A Barenaked Wednesday

Back in the dark ages of this here bloggity blog, among the first dozen posts, I gushed about my very favorite band, Barenaked Ladies.

Yesterday, I drove up to Cleveland to see BNL play at the Nautica Pavillion in the Flats. (As a side note? When I lived in Akron a million years ago, the Flats were a Big Deal. Now they’re kind of run down and depressing. Sad!) A friend I used to work with who I hadn’t seen in a dozen years went with me. We both had a blast.

I managed to get great seats for the show. Fortunately, great seats for BNL don’t break the bank. Tigger wanted to prove he attended the show …

During change-over from Kris Allen to BNL

From the minute BNL came out to start their set, I was one (hot, sweaty) happy camper. Jim Creeggan repeatedly came right over in front of our seats to play "to" our little section of the crowd, and despite the fact that we were less than two yards away from a very large set of speakers, it wasn’t painful (until Ed decided to beatbox near the end of the show. Ow.)


They jumped right in with a mix of old and new, including one my very favorites, Easy. The last two times I went to see BNL at an actual show (which does not include the Borders thing), they sold digital copies of the show. I was expecting (hoping? yearning?) to purchase last night’s show on site, but it wasn’t available. And as best I can tell, it won't be. Sad panda! The moment that really made me disappointed that the show was unavailable digitally was when Kevin absolutely crushed Sound of Your Voice. It was perfect.

Tyler, Ed and Jim singing back-up to Kevin (far left) on “Sound of Your Voice"

I’ve always felt that one or two of the songs on BNL’s concert set lists were “ego songs” for Steve. We’d all be floating along having a blast and then they’d play something like Voice just to Remind Everyone That Steve Can Sing. Meh.

I would pay to get a recording of Kevin knocking it out of the park on one of Steve’s old “ego songs.” Voice was never a song I particularly liked. Until last night.

It was an extremely hot and humid night in Cleveland, and I was sweating a ton even before BNL came on stage. About 2/3 of the way through the set list, the heavens opened up and it started seriously dumping rain during One Week and well into Pinch Me, which allowed Ed to work the rain into the lyrics. Nice. We got a decent amount of rain on us (a very welcome cool-down) but it was just fun. I walked out of the venue completely soaked, first from sweat, then from rain. Still, it was awesome.

Despite sitting on what would have been “the Ed side” when it was a 5-piece band, we didn’t see a whole lot of Ed over by us. He did wander over a time or two. This was the best pic I could manage


As is pretty standard, things got a little silly during If I Had a Million Dollars.


See Ed in the front holding something yellow? See Tyler behind his drum kit in the back talking into the mic?

Yeah. Well, Ed picked that yellow thing up off the stage after it had been thrown and said “Is this supposed to be an emu?”


And then proceeded to have the we-think-it’s-an-emu “talk” into his mic as “Sam the Scottish Emu.” Voiced by Tyler. Hilarious. Again, wish I could have purchased audio of the show.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that most of my photos are kind of blurry. I had my flash turned off for pretty much the entire show, both to preserve battery life and to not be completely obnoxious. But I did make one exception

Jim is completely awesome.

We had some fabulous women next to/behind us. And several of them brought monkeys (among other "props"). Abby, who spent most of the show dancing next to me, threw this particular monkey onto the stage. Jim’s face lit up when he saw it land, and he picked it up and put it on his double bass for the rest of the song.

Since I “knew” who had thrown the monkey, and knew I could get a great shot, I went for the flash. Totally worth it.

I stayed overnight in Cleveland, busted it home and worked a long shift at the store, hence my delay in posting. I had an absolute blast and can’t wait to see BNL again. Too bad I can’t go up to the Rochester, N.Y., area on Saturday to see them again.

Tigger wanted to see a few additional Cleveland sites, so we did that on the way out of town this morning. We could see the Browns stadium from the park across the street from our hotel

Hey! That’s just how it looks when there’s a game, too! (empty) ;-)

And on the way out of town, we drove by the LeBron-free Q


We had dinner at Mike Golic’s restaurant pre-show. Now serving The LeBron Burger. Yes, “LeBron” was sharpied-out on the menu.

And the it-has-some-stupid-corporate-name-now-but-it-will-always-be-The-Jake-to-me. AKA the baseball stadium.


So nearly $12 in tolls (round-trip) and a sung-raw throat later, we’re back home. An exhausting trip but absolutely, positiviely 100% worth it. When can I go see BNL again?