After one and a half years with almost no in person live music - one and a half years that somehow felt both like an eternity and like almost no time at all had passed - suddenly it seemed like everyone and their brother had scheduled tours for September and October of 2021. When these tours were originally announced, it looked like the pandemic would be largely behind us by the time the shows happened. The delta variant changed things. The shows went on, with vaccine and sometimes mask requirements, musicians and fans adapting the best we could to this strange new reality. In a time of many difficult questions and no clear good answers, we try to choose the least bad answer and make the most of it.
For me, a magical Weather Station show on September 9 in Detroit kicked off a period more densely packed with exciting concerts than any I can ever remember, a period that has made me realize oh, how I've missed live music so, so much - and not only that, but how I've missed simply being around people so, so much.
Among the numerous shows over the past two months, Megan and I managed to catch all three members of fabulous indie rock supergroup boygenius - Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus - in separate live appearances. If you'd told me prior to COVID that I'd have an opportunity to see separate shows by each of the three in a period of less than a month, I'd have been astounded. These are very strange times indeed.
This post is about all three of the shows.
The first, by Bridgers, was on September 18 at EXPRESS LIVE! (yes, that is really the name of the venue - barf) in Columbus. Megan and I drove down from Cleveland, found unfortunately expensive garage parking (thanks to a simultaneous arena concert also in downtown Columbus that night), made our way over toward the venue, and quickly noticed there were just so many kids. So many kids.
I had not been in such a large crowd of people in a very long time. (An outdoor crowd, it's worth mentioning for COVID concerns - Bridgers scheduled all her shows on the tour at outdoor locations.) And so many of those people were so young. It was an interesting experience. I remembered attending an Arcade Fire show in 2007 at the same venue with Cara and my dad, and my dad looking around for people in his age bracket. This was almost like that for Megan and me.
It made me think about what a weird time this must be to grow up in. Especially now, because of COVID. But then, even before COVID. And I guess it's nice to see that some things stay the same. Young people find music that speaks to them and their concerns in whatever era they live in. With everything going on right now, it's not surprising that so many connect with what Bridgers is doing.
When Megan and I were waiting in a very long line to enter the venue prior to the show, someone drove up the side street along which the line stretched, stupidly in too much of a hurry, and loudly honked their horn right next to us at some people who were walking up the street to get to the end of the line that occupied most of the sidewalk. We and everyone around us flinched, startled, and shot a glance at the passing car. A young woman in front of us in line quickly let forth the best line of the night: "Everyone here has anxiety!" A witty and timely complaint directed at the already gone driver.
Megan and I laughed in agreement. Yes, the audience of a Phoebe Bridgers concert, or a Julien Baker or Lucy Dacus concert for that matter, is definitely enriched for people who "have anxiety." (Although how could anyone not have anxiety in the year 2021? If there are people who don't, although a part of me is envious, another part feels sorry for them because they must be really out of touch with reality.) The music of these amazing young women provides at least something of a balm for that anxiety.
After entering the venue, we took our places on the lawn and settled in amongst a crowd of people mostly at least fifteen years our juniors, and it struck me that for some of those kids, this must be the first big concert they'd ever attended, and some of them must have spent the last year and a half waiting for such an opportunity. What an experience it must have been for someone in that position.
Indie pop band Muna opened with a great, energetic set, but one that was marred by the extreme chattiness of numerous audience members. Megan said that being annoyed by that was a sign of getting old. I pointed out that I found it just as annoying when I was in my twenties as I do today.
The audience was more attentive during Bridgers's headline set, although still not as much as we'd have liked. But it was a great performance. And wow, it was just so good to be experiencing something like that after so much time without it!
It was a very warm day, with temperatures dropping only a little as the sun went down, and on two separate occasions the show was paused because someone in the pit had passed out. At a Phoebe Bridgers show! So there was a lot of excitement for sure.
One weird aspect of COVID is that despite us having been together for two years, this show was the first time that Megan and I got to see live performances of songs that were already meaningful to our relationship prior to the show. This included Bridgers's haunting song "Funeral," which Megan loves to point out was a hilariously dark choice for the first song I ever sent to her when we were texting and just starting to get to know each other. Lyrics excerpt:
For a kid a year older than me
And I've been talking to his dad, it makes me so sad
When I think too much about it I can't breathe
While my friends are all waving from the shore
And I don't need you to tell me what that means
I don't believe in that stuff anymore
And that's just how I feel
Always have and I always will
After she pointed out how strange and funny it was that this was the first song I ever sent her, I obviously had to admit she was right. The thing is, "Jesus Christ, I'm so blue all the time" was not, like, a representation of my feelings about life. Okay, sometimes things seem like that, but not most of the time. I just really connect to music that gets at that sort of emotional state, that leans into the sorrow that's an inherent part of life. It's also just a beautiful song, and was a definite highlight of the concert.
An even bigger highlight was a solo performance of boygenius track "Me & My Dog," one that I was not expecting, another song meaningful to Megan and me and just an astonishingly good song. (Indeed, we "cried at [the] show with the teenagers.")
The great music was accompanied by striking visuals, something that was true of all three shows in this trilogy, the Bridgers show on a larger scale than the other two. During most of the songs, a large screen behind the stage displayed beautiful artwork matching the content of the song.
Bridgers's band was great, with the trumpet player in particular earning appreciative chants from the audience on more than one occasion. And watching those musicians on that big stage, I thought, wow, they're all so young. I thought that too at the Baker and Dacus shows. And another thing I thought, they all just seem like such good people. Not that you can know for sure. But I think you can kind of tell when you watch them interact with each other and with the audiences. It's really nice to see. The kids are all right, you know?
It was a great show. But it was just the beginning of a trilogy that would get even better.
At last year's Grammy awards, Phoebe Bridgers was nominated for four awards, including Best Alternative Music Album for Punisher. It's an excellent album, so I'm not criticizing it at all but rather praising the works of her boygenius bandmates when I say that among the most recent albums by all three, Punisher would come in third place in my rankings.
I'm glad that Phoebe Bridgers has achieved such well earned success and that so many people have connected with her music. Julien Baker and Lucy Dacus have also achieved a lot of success, but as of now, at least, don't draw nearly as large crowds, and honestly? That results in a better experience from the perspective of an audience member. Megan and I got to see both Baker and Dacus up close in two of my very favorite venues and with audiences that were totally there for the music and not to chat with their friends!
The Julien Baker show was the second of the trilogy and it took place on September 29 at Mr. Smalls Theatre in Millvale, PA, just outside of Pittsburgh. Again, Megan and I made a late afternoon drive out of Cleveland. A nice thing about living in Cleveland is that when artists schedule tours that don't hit Cleveland, there's a good chance that they'll at least hit one of Pittsburgh, Columbus, or Detroit, all very doable drives.
Our trip to see Julien Baker was marked by a remarkable amount of serendipity. This started when we missed a highway exit and ended up taking back roads through the Conneaut area, which led to us seeing a hand-painted sign next to the road advertising the amazing website ForKin.net, which led to even more amazing discoveries that I won't go into here! We marvel at the fact that we would never have known about any of it if we hadn't missed that exit. The serendipity continued as we were waiting in line to enter the venue and heard the two people behind us, a young man and a young woman, talking about the fact that the woman had offered up what she had thought was an extra ticket to the show, then after having found a buyer in the man with her, had discovered she had actually bought just one ticket to the sold out show, not two. And was therefore planning to leave rather than attend the show herself. The serendipitous part was that Megan had accidentally purchased three tickets to the show, and thus we found someone to use that extra ticket.
This was my fourth time seeing Julien Baker live. She never fails to blow me away. It was the first time I'd seen her headline a show, and she lived up to my expectations.
She is a tiny person. As illustrated in this picture of me and her taken at the 2018 Homecoming festival in Cincinnati:
When you watch her perform live, you wonder, where does that voice come from? And that voice is something truly astounding.
During the show, Baker mentioned the first time she had performed at Mr. Smalls, opening for the band Daughter in 2016. As it happened, that show was also the first time I went to Mr. Smalls, and the first time I saw Baker live. It was an unforgettable experience. I went into that show knowing nothing about her music. I left it a big fan for life.
I remember well watching her, so petite, so young (she was twenty at the time), come out on stage by herself and then just marveling at the power of her performance. She's come a long way since then; her performances now are just as powerful but in a decidedly different way. Whereas I would describe her 2016 performance as stripped down, rawly emotional indie folk, in 2021 she's a bona fide rock star with a full band and light show. Whereas many of Phoebe Bridgers's songs felt like they would better fit a more intimate venue, in Julien Baker's show the crashing, post-rock-ish guitar chords of the live arrangements of songs like "Turn Out the Lights" and "Ziptie" would have easily filled a much larger room. So I felt very lucky to be able to experience the performance in the beautiful intimate setting of Mr. Smalls, a building that was once a church, fitting because seeing Julien Baker live borders on a religious experience.
A mid-set solo interlude including some songs from debut album Sprained Ankle took me back to that evening in July 2016 in a wonderful way. When Baker's band returned to the stage, I quickly noticed that each member was wearing a shirt I'd appreciated at the merch table on the way in - a shirt emblazoned with a large picture of Baker's face.
It was hilarious, even more so when Baker turned to her band to introduce them to the crowd, and it dawned on her that one of them was wearing that shirt, and then she had to have it pointed out to her that they were all wearing that shirt. It was her birthday, so that was how they'd decided to honor her! And as a result of this, I had to buy the shirt for myself after the show. It's such a delightful shirt, and a delightful memory - how could I not?
2021 release Little Oblivions, almost every song of which was played in the show, is an astoundingly good album. Baker's previous effort, 2017's Turn Out the Lights, is also an astoundingly good album. Sprained Ankle is an amazing debut. She has easily become one of my very favorite artists of the last few years, and one that I will never miss seeing live when the opportunity arises. And in this particular show, there was something really special about watching her perform. There was so much joy in her performance. There were so many beaming smiles. There was so much gratitude at being able to be on that stage after the dreadful last 18 months. Gratitude at the opportunity and gratitude to all her fans who got vaccinated and wore masks and came out to appreciate her music. It was gratitude that was shared by me and by most other members of the audience, I have no doubt.
Another thing I have to mention from this trip - the next morning before heading back to Cleveland we made a stop at Attic Records and it was the most amazing record store I've ever been to with a vast collection including the most random stuff that I could have spent all day browsing! We'll have to return some day to spend more time there.
The final show in the trilogy did not involve an out of town trip. Lucy Dacus made a late addition to her tour with an October 14 Cleveland date after having had to cancel a Toronto appearance. Unfortunate for her fans in Toronto, but very lucky for us here. Of the three shows covered in this post, it was the one that Megan and I had the least expectations for, but it was also the one that easily shot past both of our expectations. Dacus has put out some great music - I'm currently in love with her recent album Home Video - but she also really elevates that music in the live setting. I'd seen her once before, three years ago, but I'd forgotten just how outstanding she is live.
There was more serendipity after our arrival to this show. I was (of course) wearing my recently acquired Julien Baker t-shirt, and after Megan and I entered the ballroom and found a spot near the stage, one of a pair of women near us complimented me on the shirt. I mentioned having seen her in Pittsburgh and it turned out they had also been at that show! They were from Pittsburgh, so whereas we had traveled from Cleveland to Pittsburgh for the Baker show, they'd traveled from Pittsburgh to Cleveland for the Dacus show. They, too, had seen Bridgers recently - in Pittsburgh, the night before her Columbus show. One of them said something like, "these shows are my only source of serotonin right now," and, yeah. Yeah.
Things are so weird and hard and overwhelming right now, for just about everyone, everyone in their own way, for some more than for others, but I think we can all say, this is not the life we ever imagined we'd be living. And in a lot of ways it sucks. A lot. Thank goodness for live music. It's one of the best kinds of medicine there is. And thank goodness for vaccines for making these shows possible.
The Beachland Ballroom is one of my favorite places in the whole world. I've seen so many amazing shows there. Prior to the Lucy Dacus show, I hadn't been there in more than twenty months. That had definitely never happened before, and it was so good to be back. It felt like a homecoming of sorts. We took our place toward the front of the room on the left side and I remembered previous memorable shows I'd experienced from roughly the same spot, like Nada Surf in October 2005 (one of the very best shows of my early concert going days) and Sufjan Stevens in December 2012 (a truly magical holiday extravaganza). In a lot of ways I think this most recent show will go down as being just as memorable for me.
Bartees Strange opened the night with a great set. He originally gained recognition for an album of National covers, a couple of which he included in his live set, and which he introduced by asking the audience, "Does anyone here like the National?"
I laughed and looked over at Megan, who gave an enthusiastic "woo!" I laughed because, you see, Megan is obsessed with the National, and in fact one of the main reasons I originally swiped on her Bumble profile was that it included the fact that she listens to the National a lot. I asked her whether she had ever before been somewhere where someone asked if anyone liked the National, and she, not surprisingly, said no.
Lucy Dacus completed our boygenius concert trilogy in a perfect way. She played most of the songs from her fantastic new album, one I think I'm especially connecting to right now because it leans heavily on memories of high school and I recently attended my twenty year high school reunion, and also sprinkled in a few older songs, new unreleased songs, and covers. Like at the Phoebe Bridgers show, a (smaller) screen at the back of the stage displayed some lovely artwork matching the content of certain songs, like this for "Christine":
Dacus has an incredibly charming stage presence. She's also very adept at going between quieter songs that tug at the emotions of everyone in the room ("Please Stay" might be the most heartbreaking song I've ever heard) and louder songs that get the crowd moving. The last three songs of the main set demonstrated this nicely. From the devastating "Thumbs," with Dacus's voice over understated backing music just captivating the whole room, she then introduced the next song as a cover and launched into Bruce Springsteen's "Dancing in the Dark," which I was just as thrilled to hear as Megan had been for Bartees Strange's National covers. Strange then came out on stage to play guitar on "Night Shift" and that song in particular was one of those sublime experiences that can only happen when a musician is in a room full of their devoted fans.
As the song reached its climax, the whole crowd bellowing out the words to the chorus, perhaps even louder than usual to get past our masks, I got chills. It felt like a release of all the emotions of the last year and a half. It was such a great communal experience. It was easily the best singalong I've experienced since before COVID. It was what live music is all about. I think most people in that room felt similarly.
It's a feeling I'll try to hold on to as we enter another dark winter.
