Thursday, October 05, 2006

Hotel Cafe concert... AWESOME.

So tonight we went to the Hotel Cafe concert at The Great American Music Hall and it was just out of this world. It was unbelievable... soooo amazing!!!

From http://www.myspace.com/hotelcafetour:
Once just a small coffee shop, The Hotel Café has quickly blossomed into not only one of the premier singer/songwriter venues in the United States, but also an all-purpose clubhouse for a burgeoning community of Los Angeles songwriters.

After an enormously successful first run in the fall of 2005, The Hotel Café Tour is ready for its sophomore road trip. Twenty-five artists will share one bus, one band and one crew and embark on a six-week journey throughout the United States.

The tour will feature a rotating lineup of at least six artists at every show, all sharing musicians and supporting one another, making for a unique night of music. The traveling circus is held together by performer and co-organizer Cary Brothers, who will be present for the entire tour.

After major success with his song Blue Eyes on the Grammy Award-winning Garden State soundtrack, Cary Brothers and The Hotel Café Tour continue their relationship with Zach Braff, featuring many of the artists included on The Last Kiss soundtrack.

The Hotel Café Tour has no cookie cutter corporate American Idols, just real music, written by real artists, surrounded by real friends, who actually have a story to tell. Check your city to see who is playing and expect lots of surprises! And show up early, as it's not a normal opener/opener/headliner line up!
So yeah it was just totally amazing. Out of this world. One of the best live shows I've seen lately. Josh Radin played and was totally awesome just like his concert I saw a few weeks ago.

The lineup tonight was:

Cary Brothers
Jonah Matranga
Joshua Radin
Brett Dennen
Joe Purdy
Buddy
Brian Wright

Cary Brothers played "Blue Eyes" from the Garden State Soundtrack and that was just amazing, and Josh Radin played some sweet tunes with some different musicians than he was playing with last time I saw him.

My favourite acts were Joe Purdy and Brett Dennen and they were both incredibly talented and also totally different from each other. Joe reminds me a little bit of Teitur and has an insane amount of passion in his lyrics and singing. It was AWESOME. I couldn't believe it as he was playing and his band was just rockin' out... it was soooo much energy and pure talent. Fantastic.

Brett was TOTALLY different and TOTALLY awesome too. I found out from his website that he is opening for John Mayer this year and was on the Dave Matthews Band cruise tour, no wonder I thought he was awesome. He was a totally crazy dude on stage, hair over his eyes and making funny faces and saying lots of weird stuff and just a total character. So that was great... and more importantly his music was so insanely good. This dude was nuts on what looked like a Classical-Electric guitar, and playing songs about living life well and to the fullest, and songs about war and love and "just having fun" as he said. Oh my gosh his lyrics were awesome and he had a sort of funky, reggage, bluegrass style. It was just glorious.

So yeah obviously I bought both of their albums.
I got Joe Purdy's "Julie Blue: A River Record by Joe Purdy" and Brett Dennin's "So Much More." On Brett's CD cover there is a quote from John Mayer: "A beautiful and spirited record. Instantly likeable."

Check out these websites:
http://www.myspace.com/joepurdy
http://www.joepurdy.com
http://www.myspace.com/brettdennen
http://www.brettdennen.com

At the end of the night, all the musicians played on stage together, like 15 people on stage all rockin' out. It was an amazing moment and it's really quite cool that this many musicians get along so well and put in so much effort for the fans and for the music!! Soooo awesome.

I just listened to Joe Purdy's album all the way through and now it's 2am and I am listening to Brett Dennen's album now... wow I have 2 new favourite musicians. :)

Check those sites out, these guys are just amazing.

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