Before headliners blew the roof off of the , Denver’s own , opened up the soulful evening with their brand of Roots-esque alternative hip-hop, leaving the half-filled room primed for the synth-pop singer and Bronx native, Gordon Voidwell.
The leather-clad quartet substituted the deep synthesizer lines of keyboardist Tecla Esposito for bass guitar, and employed the percussion talents of two drummers in a sticky thick sound that inspired comparisons to Prince, the Talking Heads, and TV On the Radio. The four New Yorkers ripped through a set that had the whole theatre woop-wooping along as Voidwell showed off dance moves and spat out lyrics about white friends, entitled ivy leaguers, bread, and acid rain.
After Voidwell exited, a “Nick at Nite” style voice came over the PA welcoming the crowd to the “Mayer Hawthorne Show” and announced they would be dropping the needle on an LP from the headliner’s personal record bin. Hawthorne is less well known for his hip-hop production under the alias “Haircut” as well as his work in the hip-hop trio Now On.
As the crowd swayed to the selection, Hawthorne’s backing band took the stage with schoolboy gusto, decked out in bright red Lacoste cardigans, collared shirts and ties, and rocking Nike Dunks. The County’s drummer dropped into the opening beat of “Your Easy Lovin’ Ain’t Pleasin’ Nothin’” and the well-dressed frontman bolted onto the stage with a talk show host entrance, arriving at his red microphone stand in time for the opening lines of the song.
The band welded together a seamless set of tunes from Hawthorne’s widely praised debut, “A Strange Arrangement,” that included several web-released singles and sneak peaks at newer material from an upcoming album. After offering an anecdote about his relationship with Snoop Dogg, Mayer and his band busted into the catchy hook of Snoop’s “Beautiful,” and the crowd sang along in a group falsetto. The boyish singer charmed the crowd with stories of being mistaken for actor Tobey Maguire and exclaimed that times are surely good since McDonalds has brought back the McRib and Lil’ Wayne is now free.
Between tight renditions of “Make Her Mine” and “I Wish It Would Rain,” Hawthorne reassured the theatre that they were watching “a show, not a concert.” The white kid from Ann Arbor’s vintage Motown sound harkens back to a time when performers maintained a level of mystique nearly unattainable amidst today’s Facebook and mass media bombardment. The whole production, from the band’s outfits, to the glowing “M” and “H” that stood at the back of the stage, was indeed part of a show, not a concert.
“Itap time to return to the classics,” Hawthorne told the Fox Theatre before shattering his character by taking an iPhone photo of the crowd and informing them it would be up on Twitter after the night. Later on in the evening, Hawthorne thanked his sponsor, Mazda, for supporting his tour and not Lady Gaga’s, providing another reminder that the days of Motown remained long gone.
While the word “anachronism” might pop up in conversation or internet tweets about Hawthorne, his heartthrob stage presence, and his band’s airtight musicianship and absolutely killer soul tunes fortified a performance that left nobody disappointed.
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Nick Chambers is a Boulder-based writer and a new contributor to Reverb.
