John Mark Nelson Sings the Moon at the Cedar (28 June 2014)

A lot of thought and planning went into John Mark Nelson’s CD release Sings the Moon show at the Cedar Cultural Center in Minneapolis, last night, June 28th.

 

Starting with Bad Bad Hats, who played a solid set consisting of their latest It Hurts EP (Afternoon Records) with some new songs. There were a lot of young crossover fans, who showed up early to show support for Bad Bad Hats.

Some of the new songs included “Joseph”, which singer Kerry Alexander commented, “If your name is Joseph, then this song is for you.”

Huge cheers were heard when “Super America” was announced, so you can tell that was the big hit for this young band.

Although they closed their set with an Alexander-solo song, “Things We Never Say”, the rest of the band never left the stage.

 

When the lights dimmed and the piano intro music started to play and then singer Charlie Pears (I’m awful at telling age, but he looks like he’s 12) started the set with “Sings the Moon”, you knew this John Mark Nelson show was special and was meticulously planned from the beginning.

 

Right away, Nelson thanked the audience (which was a terrific turnout) and wanted to stressed that he never would take his fans for granted. As much as the show was about him, this was also made possible by his fans, family, the Cedar, and extended musician family. He made sure that we all knew his band (Carla on keys, Nate on the drums, Gabe “I’m Nervous” on secondary drums, Aaron on pedal steel, Ben on upright bass, Nic on bells, Matt on guitars) and consistently thanked us for coming to the show. He was so sincere that it was hard to not smile and feel good with him when he’s playing and singing songs about the moon and stars.

 

Also, the guests didn’t stop with Charlie Pears, other local musicians, Ben Rosenbush played cello on “Shorebird” (which got a rather long story about how Nelson grew up in Excelsior and the analogy between his friends and a flock of seagulls taking flight) and Jeremy Messersmith on the encore song “All You Are” (who we recently saw at Rock the Garden, which we described as more confident with a large ten-piece band.)

With Messersmith, his appearance wasn’t apparently enough, as we also got a bonus surprise of explosive confetti and a Conga line of trumpets, marching through the audience… making for a very satisfying ending to this special CD release for John Mark Nelson’s Sings the Moon.

Sings the Moon is out now via Tone Tree.