Last night John and I went to see Chad and Jeremy perform at the Barns at Wolf Trap. Two things: if you ever listen to oldies, you know who they are. Their biggest hits (and almost only hits) were “A Summer Song” and “Yesterday’s Gone”. They played “Yesterday’s Gone” pretty early in the concert and ended with “A Summer Song”. And I recognized a song in the encore (I hadn’t realized it was one of theirs), but naturally I can’t even hear how it goes in my head anymore, so I can’t tell you what it was. The second thing is about the Barns. That is such a cool venue. This was only the second time John and I have been there. The first was for an improv comedy show. It really is two barns joined together. The box office and the bar are in one barn, and they’re connected by a couple of hallways to the barn that houses the stage. The walls are exposed wood, really big planks, and it has high ceilings. We were sitting just under the balcony overhang last night, maybe 50-60 feet from the stage. It’s an intimate setting, and the sound is really good.
Before the show started, when everyone was finding their seats, they were playing oldies over the sound system, and you could hear random people (myself included) singing along. That was kind of cool.
So the concert started, and Chad and Jeremy came out on stage. They talked about their career and played songs mostly in order. They were quietly funny and quite self-deprecating. They had some minor difficulties (took several tries to start some songs, had some problems keeping a string on Jeremy’s guitar in tune), but they handled everything with humor. It was fun. Pleasant might be an accurate word to describe the evening. Mellow works, too. Their “political” songs were iffy, at best. They played two or three of those, and the lyrics were pretty bad. That part reminded John of why This is Spinal Tap is so funny. The patter in between the songs and some of the career history reminded him of why A Mighty Wind is so funny.
I mentioned the people singing along before the concert for a reason. At a normal rock concert, people scream and shout and sing at the top of their lungs. This was obviously not that kind of concert. People did sing along (at least to the two songs everyone knew), but they did it quietly, almost as if they were singing to themselves. It was very low-key and kind of funny.
And yes, we were the youngest people there by at least 20 years.