Columbus, OH - 30th May 2000

Ludlow's Bar was located in the brewery district of Columbus and was just a bar with a very small stage. The balcony reached the stage so that some of us were only inches away from Todd! It was packed and very hot! The support group were Cinomatic again who sound better on the third hearing!

Todd, Kasim and Trey came on promptly at 9.00 and played the usual great opening three tracks (with an abortive start to Play This Game as Todd had to re-tune his guitar) followed by Black and White, I Like It, Fix Your Gaze (another Todd re-tune after a bad start!) and Trapped. Todd reiterated that his green guitar was called Phoney and informed us that his orange guitar is now called Percy! I wonder if he'll name Kasim's guitars in later concerts!

They launched into There Goes My Inspiration but Todd had only sung a couple of lines when there was a electronic screech and his microphone had blown! They tried to fix it with no luck so after a couple of minutes, Todd announced that they were going to sing it "a la Beatles" which meant that Kasim and Todd shared Kasim's microphone!

They then started Love In Action (after Kasim moved his microphone to allow Todd to use it) but stopped after a couple of lines and went off stage for the techies to fix the mike (did nobody think to pack a spare microphone?!).

After a ten minute break they came back and "continued this Utopia mood" by playing Love In Action and Hammer in my Heart.

After #1 Lowest Common Denominator, Jesse Gress came on stage (Todd introduced him as the guy who looks like him!). I'd seen Jesse go on stage yesterday in Cleveland and tune a guitar before the set but never played. The four of them played a twenty minute version of the Mystified melody which was just brilliant - even for someone like me who doesn't like long guitar solos! This song really highlighted Todd's guitar playing - he really is was second to none (well, second to Kasim!). Someone next to me remarked that he'd seen Todd live 22 times and that this was the best and the most that he'd ever seen him play guitar!

They then popped it up a bit with Open My Eyes and Secret Society before they played a long version of The Ikon which was amazing as all four of them had their own time in the spotlight! Halfway through the song, Jesse broke a guitar string and tried (unsuccessfully) to get the guitar tech's attention to mend it. Kasim then tried whistling at him with no luck so Jessie whipped out his guitar string repair kit and proceeded to do it himself on stage! As it took him a while to tune it too, Todd played and played and played! Just amazing....!

Jessie then went off and The Power Trio played Buffalo Grass before setting off on the long walk along the balcony to the dressing room! They then came back for Couldn't I Just Tell You and One World before once again trudging along the balcony! Finally they returned for the great World Wide Epiphany and Todd called out for Jessie to join them on stage halfway through this one too!

Then it was all over, two and a quarter hours after they first went on stage, after a really memorable concert!

Just saw the boys last night here in Columbus. Unfortunatley the sound guys were having alot of technical difficulties. At one point they lost Todd's mic completly, so Kasim was kind enough to share his mic for a song, and even give his mic completley to Todd for the next song altho' they didn't even get halfway through that one and gave up and took a break!

Kasim sounded as strong as ever on bass, and his vocals ,especially on Trapped [his solo song] were perfect as ever! [and isn't he just the cutest thing!]

I would definatley reccomend this tour to all Kasim and Todd fans altho' from what I've read good luck with your chosen venue and the sound quality and reliability there!

Photo by Ron Hromoko