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Concert -- Carbon Leaf and Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers in Chicago
We've headed up to Chicago for the weekend. We are staying with a friend, and on Friday night went to a concert with that friend and met up with another friend here in the city. The concert was pretty much a dream ticket for me, with Carbon Leaf co-headlining with Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers.
The show was at Park West, over in the Lincoln Park neighborhood, just a few miles from where my friend lives. I'd forgotten how far a mile is in the city--it took seemingly forever to get there and then we circled endlessly looking for a parking spot. While we're looking, I got a text from my friend, first asking if we were there, then letting me know that they hadn't been able to save five seats together for all of us and that it's filling up quickly.
Great. My pregnant wife will be so comfortable. And we're missing the show.
Turns out I was wrong on both counts. When we got there, maybe 15 minutes after the start time, nothing had started yet. We went in to Park West's beautiful performance space and started scanning for my friend, when a hostess came up and asked if we needed seating. We said we were meeting two friends and she said no problem, let me take you to a booth. She removed the reservation placard and we sat down. Now, I'd like to think that they were sensitive to the need we hadn't articulated, that seeing Lauren's pregnant belly induced this woman to very kindly seat us. But it could just be that they wanted to fill up the booths so that their servers got adequate tips. In any case, it was a good deal for us.
The opening act was Toby Lightman, and she was pretty good. A few of her songs seemed kind of flat, but in general she was a very solid performer. It was just her and an accoustic guitar, and she had pretty good chops. During her last song, the guys from Carbon Leaf (minus lead singer Barry) came on and played with her, and finally Barry came on and did some backup vocals, and then they transitioned seamlessly into Carbon Leaf's set with Toby Lightman singing backup on two songs (I think she sings backup on one track from their new album, which is the one they opened with).
From the first song, it was clear that Barry's voice was tired or sick, which seemed surprising considering that the tour just started. He still has a great stage presence, but his voice just wasn't quite there last night. The band sounded great. All the songs were retooled somewhat from the studio versions, and with only one exception I loved what they did with them (that being "Any Given Day," where lead guitarist Carter Gravett switched to banjo to take the place of the cello on the album version, but the middle section suffered without electric guitar). I especially liked these versions of songs from the new album Nothing Rhymes With Woman.
Once again, the transition between bands was handled by bringing on Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers for a couple Carbon Leaf songs and then taking over. It made for a concert with very little down time, which was great. SK6ers put on a good show, as usual. They played some new stuff that I hadn't heard before, and it was sort of a mixed bag--some really cool stuff and some stuff that didn't grab me, but the concert as a whole was great. The concert ended with a few encores bringing all the performers together on Carbon Leaf's "I Fell in Love with Another Man's Woman" and a couple others to finish it off. I loved the thick vocal harmonies on their closer.
All in all, great concert. We're considering it Baby Thea's first concert, because she could certainly feel the thumping bass and was banging around in there with the music. Unfortunately, we couldn't get a Carbon Leaf onesy for her. Ah well.