Hotel Café creates a collective concert at Fox Theatre
The Hotel Cafe Tour may redefine concert structure and etiquette for the better. Without an intermission, and with a constant rotation of five artists using the same backup band, the show maintained a fantastic flow and sense of collectivity.
The small Fox Theatre was made more intimate on April 3 as Cary Brothers, Ingrid Michaelson, Dan Wilson and other artists were as relaxed with the audience as they would with long-time friends.
Michaelson stored her chewed gum underneath the keyboard. Brothers talked about sagging testicles. Jason Kanakis even rehashed unnecessarily detailed accounts of his food poisoning the day before.
The artists constantly rotated to keep the concert fresh. Each artist performed in two sets of three songs each.
Meiko began the first set, playing her songs “Under My Bed” and “Reasons To Love You” with her smoky voice. Eager to talk with audience members, she joked about her stay in Boulder and her dinner at Hapa Sushi on Pearl.
“I did not have an Orgasm Roll,” Meiko said, “but I did have an orgasm.”
Jim Bianco was the comic relief of the concert. With a grumbling voice and southern blues style sound, Bianco crept around the stage, waved his hands, crumpled his face and occasionally showered the backup band with handfuls of glitter.
His songs focused on love in the most uncomfortable forms, singing “I Got A Thing for You,” which is about stalking people.
“We’re going to sing a stalker song now. Any stalkers here tonight?” Bianco said, getting bellows from a few men. “My people!”
Cary Brothers, the figurehead of the tour, boosted the more acoustic sounds of the former bands with driving melodies, heavy bass and an overall louder sound. His songs “Jealousy” and “Honesty” were performed alongside “Ride” and “Blue Eyes,” which are his two songs made popular by the soundtracks for “Garden State” and “The Last Kiss.”
When one audience member asked where his brother was, Brothers laughed and explained the complication of having his last name.
“My whole life it didn’t matter that my last name was Brothers until I started doing this,” Brothers said.
Pianist Ingrid Michaelson was next on stage, but was almost delayed due to a common distraction.
“We almost missed coming up here,” Michaelson said. “Have you gotten caught up in making weird faces on your Mac’s Photo Booth application? We did!”
Amidst the unfaltering vocals and tentative piano playing, Michaelson invented fake songs about attacking audience members and about proper eyeliner technique. She played her songs “Overboard” and “The Hat,” and later followed with her hits “Die Alone” and “The Way I Am” in her second set.
Former Semisonic member Dan Wilson ended the first round of sets. With a more relaxed folk sound, Wilson helped the crowd relax. He filled his set with small anecdotes about life, freedom and altitude.
“I used to have asthma,” Wilson said. “I’m brought back to the good old days when I couldn’t breathe when I’m here in Boulder.”
Wilson played an acoustic version of the song “Closing Time” from Semisonic fame, and revealed that the song is a metaphor for birth and a discreetly written song for his child.
The second round of sets included more group performances. The vocalists crowded around microphones to sing backup for the lead vocalist. Harmonies swelled with a choral feel of the collective voices.
Michaelson ended the show on a playful note reminiscent of the entire performance. After playing the theme song to “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air,” she took requests from a shouting audience to play various television theme songs.
For information on other bands past and present involved in the Hotel Café tour, visit their Web site.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Carolyn Michaels at Carolyn.michaels@colorado.edu.
