April 25, 2013: Sara Bareilles

Concert Details:

Bands: Sara Bareilles

Location: 930 Club, Washington, DC

Setlist:

1. Love on the Rocks (Elton John Bennie and the Jets cover ending)
2. Love Song
3. Uncharterd
4. A Change is Gonna Come (Sam Cooke Cover)
5. Come Round Soon
6. Let the Rain
7. Basket Case
8. Beautiful Girl
9. Brave
10. Manhattan
11. Gravity

Encore:

   12. Sweet as Whole

   13. Once Upon Another Time

I was a fan of Sara Bareilles before this show, but after the show I am in love with Sara Bareilles, she was just phenomenal.  This was my first seated show at the 9:30 club, and the entire show consisted of just her and a piano or her and a guitar and nothing else, and it's all she needed to put on a truly memorable show.

This was her first show so she was clearly working through how she wanted to set it up and spent a lot of time telling stories between songs, so I don't know if that means she played less songs than she wanted to, but from the look of other set lists on the tour it was generally about the same number of songs.  In some ways she treated the show as a VH1 storytellers, her words, which I rather enjoyed as I think something is added to music when you know the origin of various songs.

She has a sharp wit and was hysterical in telling her stories and directly interacted with specific crowd members one three separate occasions.  The first time, a guy rushed up to the stage and asked her a question and she let him come up on stage and ask his boyfriend to marry him, much to the joy of the crowd.  The second time was rather amusing as someone had brought a giant standee head of hers which she brought up on stage and signed for them.  The final time was when a guy who had just brought back drinks from the bar and was talking loudly, she stopped playing, looked down at him and without animosity said "shut the fuck up" and continued on playing.  It was a small acoustic show, every single thing anyone said was audible.  After the song she pointed out that she didn't hold anything against the guy, he just needed to not talk.

So as for the music.  Sara Bareilles has a beautiful and powerful voice and for a venue that normally sees loud, deafening shows, it never once felt like anything was missing as if the venue had been built to carry her voice.  With each song she drew the crowd more and more in, eventually gaining complete control.  For a loud, fast rock show, this is a feat that I do not imagine is overly difficult as the dancing and screaming that come with a live show gets the crowd involved very quickly, but with an intimate show like this I would imagine the effort required to captivate the crowd is more as you have to serenade them and pull them into you.  I've been to many small acoustic shows, a handful this year, but this was unlike any other.  At those other shows you could constantly hear talking, or you could see people who were generally focused on anything but the show, but at this show, with the exception of the one guy, nobody was focused on anything but the show.

As I said, by the end of this show I was thoroughly in love with her, as I would imagine everyone else there was as well.  I'm almost obsessed with finding another show to see her at that I've considered driving the nine hours or so to Tennessee to see her.