Needtobreathe from left: Joe, Bear, Bo, & Seth
In a nutshell, I am a really big fan of the band needtobreathe. I was first introduced to them through their second CD, The Heat, which came out last summer, but I'm always a little slow to the game, so I got my hands on it early this year. I don't think I have taken that cd out of my car's cd player since then. If I am going to take Ben's car to work, I bring the cd with me. I already wrote on this blog back in March how I just fell head over heels for their sound and even now I'm not sick of it yet. Even though they play "Washed by the Water" about once every hour on all the Christian radio stations. Don't care, still love it!
So the show was at Exit/In here in Nashville. This means that now after seven years of living in this city I can finally say I've seen a show in one of its most well-known venues. The openers were a guy named Matthew Mayfield (he was okay, sounded like Jon Foreman's solo stuff except with ten years of smoking under his belt) and local boy and fellow Belmont grad Andy Davis (fun bouncy-piano catchy songs, good stuff). It was a late show, so it was already 11 pm by the time needtobreathe came on. But it was worth the wait! They had lots of energy and good... searching for the right word here... sync... as a band. Everyone was together, they did some little interludes of just jamming happily away. The front man and the lead guitarist are brothers (Bear and Bo, loves it), and I always think it is interesting to see and hear siblings play music together. It's like there is a little something extra between them that just makes it click. Plus I think it makes for really interesting harmonizing between the voices since they usually have such similar (to use a dorky music word) timbre. And, let's be honest, they were easy on the eyes, too. My girlfriends from work were particularly taken with younger brother Bo and his hip shaking.
Also apparently big fans of the band? The two (three until the bouncer removed one of them) drunkest girls I've ever seen, a few rows of crowd in front of us. Now I haven't had much life experience being around really drunk people, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say they were about as far gone as you can be without actually passing out on the floor. It was simultaneously awkward, annoying, and also amusing. And they weren't just there by coincidence - they knew every word to all the songs and the names of the guys in the band. Which they enthusiastically hollered throughout the show, bookended by the classic drunk girl exclamation "woooo!" As in, "Woooooooooo! BO!!!! We love you!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!!!" Beers and fists held high (when they weren't falling all over each other and dancing around erratically), they seemed to be having a good time, I guess. All this had me wondering, do they not know that the guys are Christians? I mean, they were playing a song called "Yahweh" in a bar, for crying out loud. It was just a little... incongruous. If the band felt it was awkward they didn't let on, but it was kind of distracting for the rest of us.
Also distracting was the amazon couple that decided to stand right in front of me. She was easily over 6 foot, as was he. And while I totally appreciate wanting to be closer to the front... dude, you guys had half a foot on the rest of us! We couldn't seeeeeeeeeeeeeee! (End of rant.)
It was a great show and I hope I can see them again soon. Wooooooooo!
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