Modern Minstrels

Matt Nathanson

Friday night I went up to the Great American Music Hall with my co-worker Jake, his roomate Rus, and Nick to see the always entertaining Matt Nathanson. I last saw Matt a little over a year go when he opened for O.A.R in Berkeley and I really enjoyed his live show, so I was quite excited to be seeing him again. Before the show started, I picked up a T-shirt to add to my ever growing band shirt collection as well as two of Matt's CDs Still Waiting for Spring (which has penguins on the cover so it is inherently good) and Ernst. The songs on Still Waiting for Spring lean more towards the poppy side of the spectrum while Ernst is mostly just Matt and his acoustic guitar and contains arguably his best song ever, Maid. I really enjoy both albums a lot. I also picked up a free bookmark which is advertising his live acoustic solo album that is coming out in January. Can't wait for that.

Before I get to Matt's set I'll quickly cover the openers, Kate Earl and Matt Wertz. Kate only played 3 or 4 songs, I'm guessing because she was sick. The songs she played (mainly her and a piano, with an upright bass on one of them) were o.k., but I didn't really get into them. Matt Wertz played for 45 minutes, and seemed to really enjoy himself. His songs were of the standard love song variety, with a Michael Jackson medley (including Bad) thrown in there and his singing was quite over the top. It was hard not to smile since he was having a good time, but I felt like his set did drag on a bit longer than I would have liked.

Finally Matt was up and he opened with a new song, saying "this is a little bit like we're in a new sexual relation ship and I'm sticking a finger up your ass, this is either going to quickly end the relationship or it's going to be amazing". The song was definitely a lot more rock than his other stuff, but I really liked it. He played another new song later in the set that was more similar to this first song than his other stuff.

After playing 10 or so songs with the full band, he played a couple solo acoustic songs. Then the band came back out for another 5 or so songs. After the "last" song, Matt came back out and did a truly acoustic (didn't even sing into the mic) version of Suspended, which I absolutely loved. It sounded great with the crowd singing "Sunshine" and then Matt harmonizing in the background.

The other big sing along moment in his set is the ending of Answering Machine; "I can fall alone, if all, if I can fall away". Another highlight of the show was the impromptu full cover of Journey's Any Way You Want It. He was totally ready to play another song and people were calling out random songs and he says "oh no, did someone just say Journey?!" He pauses then goes and grabs his electric guitar and talks to each of his bandmates to see if they know the chords, then they jump right into Any Way You Want It. It was fantastic. Later in the show people were calling out other band names/songs and Matt laughingly says "I feel so good when everyone is yelling out songs that aren't mine. How about you just kick me in the balls with some steel toed boots?"

Another entertaining moment was when he was getting ready for the acoustic portion of the show, this girl in the front pulled out a bull horn. Matt then explained how this same girl had come up to him after the previous night's show and been all upset that he didn't play the song she wanted. And he was like, "yeah whatever, just call it out next time maybe I'll play it". So Matt took the bullhorn from her and had some fun talking into it. It was great fun.

Matt puts on the most entertaining and fun live show I have ever been to and interacts with the crowd better than anyone I've ever seen. And it's great because you can just tell how much fun he is having, and seeing that is just infectous. I don't see how you could have a bad time at a Matt show, so I highly recommend you go see him the next time he's out on tour near you

I also think it's so awesome that he's on a very small independent label and able to do full cross country tours and sell places out mainly through self promotion. From everything I've heard he's an extremely hard working musician, so I'm really happy to see him being so successful. Matt's also a long time volunteer for the Bread and Roses charity, a group that gets groups to perform for institutionalized people, which I think is a great idea. He invited them to the show to have a table set up to raise awareness of what they do and how to get involved.

So yes Matt Nathanson rocks all around. If you want to hear some of his stuff, let me know and I can hook you up. Also you can read about his amusing closet obsession with the new Coldplay album in his journal.