Of Miles Rausch

The Bright Eyes Concert

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Also known as, The Last Bright Eyes post for a while.

My first thought, walk­ing into the air­plane hangar, was “Can a God fit on some­thing so small?” It was a lit­tle tongue-in-cheek, but I got out my minia­ture note­book and made the first of many marks in the dif­fi­cult darkness.

The opener was the Dave Rawl­ings Machine. They were good. Dave Rawl­ings, we found out, was trav­el­ing with Bright Eyes, play­ing gui­tar for them, and open­ing Thurs­day night. Lit­tle to his sur­prise, it would seem. But he played an awe­some set. He’s a fero­cious gui­tar player, and he sings and plays with expres­sions that bor­der on ecstasy and con­sti­pa­tion. It was humor­ous but great. He played a spec­tac­u­lar song called Joey by Bob Dylan that I haven’t been able to get out of my head since.

Then there was Simon Joyner. I’m sure that he’s a very tal­ented musi­cian, but he brought down the tempo, which was a dan­ger­ous move. The crowd started get­ting rest­less. He sang with a sneer. He did play a rous­ing ver­sion of Short Stack, a song from an ear­lier release of his. I liked that song.

Then it was Bright Eyes. And it. was. awesome.

Set List
– — - — - -
1. I Must Belong Some­where
2. Four Winds
3. Poi­son Oak
4. Method Act­ing
5. Arc of Time (Time Code)
6. Spring Clean­ing
7. Lover I Don’t Have To Love
8. You Will? You. Will? You. Will?
9. Clas­sic Cars (for Cal­i­for­nia)
10. Lua (with Gillian Welch)
11. Another Trav­elin’ Song (for Dave Rawl­ings)
12. Hit the Switch
13. Old Soul Song (For The New World Order) (for New York City)
– — - — -
14. Man Named Truth (new song, unof­fi­cial title)
15. Walls (Cir­cus) (Tom Petty cover)
16. Roo­sevelt Room (new song, unof­fi­cial title)

Dave Rawl­ings joined the band, tak­ing the place, tem­porar­ily, of Mike Mogis. I was sad to not get to see Mike Mogis, but Dave Rawl­ings was really, really good. It added a fire-breathing, laser-guided heat missle of a gui­tar solo to the already fab­u­lous Bright Eyes songs.

Also, in drunken-related news, Jeff got pretty vio­lently accosted by a woman who had been drink­ing. She really wanted him to dance, which he did a lit­tle bit after the ini­tial con­fronta­tion, but then she left. I had a drunk close encounter myself. Instead, this guy, who was scary drunk (head down, shifty eyes, swag­ger), had fallen over. Hard. Another guy, who also seemed to be pretty tipsy, helped him up. The guy stood next to me for a short while, then he faded into the crowd behind me. Not cool, creepy drunk guy.

All-in-all, it was a fab­u­lous con­cert. It was awe­some get­ting to hang out with Jeff, which we haven’t done in a while, and it was even bet­ter to expe­ri­ence such great music.

Okay, that’s it about Bright Eyes for a while. I promise.