Rodrigo Amarante at the Cedar, Minneapolis (16 Jun 2016)

Hooops

Opening up the show was Hooops, whose members (drummer Gregory, guitarist Matt, and bassist Ted) would later resurface as Amarante’s backing band. The thing with Hooops is that the singer also happened to be their drummer, Gregory Rogove.

Hooops ended their set with ‘Sunrise, Sunset’, a song that Rogove took out the ukulele to play a gentle wave of melody.

Rodrigo Amarante

Rodrigo Amarante took the stage a little after 8:30pm with the Hooops backing band. Amarante was both excited and happy to play. He would go back and forth from acoustic to electric to piano, whenever songs called for it.

About midway into the show, right after ‘Fall Asleep’, the band left Amarante by himself for a five-song solo set.
The mini-set included ‘Idle Eyes’ (or sometime ‘Diamond Eyes’) and an Angel Olsen cover song, ‘Unf**ktheworld’. The reason for this cover is because Olsen was scheduled to play the Cedar the next night. Amarante only had good things to say about Olsen and plead to the audience to come back tomorrow night to see her in person.

Setlist

As you can see from the setlist, there were a couple of new (unrecorded) songs, including one that he simply wrote ‘New Song’. That song could probably be called ‘I Can’t Wait’ as that’s the line that started the song.

Another cover song, ‚ÄòMist√©rio do Planeta‚Äô by Novos Baianos, was played near the end of the set. According Amarante, he grew up listening to the song… and his version was a lot more animated than the original recording.

With the exception of one or two new songs, the rest of the set were either featuring covers or old songs… which Amarante responded by saying that he will be working on a forthcoming album. Don‚Äôt expect it to be a ‚Äúsong and dance‚Äù album, as he called it, but likely the intimate, passionate, and sad songs that Amarante is known for.

Amarante’s remaining tour dates: