recorded or performed together, almost completely a cappella. I've heard this song live two or three times, once where the full band came in near the end, and once where Butch delivered the whole thing from the piano, but this performance might have been the most stunning of all, offering a perfect showcase for Walker's vocal talents and emotional performing spark. He sat down behind the piano to finish the song, and then bantered with the crowd for a few minutes before launching into a pair of Sycamore Meadows cuts, "Passed Your Place" and "Atlanta." While I preferred when Walker's piano set (a live show staple, usually consisting of two or three songs) was near the end of the show, these songs both sound terrific live, though my brother and I are in agreement that both of them should be retired for awhile, since he opened the show in a similar manner on the past two tours. Complaints were silenced immediately though, as Walker got up and grabbed his acoustic guitar. "Freebird!," someone shouted from the crowd (because it's not a live show without that request), and Butch actually began to play it, before cycling through a few well known songs from Detroit-hailing artists, a perfect example of Butch's ability to take control of a live venue quickly, and to never let it go. 

Butch strummed the first chords of another Marvelous 3 song, "Every Monday," which immediately earned a big roar of approval from the crowd. Not every person in the venue was familiar with the music of Walker's former band, but the die hards in the front (where my brother and I were positioned), were ecstatic, and sang every word of the song while Walker sat down on the stage, playing his guitar with a huge grin on his face as the audience sang a song he wrote over 12 years ago. It was the same routine with "Grant Park," a gem from Marvelous 3's 2000 record, Readysexgo!, which Butch led from the microphone, jumping in to sing the bridge and the last verse. "I might as well play some old stuff now, since they don't know it!" he said, referring to the band, who had yet to take the stage. "Race Cars and Goth Rock" and "Going Back/Going Home" followed in their acoustic arrangements. Both are songs I've seen him play several times before, but both are among his best, and are welcome additions to the live set. Walker's solo acoustic/piano sets are so good that I would have been fine if he'd played the entire show by himself, but soon, the Widows took the stage (accompanied by the music from their ridiculous Spade promo video) and launched into "Summer of '89," whose huge "woah-oh" hook and catchy, singalong chorus, immediately made it the highlight of the night.

"Pretty Melody" and "She Likes Hair Bands" offered tonight's only foray into the Black Widow's last record, as the set very clearly revolved around material from The Spade, from which the band played nine of the ten tracks (leaving out "Bullet Belt," which was the one I most wanted to hear and probably Walker's most obvious live showstopper ever, but alas...) The band played a snippet of "Come On, Eileen" in the middle of "Synthesizers" (I called the song a rewrite of that 80's hit in my original review of the record, so this made me chuckle), while rhythm guitarist Chris Unck joined Walker at center stage for "Every Single Body Else," a song he co-wrote. Lead guitarist Fran Capitanelli delivered scorching guitar lines all over "Bodegas & Blood" and "Sweethearts," the two songs on the record he earned songwriting credits for, before Walker played an acoustic guitar lead in for the gorgeous country-folk ballad that is "Closest Thing to You I'm Gonna Find," another highlight of the night. The band clustered around a single mic to delivered a gloriously harmonized version of "Dublin Crow," an Irish folk-esque tune, and the formation recalled an Irish street performance. These two tracks, which, along with "Summer of '89," are the only songs from The Spade which Walker earns sole writing credit for, but those three are easily among the best, both on the album and in the live show, and support my thought that, as cool as it is to make a true full band album again, he's still better when left to his own devices.

  Butch delivered one of his most emotional performances of the night on "Day Drunk," a deceptively upbeat track that he wrote for his ailing father, singing about how nothing in life lasts forever. It's a track I've liked since the first time I heard it, but one that only really hit me when I saw Walker sang it live. An extremely familiar guitar intro heralded the arrival of main set closer "Best Thing You Never Had," the one song Walker has played every single time I've seen him live, and always at this place in the set. As has become customary, the band members traded off the vocal line until the bridge, where Walker takes command. Throughout the song's tremendously emotional build, Walker delivered his trademark performance of the song, jumping all over the stage, wailing the song's cathartic climax at the top of his lung, climbing on top the drum set and abusing the hell out of his guitar, breaking all the strings and letting it fall to the floor for the song's closing bars. This song has always been absurdly over the top, to the point of being almost ridiculous, but after seeing it half a dozen times, I think I'm ready for Butch to retire it for awhile (preferably in favor of "Bullet Belt.") Still, for a first time concertgoer, I'm sure the performance is as exciting and as viscerally moving as it was for me the first time I heard it. Watching him wail the refrain of "you never had" towards the end of the song has always been a highlight of the Butch Walker live experience for me. Sometimes, the whole thing feels like a big show, like Walker is engaging in sheer theatricality for the hell of it, but during that segment of the song, I always have felt like it was purely emotional, like Walker could still get to the emotional core of this song, to the place he was when he wrote it, every single night like nothing else he's ever written, and if that's true for the whole song, then he has no reason to retire it. 

Walker returned to the stage moments later with a different acoustic guitar (since he completely decimated the other one during "Best Thing") and quickly strummed the opening chords to "Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky." The song, which used to be the full band entrance in the first part of the show, works even better near the end, closer to its roots as a penultimate track (one of the best in that function I've ever heard). "3 Kids in Brooklyn," another track from Sycamore Meadows, has become a live staple, and I'm quite fine with that, as it's one of the most fun rock songs in Walker's entire catalog, while "Suckerpunch," the closing track from The Spade, became both the set closer and the trademark song for Butch's foray into the audience, a role previously filled by "Hot Girls in Good Moods" and "Lights Out. Butch leaped off the stage, grabbed my shoulder to steady himself, and then made his way further into the audience for a game of call and response, with a small snippet of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance" thrown in for good measure ("Bigger than any song I did here tonight, for sure. God dammit! That bitch is good!" he exclaimed). He came back and sang a few lines right between my brother and I before returning to the stage for one last guitar duel with Fran to close out the song, and the show. "When the Canyons Ruled the City" was on the setlist, but was not played, leaving both The Rise and Fall and Left of Self-Centered entirely unrepresented in the set.

By the time my brother and I finally made it back to our car, it was 12:40 in the morning (we had a 2+ hour drive back to his place in front of us, but we're not going to talk about that). I was tired, physically, mentally, and vocally, from singing along with every single word, but I didn't regret a minute of it. "I don't know how the hell he does that every night..." my brother remarked, and he's right; this guy gives his heart, body and soul to every minute of every show he ever does, playing rock and roll, drinking onstage, and just partying with his audience into the early hours of the morning, and then gets up the next day and does it all over again. And yet, every time I see him, he sings better and sounds more completely involved in his songs than any other artist I've ever seen live, with the possible exception of Mr. Bruce Springsteen himself. If there's a better act still touring the club circuit, I don't know who they are. This guy is a God onstage, he treats his fans well, and his entire band plays like they've been together (and been best friends) for years. Everything about his show has been a thoroughly unforgettable experience each time I've seen him, and Friday night, whether I was hearing songs I've loved for years or soon-to-be fan favorites from The Spade, I was always having a ball. With probably the best show I've seen this year (even next to U2, which was an amazing experience as well) and the current number two slot on my album of the year list, I can rest easy knowing the Butch Walker still is (and probably always will be) my favorite artist of all time, and I'll keep going to see him live as long as he continues to tour. I just hope that's going to be for a long, long time.

Setlist

1. Cigarette Lighter Love Song

2. Passed Your Place, Saw Your Car, Thought of You

3. Atlanta

4. Every Monday

5. Grant Park

6. Race Cars & Goth Rock

7. Going Back/Going Home

8. Summer of ‘89

9. Pretty Melody

10. She Likes Hair Bands

12. Synthesizers

13. Every Single Body Else

14. Bodegas & Blood

15. Sweethearts

16. Closest Thing to You I’m Gonna Find

17. Dublin Crow

18. Day Drunk

19. Best Thing You Never Had

ENCORE

20. Closer to the Truth and Further From the Sky

21. 3 Kids in Brooklyn

22. Suckerpunch