The Weather Station's Toronto residency: an emotional musical journey

When Erin and I walked into the Great Hall concert venue in Toronto on Monday, December 11 for the first night of a three night residency by Canadian indie folk/rock outfit the Weather Station, I was immediately struck by the familiarity of the room. But I didn't quite believe it at first - how had I not recognized the name of the venue when the concert was announced and when I bought tickets? Sitting in the balcony, the familiarity sunk in more and more and a quick Google search during intermission confirmed that just over ten years ago, in September 2013, I had attended one of the most memorable and powerful shows of my life, Ohbijou's farewell concert, at this same venue.

The Great Hall viewed from the back balcony. Top: September 2013. Bottom: December 2023.

The juxtaposition of events in my life that had been recent the first time I'd been at the Great Hall and recent events in my life now upon my second visit was utterly staggering. This juxtaposition added considerable emotional weight to what would already have been an emotional three nights of music. That's not what this post is about, though, so I won't go into it here, but as any post on my blog is in part a record of a moment in my life, I'd be remiss not to mention it.

Oddly enough, I see (from my last.fm history) that September 2013 was also when I first started listening to the music of Tamara Lindeman, aka the Weather Station. I was really only a casual fan, though, all the way up until 2021 when her brilliant album Ignorance took hold of me in a way few albums have. Since then, I've gained additional appreciation for her whole body of work, and when she announced earlier this year a three night Great Hall residency playing two different albums each night to chronicle her whole career to this point, I decided it was an event I didn't want to miss.

I'd never before seen an artist do anything like this. In being a whole career retrospective, the concept bears some similarity to the hot music event of this year, Taylor Swift's Eras tour (which Lindeman referenced at one point, saying that her and her band's costume changes were far less elaborate). Here, though, the Weather Station residency was a three night event, and each album was played in full (in contrast to Swift's epic one night shows containing selections from each album). I thought it sounded like such a cool idea, and it definitely lived up to my expectations! Seeing the evolution of Lindeman's work from sparse folk to richly orchestrated art-rock was a fantastic experience, and hearing her narrate this journey made the experience all the more compelling.

Night one featured 2011 album All of It Was Mine and 2014 EP What Am I Going to Do with Everything I Know. (2009 Weather Station album The Line was not included and if I recall correctly Lindeman described All of It Was Mine as her debut album so I guess she must not consider The Line as essential to her career, but it's a really good listen too.) Although the three nights collectively covered her career in order, it was only night two's albums that were played in the order they were released. On each of the three nights it seemed the larger of the two releases got headline status; thus, on night one the EP was the first set and the earlier LP was played second.

Both All of It Was Mine and What Am I Going to Do... are made up of really pretty, sparsely instrumented folk music, Lindeman's distinctive voice and introspective, evocative lyrics complemented well by delicate acoustic guitar and banjo parts with occasional flourishes from other folk instruments and well-timed vocal harmonies. The intimate small venue setting with a crowd who were all there to enthusiastically listen to and appreciate the performance (no chatty concert crowd here, thank goodness!) was perfect for this gorgeous music. During the first set, Lindeman said that the six songs of the EP weren't enough for a full set and so she and her band included several unreleased songs from the same era, a welcome addition.

Unlike most shows I've seen where a band plays all the songs from an album, here the setlists did not follow the album tracklists. Often the tracks that might most be considered standouts were placed near the ends of sets. On All of It Was Mine, what I and I'd guess many other listeners would consider the most outstanding track is stunning album opener "Everything I Saw," which was pushed back in the setlist - but only by one song, to second. So when Lindeman stumbled over the banjo part and had to stop shortly into the song, she said it was a mistake to have put it so early! None of her albums since have had her playing such an intricate banjo part, so she'd been out of practice. She mentioned having considered the possibility of slowing the song down but that that wouldn't have felt right. After starting over, she played wonderfully, to the delight of the audience. It was a great, human moment that you can only get in a live concert setting.

I really loved every moment when Lindeman spoke about her songs, her feelings about her songs, the process behind the making of the songs, her life as it related to the songs, etc. Getting to hear these insights from a musician about their music that I love is always such a treat. During the All of It Was Mine set she mentioned that she considers "Traveller" one of the best songs she's written and I flashed back to seeing her live in 2021 and how emotional the performance of that song was. The lyrics paint an astoundingly good and heartrending picture of the moments in time in the aftermath of a loved one's death.

After the two sets comprising the songs from the two featured albums, each night also featured an encore. Night one's was highlighted by a rousing cover of recently deceased (at a tragically young age) Canadian folk artist Richard Laviolette's "Snuck Right Up."

Night two brought performances of 2015's Loyalty and 2017's The Weather Station. Loyalty was described by Lindeman as a transitional album, which can be seen in both the lyrics and the music, still mostly delicate folk music but starting to get bigger in sound compared to the previous night's albums. It was really interesting to me to hear her talk about how she looked back at the songs she'd written in the past and how she'd had a tendency to not express things as clearly or directly as she might later in her career. This is apparent to me, looking back over her albums - her lyrics have always been so thoughtful and so beautiful, but the lyrics of her most recent albums often have this wonderfully piercing quality where in the past the meanings of her words were often more obscured.

Before playing "Tapes," Lindeman explained that the song was about her finding and listening to tapes that someone close to her had made of himself singing while walking around the city, after he had passed away. And after hearing this explanation, the simple lyrics of the song, lyrics I'd not fully comprehended before, were just so powerful, and Lindeman's vocals as she "sang 'Oh'" were absolutely haunting. I got chills.

The self-titled album that was the second to be performed on the second night is one of those albums where if you've listened to an artist's previous catalog and then you get to that album you think, Whoa, where did this come from?? The Weather Station's sound suddenly transforms from delicate, folksy singer-songwriter type stuff (albeit with more complexity than that phrasing implies) to big, full band alt-country stylings and some of the songs actually rock in a way that was barely hinted at on the previous three records. "Thirty" in particular is such a great song and it was fittingly saved for last before the encore, moved back from its also very fitting track two position on the recorded album.

 

Another highlight of the set was Lindeman's musings about the song "Power" - how she'd looked back at her old lyrics and felt she mostly still agreed with things she'd said in the past but on this song she'd felt repulsed by her expressing a desire for power. Because wanting power over other people is a fucked up thing, she said. But then she'd thought about it more in the context of the full lyrics and had realized that when she'd said she wanted power, what she had really been hoping for was to simply have respect. (Like Aretha Franklin, she said!) And thus she was able to make peace with herself about her old song.

 

At times, it felt like the performance was a kind of therapy session for Lindeman - and I mean this in the absolute best way! It was a joy to watch and listen to her work her way through all those years of her life via her music.

Night three was the night I'd been most anticipating, featuring 2021's Ignorance, one of my favorite albums of all time, and 2022's How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars, something of a companion album to Ignorance. What I said about the self-titled being an album that makes you think, Whoa, where did this come from?? That applies doubly to Ignorance, an album that I never would have imagined Lindeman making based on her previous body of work. It's recognizably a Weather Station album with Lindeman's voice and lyrics and strong sense of melody, but the lush orchestration and complex, jazzy arrangements and the intense, propulsive (two drummers for this live performance!) rock sound are so unlike any of her previous records. And it all works so well.

How Is It... then took things in yet another totally new direction sonically as an album of piano ballads, thematically related to the songs on Ignorance and written at the same time but very different in sound. And stunning in its own way, more than I would have imagined an album of piano ballads could be. The songs took more time to grow on me than those of Ignorance but grow on me they did, with a couple that I'd consider among Lindeman's finest work. This beautifully understated set of songs made up the first part of night three's show and the intimate setting was perfect for experiencing the first ever live performance of most of them.

 

I do vividly remember seeing my favorite song from the album, "Stars," from which the album's title comes, performed live in 2021. At the time, I'd never heard the song before. I was instantly captivated by it and hoped fervently that it would be released on an album in the future. During the performance of the song at the Great Hall, Lindeman had to stop partway through to drink some water (all the singing and talking had done a number on her voice, apparently). She took the opportunity to tell the story of the song, of how when she was a child, her mother always took her out to see the Perseids meteor shower every August, and how she'd been so awed by the beauty, but now it was hard for her to appreciate that beauty because it made her think of all the beauty on our unique and wonderful planet and the devastation the human race is wreaking upon it.

"But how should I look at the stars tonight?/At a million suns? None of them mine/Nowhere up there is a place like this/Not one waterfall, no river mist" is, to me, just such a beautiful expression of this sentiment.

It was fitting, Lindeman said, that the night of the show was the night of the Geminids meteor shower. As someone who has loved watching meteor showers since childhood, I especially enjoyed hearing this backstory. The song plus Lindeman's narration of it did get the tear ducts going a bit, I have to say.

Unlike the five previous sets, the performance of the songs from Ignorance went straight through with no narration from Lindeman, just a high energy rock set of great song after great song. I got the sense that the albums that were further back in time gave Lindeman more to talk about because she was revisiting her past in rehearsing and playing them, whereas this was not so much the case with Ignorance.

Lindeman's band (with some repeat and some different members across the various albums) was great throughout the residency but especially got to strut their stuff on this last set. A sax solo on one song brought the crowd to raucous applause.

 

I've already written a lot about Ignorance on my blog so suffice to say, the live performance easily lived up to my high expectations. A rousing encore rendition of "Better Now" from Ignorance's deluxe version (amusingly introduced by Lindeman as hopefully the last song she'll write about writing songs, something she's done a lot but that she does really well so I don't mind!) was a fitting conclusion to the three nights of music.

At the end of the performance, Lindeman remarked that after playing through those 60+ songs over the course of three nights, she felt in a way complete. It was a really touching statement. A reminder of the powerful way that music accompanies us on the journey of life. Lindeman was grateful we the audience had joined her on that journey. I'm grateful she gave us the opportunity, and I'd love it if other favorite artists of mine would do similar career-spanning performances. It really was a magical experience.

boygenius, Bartees, bikes

I've been to hundreds of concerts in my life. Just about any time I get to witness a musician I really like performing live, it's a special experience, but after so many years and so many shows, it's rare that I come away from a concert thinking that it was truly unlike anything I'd ever previously seen. The boygenius show at Riis Park in Chicago on June 24 was one of those rare occasions. How so? I'll get to that in a bit.

I first became aware of the indie rock supergroup, made up of the trio of Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus, after they released their debut self-titled EP in 2018. I was already a huge fan of Julien Baker and had been ever since I went to see Daughter at Mr. Smalls near Pittsburgh in the summer of 2016 and this tiny young woman I'd never heard of before took the stage to open the night and proceeded to blow me away with her powerful voice and haunting melodies and lyrics. Phoebe Bridgers and Lucy Dacus, however, had flown under my radar until 2018. In October of that year Dacus happened to headline Studio-a-rama, the annual festival put on by WRUW, the radio station of my alma mater and now employer Case Western Reserve University. I went and really enjoyed her performance. I remember seeing news about boygenius and how the trio were touring together the next month, each playing solo sets and also playing the songs from their EP together. The nearest show to me was in Detroit; unfortunately I hadn't yet gotten around to listening to Bridgers or boygenius and therefore didn't consider it worth the trip. That's something I've regretted for a long time and now regret even more.

That winter I have two specific memories of hearing specific songs on the radio in my car. The first was "Funeral" by Bridgers. I remember that I was driving to Ray's Indoor Bike Park after work and that this song came on the radio and I was just so stunned by the sad beauty of it. The second was "Me and My Dog," a standout boygenius track that I remember hearing while in the parking garage at work and staying in my car until the song ended. I quickly recognized the voice of Bridgers as the same voice that had captivated me on "Funeral." Right away I had to look up the band and I soon got their EP and fell in love with it.

Ever since, I'd hoped the band would release more material and tour again. A tantalizing hint at the possibility happened when Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus each released fantastic albums in the 2020-`21 pandemic era and each of the albums included a song on which all three boygenius members contributed vocals. The songs, it was revealed, had all been recorded on the same day. It was some time longer, though, before the March 2023 release of the record was announced, instantly launching the debut boygenius full-length and the tour that would come with it to the top of my anticipated music events list for the year.

Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus are all amazing solo artists. (Especially Baker, to me, but I'd respect any ranking or lack thereof.) The three of them together, though? They're just something else. The more I listen to the record the more I love it. So I couldn't wait to finally see the three of them together live (having already seen Baker five times, Dacus twice, and Bridgers once). The initial announcement of boygenius shows for 2023 came as part of the Re:SET concert series, an odd sort-of festival series that was "conceived as an artist and fan friendly alternative to the standard summer concert experience" according to the promoters. Each weekend of June saw three four-artist lineups rotating between three cities in a region across the three days. Boygenius headlined at shows also featuring Clairo, Dijon, and Bartees Strange, and I decided that traveling to Chicago to see them on Saturday the 24th was more appealing than going to Columbus on Friday the 23rd despite being a farther trip, so Erin and I made the drive from Cleveland after work on the 23rd and checked in late to an Airbnb in the Logan Square area.

The most notable aspect of our trip, other than the concert itself, was that we took our bicycles with us and made great use of them while in Chicago. The concert started in the late afternoon of the Saturday so earlier in the day we headed out on our bikes to explore. The Airbnb was very conveniently located right next to the Bloomingdale Trail, an elevated multi-use trail running for several miles above the streets of Chicago on what used to be a rail line. Riding on this trail was a revelation. Being able to ride a bike through a city, on an elevated path and therefore able to cross over streets without having to worry about cars or stopping at traffic lights, was amazing - I wish there could be trails like this everywhere!

After reaching the end of the trail we continued along surface roads to Lake Michigan. There were bike lanes nearly the whole way and we soon found ourselves in a sort of impromptu convoy of cyclists, which was another very fun experience. There's just something about being on a bike. When you're driving a car on a city street and a lot of other cars are going the same way, you get annoyed because the other cars are slowing you down and getting in your way. On a bicycle it's the opposite - the other cyclists aren't obstacles or enemies but allies and comrades and there's a sense of joy at using your own legs to propel yourselves through the city, feeling the wind on your face, and being around other people doing the same thing. In the last year I've come to appreciate much more the pleasures of just being on a bicycle. It used to be I tried to ride fast on almost all my bike rides. That's currently not something that would be healthy for me, which I'm definitely not happy about, but I think this experience has helped me see cycling at a moderate pace in a new light. Cycling is just such a wonderful mode of transportation whether you're going close to 20 miles per hour (like I almost always tried to do in the past) or little more than half that speed. It's been great, with Erin, to go on adventures where we can explore places together on our bikes.

 

We checked out the lakefront a bit and then headed back to the Airbnb to get ready for the concert - which we also rode bikes to (about 4.5 miles each way, partly on the aforementioned Bloomingdale Trail and mostly on bike lanes thereafter). On the way, we purchased large bottles of water in preparation for the frankly infuriating show policy that each guest could bring one sealed bottle of water and no refill stations were available. This was a terrible decision for a long, hot day, and predictably at least three concertgoers needed medical attention during the boygenius set after passing out. All in all, I can't say I have much if any praise for the Re:SET organizers, but the musicians made attending the event more than worth it.

We entered the festival grounds, a large grassy field with a few trees here and there, a stage at one end, and various booths around most of the sides, to find the completely unshaded pit area already packed. We had no interest in standing in the sweltering heat of the sun for hours so we found a spot near a large tree where some others had already gathered. I had seen headlining shows by each of Baker, Bridgers, and Dacus in the fall of 2021. All were great, but I enjoyed the Bridgers show at a large outdoor venue less than the Baker and Dacus shows in more intimate settings. This was partly because of being much more removed from the action and partly because some members of the Bridgers audience were annoyingly chatty. Although I was very hyped to see boygenius, I was worried that similarly annoying audience members might dampen the experience. I'd read complaints on a boygenius Facebook group about poorly behaved audiences with people theorizing that Gen Z kids never learned concert etiquette because of the pandemic.

The first act of the day was Bartees Strange, who I'd previously seen open for Dacus. The crowd was indeed quite chatty during his performance, although that's never been uncommon for openers at large shows. It was too bad, because he put on a great set which I did still enjoy a lot. I hadn't listened to his latest album so almost all the songs were unfamiliar to me, but I really liked what I heard. The highlight, though, was an excellent cover of a song I do know well, "About Today" by the National.

 

Next up was Dijon, an artist who I knew basically nothing about before the show. I feel this was a mistake on my part - he was fantastic! His music had some great grooves and I really dug the interesting soundscapes created by his band, with the unexpected combo of synths and slide guitar meshing nicely. Unfortunately much of the crowd again didn't seem very appreciative and chatted through his set.

I guess the next artist Clairo has garnered a good following among the Gen Z set because the crowd quieted down considerably for her performance. She was also very good, with some nice retro vibes to her indie pop/rock songs. Although I question a lot of the show organizers' decisions, they did well in putting a good lineup together.

The first three artists were all good, but boygenius were who we'd all been waiting to see. It was great fun for Erin and me to just observe all the diehard fans filling the venue. Most of them were much younger than us, and many had dressed for the occasion, some in boygenius-related costumes or homemade shirts with favorite lyrics like "Not Strong Enough" or "Always an Angel, Never a God" emblazoned across them. Another fun sighting was a little group of friends made up of male/female couples, the guys wearing shirts that said "boy" and the girls wearing shirts that said "genius." There was the sense that this wasn't just a show. It was an Event. It was probably a landmark moment in a lot of those kids' lives. And heck, by the end of the night I came away thinking it was a landmark moment in my life too.

What made this show unique among all the shows I've ever seen in my life? Boygenius are very early in their career as a band - they've released one EP and one LP. Therefore, a boygenius setlist could contain every song they've ever released (although at this show "Bite the Hand" was omitted in favor of new, unreleased track "Boyfriends"). I've seen shows like that before, but they've always been in fairly small venues. I'd never seen a band play almost their entire catalog in front of a crowd nearly this huge and when it comes to the type of music I generally listen to, that's something that basically never happens. It requires a band to dramatically explode in popularity in a way and to an order of magnitude that just doesn't tend to happen for an indie band that's only released one album. And clearly boygenius being a supergroup with one member, Bridgers, having previously shot to stardom is a unique factor here, but there was something else about this show, something that wasn't present when I saw Bridgers play in 2021.

The crowd for the Phoebe Bridgers show was definitely full of huge Phoebe Bridgers fans, but there were also a lot of kids who seemed to be there to hang out with their friends and as a result the crowd was, as I mentioned before, annoyingly chatty at times. This crowd was different. In this crowd, it seemed, everyone was a huge boygenius fan. And not just a huge fan. A lot of these kids worship boygenius. Which made the show something like a religious experience. And like a good religious experience, the proceedings truly held the rapt attention of everyone present. After grumbling about chatty audiences and other irritating audience behavior at most other large shows I've attended recently, I think back to that boygenius show and marvel more and more at the fact that at no point during boygenius's set did anyone in range of my ears do or say anything to detract from everyone's enjoyment of the beautiful music coming from the stage.

To summarize what made this show so unique and special in my concertgoing experience: it's the only time I've ever seen a band I love (or any band, for that matter) play very nearly every song they've ever released in front of a crowd of thousands of people. And to make it even more special, it seemed most everyone there was just as captivated by the music as I was.

It truly is a magical experience when you're at a great concert in a crowd of people who are all there for the music, and the music (perhaps with audience members joining in) is the only sound entering your ears. It's like being under a wonderful spell. A spell that can sadly be broken by a single inconsiderate jerk, which is maybe why it's so much rarer to experience at really big shows. And this was a crowd of mostly Gen Z kids who, as mentioned before, probably had their social development hindered by a pandemic. Just for being able to so fully command their attention, boygenius deserve enormous praise.

"The boys," as fans like to call the trio, were appropriately introduced by "The Boys Are Back In Town" playing over the speakers, then kicked off their set backstage, with live video projected on a large screen behind the stage, the three of them huddled together and serenading the crowd with the beautiful harmonies of the record's opening track "Without You Without Them." Then they took the stage to raucous applause and proceeded to play one of the best series of 20 songs that I've ever seen live. I realized during the show that not only do boygenius have no bad songs, they also have no songs that are merely "good" - every song on both their EP and their LP falls somewhere on the continuum from great to superlative.

This is a band that truly is more than the sum of its parts, and that's saying a lot because "the sum of its parts" would already be pretty damn good. Listening to boygenius truly does feel like taking the best parts of what makes each of these three young women's music so great and mixing them together in the most perfect way. What makes seeing them live even more special is how clear it is that not only do they meld so well as musicians, they do so perhaps even more as human beings. The friendship the three clearly have with each other is a beautiful thing. They seem so much happier on stage together than they do when performing as individuals. The sheer joy emanating from Baker in particular is delightful to behold. That friendship is a theme that comes across clearly on the record and its accompanying music videos. Although each of the three is known for making "sad music," when they join forces their output is, at times, downright uplifting. With a healthy dose of sadness still there for good measure, but that makes the uplifting parts extra cathartic.

Nearly every part of the concert could be described as a highlight, but one of the biggest highlights was when that trio of songs from their most recent albums - Dacus's "Please Stay" (the one song during the set that got me to "cry with the teenagers," to quote an iconic boygenius lyric), Baker's "Favor," and Bridgers's "Dreamland Too" - was played in order. Each of the songs is just stunningly beautiful. The lyrics, the music, the incredible harmonies. And the way the songs go together, the progression from the devastating "Please Stay" to the hopeful "Dreamland Too," it was all just sublime and gave me chills.

The main set concluded, not surprisingly, with "Not Strong Enough." "Not Strong Enough" is my favorite boygenius song, my favorite song of 2023, and perhaps my favorite song in quite a bit longer than that. Also, the moment where the repeated "Always an angel, never a god" harmonies of the bridge build to a raw scream and then Dacus's voice comes in above it with an exuberantly sung "I don't know why I am, the way I am" has to be one of my favorite moments in a song ever.

It's a song that for much of this year has felt like my theme song, with that "I don't know why I am the way I am" chorus and me wondering why I am the way I am and trying to stop myself from "spinning out about things that haven't happened." And then I think, that must be a challenge for most of the young people who have come of age during the last few years. No wonder boygenius have such a hold over that demographic. They're a band truly fit for this moment in time - and yet also somehow timeless.

Being in a huge crowd of people all joyfully singing along to this anthem was one of those moments that makes one really feel alive. I think that's the best way to summarize the feeling.

After a two song encore, the show was over, and it started to sink in that I really had just experienced something unlike any concert I'd attended in my life, and also that it was one of the best concerts I'd ever seen. With that realization, I told Erin that I needed to buy a shirt to commemorate the experience, and I did, and then we joined the throng of exhilarated concertgoers exiting the festival grounds and made our way back to our bikes. As we rode in the direction of the Airbnb (in fact, a little ways beyond it at first for a late night drink at a cocktail bar), it struck me that here Erin and I were, riding our bikes through the streets of Chicago at night after having attended such a monumental show, and this, I thought, was one of the coolest experiences I'd ever had.

The next day brought more bike riding and sightseeing along Chicago's lakefront before we headed home. It was a wonderful weekend.

I started writing this post almost two months ago. It's been an extremely busy time in our lives. I have another post that I started much, much longer ago and still have to finish. In the time between my starting this post and now, Erin and I went to another music festival for which we also stayed at an Airbnb and rode bikes to the show (and also another festival at which Bartees Strange played), the National's Homecoming in Cincinnati, and it was also great. Live music and bicycling are two of my favorite things in the world. Combining the two? Well, that's hard to beat. And how great to have someone to do that with me.

We are the only friends we have

There was a point in time, fifteen years ago, when there was no band I had seen live more times than Piebald.

This is funny, because the first time I went to see Piebald live, my liking of their music was really a secondary reason for me going.

That show happened in October 2005, and was not only the first time I saw Piebald, but also the first time I went to the Grog Shop in Cleveland Heights (the Cleveland suburb where I now live), one of my favorite music venues and one where I've seen so many fantastic shows over the years. The main reason that I went to that show was that I secretly hoped to get inside info about the rumors on the Internet that my favorite band Ozma would be reuniting, and I knew that members of Piebald and Ozma were friends with each other. I hardly knew any of Piebald's music at the time, just a few songs I'd downloaded from their website.

I went to the show wearing an Ozma t-shirt, which did indeed lead to me getting inside info, as more than one member of Piebald complimented my shirt and then told me about Ozma's plans to reunite, information that thrilled me to a fairly ridiculous degree. But the show itself was also a revelation. I hadn't been to a whole lot of concerts yet at that point in my life, and I don't know if there had been any that were just as much pure fun as that one. I vividly remember standing in front of the stage by the large speaker at the right side of the room and enthusiastically banging my head to the heavy guitar chords of Piebald's emo-tinged rock music.

After the show, I was hanging out by the bar with a couple friends and a Grog Shop employee asked if we'd like a promotional poster from the show. I gladly took one, a memento of a very memorable night, and 17 years later it's hanging in my bedroom.

I saw Piebald twice more at the Grog Shop before, in 2007, they announced they were breaking up, and so I saw them one last time at the Agora, bringing my total number of Piebald shows to four. There they were one of the opening acts for the Format, a band I wasn't particularly into, and I didn't stay until the end of the show. The Piebald set was very fun, but also sad, because I thought I'd never get to see them again.

It turned out I was wrong! They got back together and toured again starting in 2016, and another Grog Shop show in July 2017 was again one of the most fun shows I've ever been to. I wrote about this show along with Okkervil River and Andrew Bird shows I saw the same week. Wow, what a week of shows that was, and also, wow, what a different place my life was at, and what a crazy unfolding of events has proceeded to happen in the years since.

Piebald's album We Are the Only Friends We Have is one of my all-time favorites. It's just such a fun album from front to back. I was completely obsessed with it for a period of time after I bought the album. It also holds a special place in my heart as the pump up music of choice for both Cara and me on early morning drives to cycling events I went to with her and later by myself. A few months ago Piebald announced they'd be playing a few end of 2022 shows for the 20th anniversary of the album. I immediately began to consider going.

There's another Ozma connection here. In December 2019 I took a trip to California to see 20th anniversary shows for Ozma's Rock and Roll Part Three, an amazing trip and my favorite shows I've ever attended. That experience definitely made me think taking a similar trip for Piebald would be worth doing.

It ended up being something of a last minute decision to go, however, due in large part to the turbulent mental health I've been experiencing of late. But a week before the December 30 show at the Market Hotel in Brooklyn, I did pull the trigger on purchasing a ticket to the show and a plane ticket to New York.

It ended up being a very good decision. There's a lesson here. There have been a number of times when I've questioned whether I really wanted to go on a trip due to how I was feeling or things going on in my life. Every single time that I've made the decision to go, I've ended up being glad that I did. So I think that's some good data to have collected and to inform future decision making.

Going on a trip centered around seeing a favorite band live but that also involves spending time in a fun destination is one of my absolute favorite things to do. This was another such trip, a fairly short one, but a very good one. I got into town the day before the show and went on a great walk from my Manhattan hotel, including walking through Central Park, and thinking about previous times I'd been there (a topic for another planned blog post).

I also went to one of my favorite restaurants, Coppelia, and later that night to a very cool speakeasy called Patent Pending that is located in the building where Nikola Tesla once lived and worked.

I love visiting New York. There's so much to do and see and so much amazing food. I also love how easy it is to get around the city without a car. It really stands above any other American city in that regard.

The 30th was another fun day, and with great weather. I got a delicious bagel sandwich with smoked trout, walked the High Line, and checked out a cool bookstore. The main event, of course, was coming up that evening in Brooklyn. Before making my way to the concert venue, I also got a delicious pizza dinner at Roberta's, a restaurant my former Brooklyn resident sister had suggested.

I was surprised when I got to the concert venue shortly after the door time, 7, and not only were doors not open but also there was hardly anyone there waiting. It was a sparse crowd at first, but filled out well by the time Piebald played. All three openers - Rites of Springfield, Rebuilder, and Phony, put on energetic, fun sets. And then it was time for Piebald to take the stage.

There's a feeling of excitement I get about seeing one of my most favorite bands live that little else can compare to. That feeling was definitely present that night. Seeing a favorite album performed from front to back live is a rare and special thing to experience. And We Are the Only Friends We Have is an especially good album to experience that way.

When the familiar opening notes of "King of the Road" filled the room, the crowd went wild. The first four songs of Friends - "King of the Road," "Just a Simple Plan," "American Hearts," and "Long Nights," comprise one of the best opening quartets of any album I know. Seeing them performed in order live? That was something else.

Being in a crowded room, seeing a band you love play music you love, and surrounded by other people who love that music, is one of life's most special experiences. I'm always grateful whenever I get to have that experience. And this was definitely one of the top such experiences I've had since the pandemic temporarily made such experiences forbidden.

At times lead singer Travis Shettel wandered out into the crowd, holding the mic out in front of the faces of delighted fans. There was plenty of dancing, banging of heads, and pumping of fists. There was a little moshing (I could have used more, but that's okay). And there was a room full of people singing and screaming out the familiar lyrics of those twelve great songs. Album closer "Sex Sells and (Unfortunately) I'm Buying" features horn parts that were (unfortunately) not part of the live show, but some audience members did a nice job singing those parts instead.

Market Hotel is a cool venue. Nothing fancy, just a small-to-medium size room with an elevated stage at one end and a bar at the back. What more do you need? The unusual feature that makes it stand out is this - the room is upstairs in the building where it resides, and directly behind the stage is a window that looks out onto an elevated subway platform. Seeing trains pass behind the stage throughout the show was just such a cool visual that enhanced an already great setting!

After the show, waiting for the train back to Manhattan, it was also cool to see that window from the other side and think about the great time I'd just had inside that room. It felt like a very New York thing, something I'd be unlikely to experience anywhere else, at least not in this country.

Several times during the show Travis expressed great gratitude at the fact that we were all there to see them. It was amazing, he remarked, that music they had made twenty years ago was still loved so much by people today. At one point he asked if anyone there had seen them in the '90s (the band actually got their start at very young ages way back in 1994) and I was surprised by the number of cheers from the audience. That was long, long before my concertgoing days.

I definitely thought back to that night in October 2005 and to how much younger the members of the band had looked back then, and how much less young they look today. Which of course speaks to the same about me. But that's life. Where did those 17 years go?

After playing the twelve songs of Friends, the band took a quick break without leaving the stage and then continued to thrill the audience with some additional songs from other albums (mostly from 1999's If It Weren't for Venetian Blinds, It Would Be Curtains for Us All, another classic album and also one of my favorite album titles). I was especially glad when they kicked off the extra material with "Grace Kelly With Wings," one of the handful of songs I'd downloaded when I first checked out the band and therefore one of the few songs I recognized the first time I saw them, and a favorite ever since.

The show seemed to be over after five more songs were played, as the house music started up. The crowd continued to applaud, and then chants of "one more song" started up, and then I laughed when I looked over and realized the chants were being led by Piebald guitarist Aaron Stuart, who had descended from the stage and was standing in front of it and acting like he was an audience member! After two more songs, the show was over, and what a great show it was. Sneaking in before the deadline as a contender for my favorite concert of 2022.

After I took the train back to Manhattan, I stopped at a bar by my hotel for a drink. The bartender asked how my night was. I told him about how I was in town from Cleveland and had just seen a 20th anniversary concert for one of my favorite albums. He asked what the name of the band and album were. When I told him the album title, We Are the Only Friends We Have, he said, "That just broke my heart a little."

I reassured him that it wasn't sad music (not that I'm not also a fan of sad music), it's actually a really fun album, and he said he hadn't meant that as a bad thing. I mean, not that I had taken it as one. He said there was an old Irish saying, and I forget exactly what it was he said, but it was something to the effect of, does life have meaning without heartbreak?

My Google search failed to find the saying he quoted. When I searched for "Irish saying about heartbreak," the closest result was, "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal." Which, yeah, I can relate to. Who knows whether the bartender was quoting an obscure saying I couldn't find in my search, or whether he was misremembering, or whether he was making it up?

Anyway, I can appreciate the sentiment. The Jeff of five or so years ago might have taken the opportunity to launch into an account of all the heartbreak I've already experienced. The Jeff of today didn't feel the need to do that. I could definitely use a little less heartbreak going forward, but I'm ever hopeful.