Nickelback is one of those bands that people always bag on but they continue to make and sell records. It’s weird. Angie and I went to see Shaman’s Harvest, Daughtry and Nickelback at Starlight for $25 Groupon, yes score!
First up was Shaman’s Harvest a local bunch (from Jefferson City, MO) that had a fair amount of fans in the audience.
They sounded solid, in time, and strong. It was interesting to listen to Nathan Hunt (lead singer) talk as he is clearly back woods – nothing wrong with that but I didn’t expect that from a hard rock genre band. They played about 30 minutes, and the stage was set for Daughtry:
They hit the stage running and thank goodness Chris’ voice is still as spot on as it was (during my memory anyway) as American Idol. I would vote a couple of the tunes they played were borderline prog-rock, note the keyboardist over on the left side:
In case you didn’t notice it was very bright still out and there were a ton of open seats:
Daughtry was on for about an hour. Playing one of their new songs from an upcoming album I was taken back from the sound. Not like their other stuff almost a reggae drum groove. It was good just different I thought. Onto the Nickelback set:
Finally started getting dark and about 2100 Nickelback hit the stage. They for some reason kept their stage gear wrapped up till about 1 minute before they started the show, I guess to keep suspense up on the color/look. The production level was high, the sound was dead on, I was impressed by the first couple of numbers.
The video screen in the back was really impressive quality, it showed videos during songs and every so often would show live feed from the side screens:
Again the production quality was great, here is a really crappy video showing some of the light show:
Towards the end of the show Kroeger asked Daughtry to come out and sing a couple of songs. I couldn’t tell if Kroeger was just tired of singing these on tour or if he really wanted to show everyone that Daughtry sings better than him. At any rate it was interesting to watch:
Towards the end of the set Kroeger invited a couple of folks up on the stage and asked them to sing, it wasn’t as bad as you would think.
Overall it was a concert I enjoyed especially for the price point.
All that being said what was my one negative take away. Chad Kroeger comes across as a huge prick. He was rude to his crew, really REALLY snotty to others on stage, and kept insulting people in the crowd. I just kept thinking “geez what an ass” through their whole set.
Me and Angie sitting in the sun (she is wearing her Wolfmother shirt from Granada):
