Kansas City Music Blog

Going into a show aware of an artist's reputation, but completely unfamiliar with any of that artist's material is a double-edged sword. I've not a clue as to how any of Brendan Benson's studio work compared with the live show he and his band put on Saturday night at the Bottleneck. Thus, while being completely ignorant with anything he's done, I'm going into this without any preconceived notions.

Nick Spacek

Brendan Benson

​I can state categorically that every single word of praise I heard from friends was 100 percent deserved by Mr. Benson. In fact, I can think of no higher praise than the fact that I ran into Tim Gutschenritter, owner of the Riot Room. His birthday was at midnight, and rather than hang in Kansas City, he chose to make the drive to Lawrence to see Brendan Benson. If a club owner takes his birthday off to see an artist, it's probably an artist worth seeing.

While the show was decently populated, it didn't seem many people shared Gutschenritter's affinity for Benson. The club was mostly full in the area immediately in front of the stage, but the bleachers were mostly empty, and the booths lining the raised portion along the club's south wall were empty, save for a few.

Benson and his band played a solid set that ran just over an hour, playing songs that seemed to draw equally from all of his releases, with a slight emphasis on this year's My Old, Familiar Friend. Benson's vocal delivery style is conversational, taking equal parts Frank Sinatra and Robin Zander of Cheap Trick to create a pop singer that has a little class.

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The band was tight. It's an interesting thing to note that most of the mid-level power-pop acts that tour regularly, like Benson (or any of the mid to late '90s alt-rock acts still plying their trade) tend to have a band that knows how to knock out the songs in a way that makes you forget that they're playing them live. Every guitar lick, drum beat, bass line and vocal aren't a bit out of place, and you could close your eyes and imagine that you're just listening to an album on a gigantic sound system.

Of course, the negative aspect of this is there's not a lot of audience interaction. The liveliest part of the entire set was when an audience member screamed out "It's my birthday!" Benson responded, "No, it's my birthday," which it was. After a little back and forth, Benson said ,"It's your birthday, too? Come up and get your shot." The young woman who'd yelled bounded up to the stage to grab a shot off the tray Benson proffered, and then Benson led the audience in a rendition of "Happy birthday to us," celebrating his birthday, along with audience members Jenny and Tucker.

Nick Spacek

Cory Chisel

​Opener Cory Chisel had next to no one in front of the stage during his performance. Considering the lite-FM nature of most of the man's songs, it's unsurprising. While Chisel and his band, the Wandering Sons, acquitted themselves decently, the music they were playing was very much middle-of-the-road pap, the sort of which was once purveyed by the Wallflowers.

It was amazingly mediocre, and the empty space in front of the stage while Chisel and the band played was testament to the lack of interest they generated in the audience. Chisel tried to engage the audience, but much like Benson would do later, Chisel asked the audience if we'd won our football game that day. In both cases, the audience responded with a resoundingly bitter, "NO!" If you're going for a cheap pop, make sure you check the score first, especially when the team just lost their fifth game in a row.

Nick Spacek

Nick Colby of the Dead Girls.

​Local openers the Dead Girls played what drummer Eric Melin described as a short, tight set of "band favorites." I missed the band's first ten minutes, due to the fact that they went on promptly at 9 p.m., but arrived to find the four-piece playing in front of an enthusiastically engaged crowd. I actually thought I'd shown up at the end of the group's set. Bassist Nick Colby and frontman Cameron Hawke were both rocking out in front of the monitors with such fervor that you could easily assume they were in the middle of a set-closing blowout. But, no -- they were only halfway through. That's how you open a show, my friends.