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Counting Crows, Wallflowers @ Count Basie Theatre 6/24/13


During Counting Crows' performance Monday night at the Count Basie Theater, I kept thinking to myself about connection. Whether you call it empathy, enlightenment, or just downright entertainment, in order to achieve any of those things you (the artist) needs to make a connection to us (the audience). In one given night, I experienced the wide berth between empathy and apathy.

You see, the opening band, The Wallflowers fell flat due to a lack of connection. Mind you, Jacob Dylan and crew are all very capable musicians. Their set, though, never quite achieved a lift off point, to make it rise above the room and make everyone stand and take notice. While watching the hour long set progress it finally occurred to me: Jacob seems completely disconnected to the music. He's there. He's playing the songs with the band. But he looks like he only does this because he really doesn't know what else to do with himself. He's going through the motions. The band are just doing their job, adequately but not passionately. That disconnect took me right out of their set. I was there, it happened, but in no way do I feel like I was moved. You don't have to be great. Hell, you don't even have to be good to move me. You just have to have a certain passion and/or conviction in what you do (musically or otherwise), and the Wallflowers just lacked that certain je ne sais quoi in terms of moving myself and most of the audience.

Counting Crows, on the other hand, know how to communicate in a moving, impassioned way utilizing the three e's (empathy, enlightenment, and entertainment). Need examples? When a crowd that has been on their feet since the opening salvo of "Sullivan Street" collectively sits back down during "Colorblind" mid-set, it wasn't because they were tired. It was because the song hit the audience with such an empathetic wave, we collectively felt the resigned and stoic exhaustion of the tune's protagonist. Enlightenment came from an extended version of "'Round Here", when lead singer Adam expostulates upon people, places and things great and small in his life, as if he is having a conversation with us that he probably shouldn't be having.

It's things like this that make a performance less of a "can I get a witness?" to "can you help me up?" Wounded, but unbowed. That's not to say things were all heavy. The entertainment was in high gear, as well. Rolling through a rollicking rendition of Gram Parsons "Return Of The Grevious Angel", smiles and laughs were being exchanged from one band member to another during a spritely reading of "Hard Candy", the absolutely killer harmonies on the Teenage Fanclub tune "Start Again", to the joyous refrains of "St. Robinson And His Cadillac Dream" (again with killer harmonies-people don't talk about the Crows sweet harmonies enough)...it was a setlist that really understood how to present the ebb and flow of emotional peaks and valleys for an audience. Counting Crows connected to the audience. The Wallflowers, not so much. There's a lesson there, fellows.

- Jason Ingstrup


www.countingcrows.com

www.thewallflowers.com


Photos
by Lazlo

(click on photo to see full size)

Wallflowers



Counting Crows