Story by Kristen Collosso | July 18, 2010 | Tags: Koka Booth Amphitheatre, music
Review by Kristen Collosso. Photos by Tom Mousseau.
In its second consecutive year on tour, the Traveling Circus and Medicine Show tour rolled into Koka Booth Amphitheatre on Thursday. Fans were in for a hot, humid, festival-style night of nostalgia — with some new stuff thrown in there too.
As a 20-something, I remember the Counting Crows as a part of the soundtrack to my high school years. Their hits were everywhere on the radio and at least half of my friends were huge fans of the band. Given that, it was easy for me to presume that the majority of the people I’d find in the audience would be, well, close to my age.
While there was a decent amount of people of this category, there was also a significant representation of the over-40 crowd, which I admit surprised me a bit. And you know what? The over-40s were no less into the show than the 20-somethings. Whatever their age, the members of this audience remained on their feet from the first song to the final encore!
A rustic curtain fashioned to look like an old canvas hung at the front of the stage for the opening of the show. As circus music began to pour out of the speakers, performers reached out from behind the curtain to pull a piece of rope which drew the curtains open. All of the performers were on stage for the opening song, Caravan!
The format of the Traveling Circus tour is an interesting one. Instead of your usual opening band / closing band sets, the performers (mainly Counting Crows and Augustana, with rapper Notar in the mix) swapped places on the stage, moving back and forth between performing each others’ songs.
The lineup on the stage was consistently fluid, with performers coming and going between songs. Adam Duritz of Counting Crows offered backup vocals to Augustana’s songs, and Augustana’s Dan Layus offered his to Counting Crows.
As a result, the entire show had a cheerful, laid back tone. There weren’t a lot of special stage effects aside from a simple lighting scheme. It was just a bunch of guys with their microphones and instruments, armed only with their raw talent. The folksy, acoustic tone of the show was amped-up at times by instrumentally-backed insets from rapper Notar.
While it would seem that a rapper would be out of place among such a lineup, Notar managed to bring something new to the mix while still fitting in nicely throughout the performances. His freestyle piece during Hanginaround even included some custom lines just for Cary, NC audiences!
Augustana, a band I was admittedly unfamiliar with leading up to the show, meshed really well with the members of the Counting Crows and showed off their own considerable chops in their hits as well as several new songs from their upcoming album. Lead singer Dan Layus has a pleasingly versatile vocal range, and especially during their song Dust I was very impressed by the raw energy that came from his performance.
The Counting Crows performed many fan favorites (with the curious omission of Mr. Jones) throughout the night, and though some of these songs have been around for awhile, the nuances created by the format of the show kept the sound fresh.
You can tell these guys are having so much fun on this tour. Before performing Long December, lead singer Adam Duritz commented on his disappointment that he’d JUST discovered the snow cone machine backstage. Even at 9pm the humidity was killer, and a snow cone did sound nice. A few minutes later, about a verse or so into December, the song stopped because someone had gone backstage to get Duritz a snow cone. “During the one song I don’t have an extra hand!” he said. The audience laughed and the band picked back up and finished the song.
Along with original hits and newly written songs, the set also included covers of songs by the like of Leon Russell, Bob Dylan and Woodie Guthrie. The bands owned all of these covers, and they may as well have been on an album with the rest of the stuff we heard that night. Clearly influenced by Bob Dylan, they commented before Just Like A Woman that “We’re like 16 levels down ripping off this shit. But it’s so good!”
Thanks to the Traveling Circus and Medicine Show for bringing a great night of music to the Triangle!
Set List
INTERMISSION
ENCORE
Slide Show
Check out this slide show featuring more of Tom Mousseau’s photos from the concert.
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Lindsey Chester
July 19, 2010 at 11:36 pm
Great review- I feel like I was there- missed that one
jamie countryman
August 7, 2010 at 11:03 pm
This is my second year seeing the traveling circus and medicine show, and each show left me breathless. I got back yesterday from westbury ny, the 8 hour trip was well worth seeing my favorite band. Check out my facebook I got many pictures. I love the atmosphere and the combining of the bands. Notar was a plesant surprise, def. Opened my eyes and I will be searching for his music!
Disappointed in DC - BAD MEDICINE
August 10, 2010 at 10:03 am
Saw this fiasco of a show @ Wolf Trap last night.
WOW what a trainwreck.
Sound mix was terrible, Adam has one of the best voices in the biz…where was it…He’s the STAR and why everyone came.
The solo CC song mixes were overloaded with guitar, and drums.
The “group sings’ were just a waste.
The lead for Augustana has a terrible voice (at least last night he did)…painful..He made Taylor Swift sound good!
We wanted more of the Rapper after Augustana.
Not sure why the rapper was there, not a good fit.
CC’s website video promised 3 hours of music starting “When the curtain went up”…8PM show started @ 8:25, one 10 min intermission that was really 15, no where close to 3 hours.
I’ll look for CC’s again, but not with the Medicine Show.
Huge CC fan, but very disappointed
August 10, 2010 at 12:37 pm
The Wolf Trap (DC/N. Virginia) show was horrible. The entire concert was a little over 2 hours with a 15 minute intermission. It started 25 minutes late. 25% of the concert was Augusta alone, 25% was CC alone, 15% was Notar (rapper who sucks and doesn’t belong at a CC concert), and 35% was all the “artists” performing together. The sound system was poor. For a true counting crows fan who expected to hear Adam sing for at least 75% of the show, I got way too much rap, way too much Augusta, and probably less than a half an hour of Adam singing counting crows songs. It was more like Adam attempting to showcase Augusta (a decent band) and Notar (a white rapper on speed who thinks he’s P. Diddy). I’ve been a die-hard CC fan from the start, but felt like last night’s act was rude and insulting to true fans.
Kristen
August 10, 2010 at 9:40 pm
Thanks for your comments. I’m sorry to hear the DC show was a disappointment. I’m not a huge CC fan myself so it’s good to get input from people who had other expectations of their live performance.