Ben Howard at the Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (09/27/12)
Tour Dates
09/30 Salt Lake City, UT – Depot
10/02 Seattle, WA – Neptune
10/03 Vancouver, BC – Commodore
10/04 Portland, OR – Wonder Ballroom
10/06 Hollywood, CA – Fonda Theatre
10/07 Solana Beach, CA – Belly Up Tavern
10/09 San Francisco, CA – Fillmore
10/12 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits
10/13 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits
10/14 Austin, TX – Austin City Limits
Apologies to Gill Landry, I didn’t realize this was an all-ages early show, but Brody saw him with his band, Old Crow Medicine Show, at SXSW 2012.
I did catch Marcus Foster’s full set, who was excited to experience Minneapolis for the first time. Foster certainly had some women fans in the audience, as they kept shouting out how beautiful he was. After his first song, “Shadows of the City”, he had Jack Standen play keyboard for the remainder of the set. I felt Foster was a good fit for Ben Howard’s music style.
Ben Howard, for some reason, I thought it would be just him, but he had a full touring band. I didn’t catch all the names, but it looks like all the band members were multi-instrumentalists, swapping out keys for cello for guitar or bass… I got the impression that they probably have their own side project bands.
As you can see from the setlist, they did almost everything from their debut album Every Kingdom at “all the feisty ones.” He threw in a couple of new songs, including “Oats In The Water” and the encore song, “Depth Over Distance”, which I think are available on a new EP. For the unknown songs, the audience was pretty quiet and attentive, however whenever Ben Howard did his hit singles (“Old Pine”, “The Wolves”, “Keep Your Head Up”, “Only Love”) there was always a huge reaction with foot-stomping, clap-along and singing.
Ben Howard is currently on tour in support of the Mercury Prize-nominated album, Every Kingdom, out now via Universal Republic. See him on tour with his good friends Marcus Foster and Gill Landry.
