I started my Lollapalooza weekend with "Chalky Jesus," the world's greatest Butch Walker cover band (aka Butch himself), at the new Angels & Kings downtown. It's a pretty decent place, it's pretty much half the size widthwise of Schubas, and has stages on each end of the venue.
He played the show almost entirely solo, starting about 4 or 5 brand new songs to start the show. He used digital recording/loop pedals to make himself sound like a full band, which my friends and I call the "Howie Day" effect. He then sprinkled in a few of his more well known songs, like Mixtape and San Fernando Sex Star.
As predicted, he then got pissed at the people chitchatting in the back of the venue (even though the place supposedly only holds 115 people, there were many more than that). He then went out the back door and went to the front of the venue, where they had another piano, and of course played Joan right in front of the chit chatters. I'm not sure if that was a reward or punishment. Along with another new song, he then followed with Cigarette Lighter Love Song.
He came back to the normal stage and rewarded his fans with a rarer great song, Straightline, the hidden track on Letters. He pretty much stuck to the well known tracks from there (Race Cars, Don't Move). In a really cool move, he sat on his stool and pointed the mic at the crowd, and let them completely take over the vocals on The Best Thing That You Never Had. And for one more special treat, he invited fans in the front row up on stage to play the tambourine and bass, and he got out a sloppy version of Grant Park out of them. So there's hopes he'll play that today with his band.
He then closed out the set by having his guitarist and piano player play When Canyons Ruled the City, while Butch stood up on the stage to lead the crowd as a chorus. Despite Butch's quick temper, and the pace of the slower songs, the set still gave me very good hope that Butch's set today at Lolla will be one of the best in a great weekend.
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