After several years away from the great state of Utah, my favorite band, Counting Crows, was back in town on Saturday night and I was lucky enough to get to go see them. If anything its a testament to how long I've been blogging that I actually blogged about the last time I saw them back in '06. This year they've dubbed their tour "The Outlaw Roadshow" and have hand-picked some bands to tour with them. So there were 3 opening acts before the main event. All of the bands were pretty good. I especially loved Kasey Anderson & The Honkies and Tender Mercies (featuring 2 of the Counting Crows). Field Report was pretty good, too and above all interesting to look at. They all wore business suits, and one of the guitarists looked strikingly like a former bishop of mine.
Kasey Anderson & The Honkies - Apparently Kasey has relatives in Salt Lake and mentioned enjoying Jazz games in the Salt Palace and going to the Galleria when he was a kid
The lead guitarist was pretty great
Field Report
The guy on the left was the one who looked like my former bishop
During Field Report's set, Adam (lead singer of Counting Crows) was just chilling back on the corner of the stage, sometimes singing along
Tender Mercies -- the guitarist on the left and the piano player in the back are both members of Counting Crows. Another band was supposed to be on the tour but had something come up, so the Crows got the rest of Tender Mercies to come on part of the tour.
As Counting Crows don't have quite the following the once had in the late 90s and early 2000s, by arriving 30 minutes before the opening acts started, I was still able to get a nice spot in the all-general-admission-standing-only audience, about 5 people back from the stage and 7 or 8 from center stage. It was a pretty great spot and I was able to take quite a few pictures that I was really pleased with. Also Picasa has added some new toys for playing around with your photos (probably to compete with Instagram or something), and I was able to do some fun things with some of the pictures using those, too.
Their newest album, Underwater Sunshine, is made up entirely of cover songs, though the songs are primarily ones I'd never heard of before. But thankfully their 2 hour set included a nice mix of songs from all their albums, including August and Everything After favs "Rain King", "Round Here", "Perfect Blue Buildings", and "Anna Begins". They also played "Long December" which has always been one of my very favorites. And of course, seeing Counting Crows live is never quite like listening to their albums because they're always doing new arrangements of the songs and mixing in bits of other songs that they like in the middle of their own songs.
"I am the Rain King"
Call for Audience Participation
Here's my (less than high quality) record of "Long December". Warning: There is a little swearing (including one F-word) when Adam messes up around 2:30 in the video, in case that bothers you.
Here's the full setlist as best as I could keep track of it while also enjoying the show:
Rain King
Untitled (Love Song)
This Desert Life
Four Days
Hospital
Black & Blue
Anna Begins
Mercy
Mrs Potter's Lullaby
Perfect Blue Buildings
Children in Bloom
Good Time
Look at Miss Ohio
Long December
Round Here
(might have missed a song or two here, can't be sure)
Encore:
Le Ballet D'Or
You Ain't Going Nowhere
Hanginaround
For the last two songs they brought back all 3 of the bands that had played earlier and had them on stage singing along.
All in all a pretty fantastic night. As they left, Adam said "We'll be back", so hopefully it won't be another 6 years before they make it back. :)
More photos here.
