My Second Date with James Blunt

Well to be completely honest the date was really with the husband at a James Blunt concert - but a girl can dream right! My absolutely wonderful husband took off work for the afternoon yesterday and this morning to drive me from Columbus, OH all the way to Cleveland, OH (about 3 hours) just to see James Blunt! We even stayed overnight at the Wyndham Hotel in Playhouse Square, making it very convenient to go to the concert. Logoann thought it was a waste to see him in concert again only on a different leg of the same tour (I saw JB in concert at the Warfield in San Francisco this past April. Check out the April, 2006 archive of my blog to see pics from the SF concert as well.)- but you can NEVER get enough James Blunt as far as I am concerned.

The concert was at the State Theater at Cleveland's Playhouse Square downtown. Boy the culture shock from San Francisco to Cleveland was almost indescribable but that is for another blog entry. The venue was great but not as intimate as the Warfield.

Opening for JB was Starsailor, who was pretty good. Unfortunately when they took the stage, no one was manning the sound board, so the house music wasn't turned off until Starsailor's second song and no one could hear a word the lead singer was saying on the mic until it was fixed.

Luckily all was fixed by the time James was ready to play. At first I was a little baffled by the stage set up for JB - there was only a keyboard and a couple of mics. I was getting prepared for the cheaper version of the concert with prerecorded tracks but I soon realized I would not be disappointed and that the regular band set up was just behind the curtain.

"Star" is "Annie", "Girlfriend" is the Supertramp cover, "Breakfast In America".

There were of course new sets, visual effects, and lighting for the show which started out looking like the inside of a circus "big top" tent. There were a few new songs as well in addition to the regular tracks from the Back to Bedlam album, and the few cover songs. I counted at least 3 new songs the first I thought was called Star, but I have since found out is really titled Annie, which reminded me of JB's former girlfriend before Petra. The second new song was When I Can't Hear the Music, which in some parts reminded me of a song I heard JB sing before by a different name, so maybe it was a reworked song. The last new song was 1973. There was also a cover of a Supertramp song, Breakfast In America which I had never heard JB perform. I especially liked the new songs because the audience can't sing along and you could actually get to hear JB better.

The band was of course in great form as always and JB even at one point jumped off the stage into the crowd causing quite a commotion! I thought that the venue made them sound a bit less edgy then they had sounded at the Warfield in San Francisco but it also could have been because our seats were located under the lip of the balcony.

There was also a noticeably different type of crowd in Cleveland than in San Francisco. I was surprised at how many older audience members and young children were present. Also of course there was no aroma of weed that was present at the San Francisco concert.

The crowd was really worked up by the end of the concert! I think that they would have stayed longer if the band had only kept playing - but I imagine that they were all very tired from performing and they had a long bus overnight bus ride to Detroit to look forward to!

The husband was of course again my official James Blunt photographer - did I mention how wonderful the husband was by the way!

Here is a sneak peek of the pics and a link to all of my concert pics from last night. Enjoy!

James Blunt in Concert
State Theater in Cleveland, OH
October 18, 2006



More pics from the 10/18/06 James Blunt Concert at Playhouse Square in Cleveland, OH!