Once a year, radio/music industry publication FMQB turns the Fox Theatre into Aspen’s Belly Up, bringing 1000+ capacity-room headliners to the tiny 450-person room in Boulder. The seated areas flanking the stage filled up first, brimming with lanyard-adorned industry folk waiting to be wooed, like a less sexy version of The Voice.
Nobody told . From his crusty sea urchin mop to his goofy stage-side manner, it felt a lot like we were gathered in his high school bedroom. If you’d only heard his solo work, which ranges from wistful to inconsolable, his onstage persona is exactly nothing like you’d expect: no artistic temperament, spontaneous crying, or stoney glares. Instead, scattered among an almost entirely electric rock set (“Cold Roses,” “Fix It,” and new single to name a few), he’d commiserate with fans about being subjected to new material at a show, and improvise blues songs based off of whatever popped into his head. In a Slayer T-shirt, relating a story about Joey Ramone watching taped baseball games on stage, Adams was just another music nerd like us, banging out odes to the rock gods. Then came “Sweet Carolina,” and with it, a reminder: this dude is a rock god.
Meanwhile, Josh Tillman, AKA , stripped his set down to just a guitar and voice. The audience met solemn songs like opener “Only Son Of A Ladiesman” and with almost reverential silence, which was usually broken with a laugh. “I think the reason that one didn’t get on the radio,” Tillman said after performing “Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings,” “is because instead of ‘someone’s gotta help me dig,’ people thought I was saying ‘Someone’s got a healthy dick.’”
Whether or not you take issue with his persona, Tillman sings like a bird. His voice gave on him some, but he hit his notes cleanly with every puff of the chest. In addition to the given chunk of songs from his debut album, Tillman previewed a few new songs. All of them were unstructured and verbose, almost stream of conscious, with the same humor and horror of “Fear Fun.” (Random excerpt: “She blames her excess on my influence but has no problem Hoovering all my drugs / I found her naked with her best friend in the tub.”) The new material is reason to start looking wistfully forward to Tillman’s second LP as Father John Misty, slated for sometime in the not-too-distant future. But the FMQB-laden audience’s warm reception aside, don’t expect to hear it on the radio.
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Dylan Owens is Reverb’s all-purpose news blogger and album reviewer. You can read more from him in Relix magazine and the comment sections of WORLDSTARHIPHOP.
Kirsten Cohen is a Boulder-based photographer and a new contributor to Reverb. See more of her work on her website.
