Concert Review: Rocco DeLuca/The Feeling/Mat Kearney

Last night my husband and I attended the VH1 You Oughta Know tour at Rams Head Live! in Baltimore. I bought the tickets because my husband and I are big fans of Rocco DeLuca; not until after I purchased the tickets in January did I ever hear a song by Mat Kearney or The Feeling. What I heard from both (one or two songs) seemed pretty good; kinda boppy but nice.

Doors opened at 5pm, but the first act wasn’t to perform until 6. We got int here and the place was not packed; doubt if it sold out. We decided to go to the tavern on the 2nd floor of the place and have a quick bite to eat. Rams Head is known for good food yet horribly slow service; we were happy to see only three other tables occupied in the joint. We sat down, a waiter came by and quickly got our drink orders.

We didn’t see him for ten more minutes. My beer was either flat or had been sitting at the bar a couple minutes waiting to be picked up; lucky I am a weirdo that likes semi-flat beer and I don’t care too much as long as it’s cold. It was still semi-cold so I drank it. We placed our orders – vegetarian burrito and a side of stir-fry veggies for the spouse, a small baked potato and a side of spinach with kalmatta olives and feta cheese for moi. We placed the order around 5:20.

We received our food at 5:58; bit into my first piece of potato and heard Rocco DeLuca come on stage. And he started with “gift.” Are you kidding me??? We flagged down our waiter and asked for our bill ASAP. We gobbled down our food, realizing it was not up to Rams Head snuff; my potato was not completely cooked and hard in the center, my spinach and my husband’s veggies were almost soup from the amount of liquid. And not surprisingly, all of our food was lukewarm. I got the bill, didn’t even look at it, left EXACTLY 15% and we dashed out to find a place to see the show.

We missed the first song and a half, but found a great spot on a ramp right to the left of the light/sound booth. Since it was angled, I could see over the crowd and I find it fascinating the watch the lighting techs at work. There was a railing so we shoved our jackets between it and the wall and could prop our beers on it.

Rocco was awesome. He sounds even better live than on his CD. He holds his steel guitar really low and at one point when he was playing it, it almost looked as though he was jerking off. Strange, but sort of exciting to see how he personalized his style and had such passion. Also when he sings and plays his face gets so contorted, this music comes from the pit of his belly… this is not cheesy VH1 pop music. He filled the whole three-story concrete general-admission place with passion, intense sound and utter talent. After his set (which was only 6 songs. Waaah!) he went to a table to the side of the stage and we got in line to meet him. My husband had a Rocco tee shirt that was signed on the shoulder, I only had my ticket but he signed it. Not too personable, but not cheesy. He thanked us for coming, we told him we’d see him at Bonnaroo.. it was nice to have the chance to meet him.

Then next band that performed was The Feeling. I only knew one song of theirs – the one on VH1 where rope is wrapping around the band as they sing very calmly. I didn’t love it or hate it; my husband though the video was cool and Tool-esque and was looking forward to seeing the band. Boy was he disappointed. We personally felt that this band sucked. They were skinny cocky little children from the UK in Western shirts and tight lowrise black jeans jumping all over the stage trying to be every band that had success before them, but not being themselves. They did a bunch of harmonizing and “bah bah bah” singing that made me think later Beach Boys or even the Beatles. Too bad they weren’t as talented or innovative. Their songs all sounded the same, lots of harmonies, bee-bopping in place of real lyrics, and cheery simplistic riffs while they made the appearance of rocking out (jumping off amps and falling to their knees). It was if Motley Crue dressed up like Oasis and sang Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hears Club Band. It was stupid. My husband asked if I was ready to leave, but we decided to stay to hear Mat Kearney.

Mat was the headliner of the show, and therefore had 14 songs to sing (I saw the song list in the light booth). When he came out, I suddenly saw how young the front of the crowd was. Dozens of girls with big black Xs on their hands (under 21) were screaming and flailing around when he hit the stage. He reminded me of John Corbett (best known for playing Aidan on Sex in the City); he was tall, plain-faced yet attractive, in a black fitted button-down and black jeans. His hair seemed to be thinning in the back and he had a slow stoner smile that made the girls go ga-ga. He came out, started playing and did a bit of chatting between sets, all in a slow way with a slight smile. He sounded good, the songs sounded good, but the location was totally wrong for him. Mat’s set had more fancy lighting than the other bands, which seemed inappropriate for his quiet sweet songs. It also was too… loud. His music is to be heard somewhere like Rams Head Annapolis where everyone is seated, drinking wine and enjoying the tunes, not in a stale-beer and smoke-filled concrete box where his voice and lyrics were drowned out by his band. He doesn’t scream when he sings, so all his singing just sounded like noise with the acoustics. It got boring after about three songs and then he sang “Renaissance” and forgot the lyrics. At first I thought he was being cute trying to get the audience to participate, and then we all realized that he honestly forgot the words to the song and a good third of the song was purely instrumental as he said “I can’t believe it, this has never happened to me before.”

This is when my husband and I decided to make it a night. We hadn’t heard the songs we knew best, but we figured we would just listen to them on the stereo on the car ride home.

All in all, worth the $18 ticket just to see Rocco DeLuca. It wasn’t crowded, but there were enough people to get energy off them. We met some cool cats in line to meet Rocco, and though our dinner wasn’t the absolute best, we had good conversation while we waited for it and all in all a nice Date Night.