Kings of Leon is my favorite band period. Yeah, yeah give me flak for it because they “sold out” or because of their bro-jams “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody”, I don’t care. I’m sticking to the fact that Aha Shake Heartbreak is my favorite album. Youth and Young Manhood is a close second. Those two albums sum up great rock and roll to me. A good mix of everything and honestly what I try to shoot for in my own music.
Anywho, back to the show. You can imagine how excited I was to hear about it. I bought tickets immediately months and months before hand as well as a camping spot. If I had to I would have made the 2 hour trip alone to see them, but luckily I didn’t have to. Had an amazing group of people come with which made the experience that much more of a good time.
The first night only Jake came up with me and we quickly made friends with our neighbors. We spent the night drinking and called it kind of early, went on to sleep to wake up to the blistering heat that is the gorge. Not going to bore you too much longer with what we did the next day. Same ole same ole, lots of drinking, and playing ladder ball. This time I made sure to wear plenty of sunscreen so no lobster skin for me.
Finally, on to the point of this whole post, we made it to the show. I was feeling very good to say the least and this time we were able to make it to some good seats towards the middle of the stage. Granted we were in the grass, but it was still better than being towards the side of the stage.
The strangest part of this show was how they started of the entire thing with their song “conversation piece”. While I do love all of their songs, this is definitely one of my least favorite. It has such a slow pace, and its very simple. I will admit it gave the start to the show a relaxed feel though, kind of a calm before the storm feel.
After the slow start, the show turned into the best one I’ve seen there. I know every song by heart so naturally I was into everything they played. It helped being there too with friends who loved all the tunes. The drinks kept coming and we kept dancing. I feel bad for people who had to look at my bodacious dance moves, but hey theme the breaks.
To sum up their show for someone who hasn’t seen them I do think it’s worth it. There’s not much to their stage antics, but their instrumentation and vocals are flawless. They’re hugely successful now so they have amazing lights and video. As for improv, there wasn’t much (nor was there much last time) but there were slight variations to solos that I appreciated.
I was also worried going into this that it would be mostly new material. that wasn’t the case they played a handful of songs from every album which was great. Honestly pretty much a timeline of my life in music which I think is why this concert meant so much to me. I can only hope I get to see them come through again soon.
Normally I post a Spotify song or youtube video to one of the “official” songs but in this case I’m going to post a live video taken at the gorge. On this video in particular they’re playing on of my favorites “Fans”.
Enjoy!