Live Music in Charlotte, NC (July 2019)

When I travel for work, if I’m staying over there’s a pretty good chance I’m trying to catch a show while I’m in town. Sometimes I’ll find a nice indie band or outdoor venue to kill an hour or two after dinner.

Charlotte was not that experience.

While only planning to see 1 show, our newest US citizen and non-ghost host @ariobueno and I ended up seeing 3 different sets.

Show #1 – Departure: Journey Tribute

Part of Charlotte’s Alive at Five free concert series, I watched them set up this stage from my hotel window. Doesn’t get much more serendipitous than that.

They were pretty incredible actually, frontman absolutely nails Steve Perry and everyone from the drummer to the keyboardist to the bassist (who I want to adopt me) were fully committed to giving you an authentic Journey experience.

Show #2 – Improv

Honestly not even sure if this group has a name but we had an hour to kill before our late night plans so we wandered into a bar that the woman at the hotel recommended solely on their selection of “bucket drinks.” You do you, Rhonda, but a literal bucket of sugar alcohol is not going to help me make my 9am flight.

They were essentially an improv group, taking requests from the crowd and riffing off that with mashups and the occasional shoutout to Katherine (hbd girl!). Think dueling pianos with a drum kit.

My favorite part is a toss-up between when they all switched instruments and when the v large man had to be asked to get down off his chair while singing Let it Go (yes, that Let it Go) to a table full of his closest coworkers.

Show #3 – Steve Aoki

This was the highlight of the night, even if it did come with a steep 4am pricetag.

I have always been a big proponent of getting people to understand that not all electronic music is EDM and to appreciate the nuance of a Novation Launchpad as an instrument. But sometimes club music is just club music, and sometimes that’s just what you need.

The highlight of any Aoki show is watching a crowd of drunk idiots beg a grown ass man to throw sheet cakes at them. In a night club. On a Thursday night (well, technically Friday morning I guess…)