The Ikon
Open My Eyes
World Wide Epiphany
It was another concert in a car park.....!
I know the band flew out here but I took the scenic seven and a half hour drive out here along the I-80 back past Wilkes Barre - who designed this tour?!! It's no wonder that Jessie decided to stay back in New York!
This had to be the most relaxed concert of the whole tour! I drove past the Southern Park Mall car park (parking lot) at 6.30. There was a band playing on the stage but nobody was standing in front of them so I returned to my hotel for a while. I got back to the Rib, Wing and Music Fest at 8.00 in time to see another band finishing and just a few people milling around in front of the stage but nobody staking their claim on the front row at all! I wandered around the festival but it didn't take long as there were only a few rides for children and a couple of places to buy ribs and that was it! It reminded me of the Cleveland Ribfest earlier in the tour but it was about an eighth of the size!
As they were preparing the stage, I saw all the band members just meandering around by the tour coach and security were allowing people to go up to them to get autographs and photos with them! People started to stand in front of the stage but there was no rush and everybody just stood where they liked, it was that relaxed!
Kasim, Todd and Trey came on about ten minutes late at 9.10 for this hour and three quarters concert. Immediately I noticed how bad Todd's voice sounded again (it was very croaky) but nobody around me appeared to notice it much. After a few tracks it did improve a bit as it warmed up. Todd didn't mention his voice at all other than to say that he should have paced himself more!
Kasim seemed to be playing well to the audience tonight! He was making
a lot of eye contact with various audience members (male and female)
and threw a lot of guitar pics too! He's got an amazing knack of making
people in the audience feel really special, whereas Todd seems to rarely
connect with people but that's probably partly due to his dark
glasses.
When they got to the musical part of Couldn't I Just Tell You tonight, Todd looked at Kasim who made a bit of a face but then (reluctantly) agreed to join in the "two step"! I know it's risky but the audience really seem to love them doing that!
After Love Of The Common Man, they played the Black And White / Fix Your Gaze combo which Todd seems to like before they sang Love In Action. Todd spoke briefly (mainly about ribs!) when they did stop and then they finished the song - they only played it the once tonight!
Love in Action was the first of four consecutive Utopia tracks and also the start of a rain shower! By the time they got to There Goes My Inspiration and Play This Game the rain was really falling quite hard so they covered Trey's drums and the speakers during Todd's solo Cliche / Bang the Drum! When Trey came back on stage he still had to dry off the cymbals!
After the newly popular Yer Fast they went into the even more popular
Trapped and Kasim's great lead vocals! Todd reminded us that he'd
promised that the rain would stop and it did by the time they sang Hammer In
My Heart!
As much as I like Buffalo Grass, I dread hearing the opening bars (not played by Kasim, Todd or Trey either!) as it means that it's the beginning of the end of the concert! As always it lead into One World with Kasim's hand punch and the line "From New York to Boardman, Ohio"!
As I expected they returned to play The Ikon (Trey played for ages again tonight with Kasim just standing smiling at him as he went on SO long!) and Open My Eyes and then we had the usual great World Wide Epiphany finale! Todd went wrong in that track as he sang a couple of extra "World Wides"!
Despite the rain this was another brilliant concert! As much as I like seeing Kasim play to a packed 20,000 seater Wembley Arena crowd I thoroughly enjoy seeing him at these intimate relaxed car park gigs too!
