Tickets sold out early on for the Austin-based singer/songwriter who got his start with bands like Ugly American and the Scabs. Schneider has clearly developed a following of his own after branching out with his solo Lonelyland in 2001 and then I’m Good Now in 2004. In addition to the upcoming live album, he’s also scheduled to release Californian in August.
In order to get more variety for the live recording, Bob Schneider and his band played songs not only from his most recently released albums but also a few previously unrecorded songs. “We’re still working that one out,” he told the audience after playing a mellow new attention-holding song.
For the first half of the evening, the show was a more straightforward blend of familiar songs from I’m Good Now and Lonelyland. Schneider played some newer hits and kept the crowd singing and swaying- but it wasn’t until after he stopped to introduce his band and made the announcement that he and the band really seemed to start enjoying themselves. After that point it was getting the audience to participate, and not just playing out the songs, that took the focus of the night. Schneider joked with the crowd and even accepted a request that was handed to him on an American flag napkin by a girl in the front row. “Well, since they took the trouble to shrink the American flag down like that, I guess I have to play the song,” he deadpanned.
The band soon got the audience moving with faster songs like, “C’mon Baby,” and then slowed it right back down with popular, but slightly altered mellow tunes such as, “Big Blue Sea.” They turned down the lights and stepped to the left of the small stage after playing the “last” song, and the audience continued to cheer for more. After huddling together for a few moments, the band came back, as planned, to play one more original song. “We couldn’t go offstage, so we sort of had to hide in the corner and pretend to be invisible,” Schneider said. “Did it work?”
The final song of the night was a rollicking satire, “The Sons of Ralph,” that had every audience member linked at the elbows and screaming out “Aaarr!” (I think you had to be there) while bob Schneider jumped around onstage with a plastic pirate hook and the bassist took “hits” from his microphone that had magically transformed itself into a bong.
Another surprise of the evening, however, came earlier from Bob Schneider’s opener, Matt the Electrician from Houston, Texas. The new performer warmed up the crowd by playing original songs on both an acoustic guitar and a banjo, and delivered comic comments to the audience with a straight face and an almost robotically straight voice while his fingers continued to strum. His excellent rendition of Rick Springfield’s “Jesse’s Girl” slowed down to incorporate details about how his first “rock” concert was a Rick Springfield show. “If Rick Springfield were here right now…and I like to think that he is…in every single one of us….just like Jesus….or maybe a little deeper than Jesus…well if you ever need something and Jesus isn’t listening…just turn to Rick…and I think he would do the bridge a little something like this…”
Overall, Matt the Electrician proved to be an up and coming talented and the perfect opening to Bob Schneider and his band. He even jumped in with the saxophone on one of Schneider’s songs, and will now be immortalized, along with the screams of the Schubas crowd, on Bob Schneider’s new live-from-Chicago album coming to a record store or iTunes soon.
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