Last night, despite the threat of an incoming storm, I headed out to the Bluebird Theater to catch a show.  It was my first solo show in many years, though I’m no stranger to going alone to shows in the past.  I really wanted to see the opening band, The Alternate Routes, who I hadn’t seen in years.  I found out that it was only going to be the front-man of the band playing, as the other band members were still stuck in California waiting on replacement parts for their tour van.  I decided to head to the show regardless, figuring it was only $15 and I could always leave when I wanted.

I arrived just in time to see Tim, the aforementioned front-man, take the stage.  I had forgotten how powerful his voice was, and despite playing solo he was easily able to hush the rather large crowd.  I was happy to hear song after song of material that I was very familiar with from their first album, Good & Reckless & True.  After four of these older songs, Tim invited a crew-member from the headlining band out to play guitar on a track from their latest CD, A Sucker’s Dream, titled “The Future’s Nothing New.”  While the guest, Toby, played guitar Tim commanded the microphone while playing a tambourine and amplified toolbox.  Yes, you read that correctly, he used a toolbox as a percussion instrument.  There are a number of videos on YouTube of this if you want to see what I mean.

From there, another guitar player by the name of Johnny sat in to play another new song, “On and On We Whisper.”  Johnny was the guitar player for the next musician Serena Ryder.  With two guitars on stage Tim was obviously singing the vocals, but he was also playing a small set of drums.  Though I’m not as familiar with the new songs as I am with the old, and I prefer the older tunes, this was an interesting way of seeing the new stuff for the first time.  On their last song of the night, Serena Ryder also joined the stage to sing along, while her bass player and drummer joined in as well.  This just confirmed that I really need to see the full band perform again sometime soon.

Though I was mainly there to see The Alternate Routes performance I decided to stick around for the other bands.  Next up was Serena Ryder, who I already mentioned above.  She started off her set a cappella, and though I immediately felt how strong her voice was, it almost reminded me of Amy Winehouse.  I’m glad to say that the rest of the set was far from that, and was much more rock and roll, though maybe a bit too twangy for my tastes.  Still she commanded the crowd and it was obvious how much the ladies in the room loved her performance.

The headliner for the night was Needtobreathe.  I was only familiar with their song “More Time” as it gets fairly regular radio play.  I admit that I do enjoy the song, and I was happy that they played it early in their set.  I stuck around to see what I would think about the rest of their material and I must say that it’s almost as if they have an identity crisis.  Very few of the songs featured the harmonies that I enjoyed on “More Time” and often the band drowned out the vocals completely.  This was not what I was expecting from a southern rock band from South Carolina.  Before the show I was worried about being bored from a slow performance, but it was pretty much the opposite, and I wished they would have turned down the amps and let the vocals shine through.  Again the fairly large crowd appeared to enjoy the band much more than I did.