Full Moon over the Graveyard, after the break!
If you follow my personal twitter (all 1,000+ bots jk) you probably saw my tweet about what happened a day before Passenger took the stage at the haunting Masonic Lodge at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. last Tuesday night Long story short: forgot I bought tickets for this show!
Main reason why I hate buying tickets months in advance. Prefer to buy all my tickets (via Ticketmaster/Live Nation/Stubhub) the week before a show. You don’t get that luxury at Hollywood Forever Cemetery. For it is one of the few venues that holds you to your buyer’s agreement. What does that mean? THEY WILL NOT LET YOU IN IF YOU DON’T HAVE THE PERSON NAMED ON THE TICKET WITH YOU! Truly. That’s their rule. Better live by it and buy your ticket the day they are released because 9/10 that show will sell out in days (more like hours). It is the hottest ticket in LA due to a intimate acoustic bill. For seeing a performer like Passenger in a church hall will leave you with chills all night. And that’s my review of this shows. Chills for almost 2 hours.
Personally, I love their rule. Because seeing a show at Masonic Lodge is a must for any concert bucket list. Most Church shows are. I’ve been to a few. You get an artist in a small room, built for angelic voices, equipped with a guitar ready to take you to Heaven.
Passenger’s impressive Americana songbook is ultimately dangerous under these conditions. Because you’re gonna feel. Each word is bound to dig into your heart until it shatters to the tune of indie rock poetry. The full moon only made Passenger stronger it seems.
This show definitely connected more than his fantastic show at The Wiltern back in 2014. That wasn’t his element. Masonic Lodge definitely was. You could tell because Passenger really wanted to leave the stage and join us in the crowd. Which he did at the start of the show. Small rooms probably brings back memories of his street performer days. Where he feels most comfortable I’m sure. No mics. No gimmicks. He didn’t need it. We were locked in his paradise of sounds: just Passenger, the supportive crowd, and lovely tunes. He is a hell of a talker. Luckily, the vocals are equally as enlightening.
As you might expect, you could’ve heard a pin drop during each ballad. Think my near silent camera shutter was actually audible at times. “Did I just hear my camera?” I thought at times. “Whoa!” Something I definitely don’t think about like ever. Surreal feeling.
The setlist was solid featuring all his major hits – “27”, “Let Her Go”, ‘Scare Away The Dark” – and a bunch of new stories from his upcoming 2016 effort, “Young as the Morning, Old as the Sea” (Out Sept. 23). The new stuff has a much happier tone than most of his past catalog. The standout track was ‘In The End”.
But “Whispers” changed my life back in 2014 after I went through a hard change. Still is an album that makes me cry whenever I play it. So you can imagine how my emotions felt when he told the story before belting “Riding To New York” to the congregation. Utterly destroyed me. Don’t remember much after that. That performance of his chance meeting with a dying soul at a gas station in Minnesota speaks to many of the stone angels who I passed as I returned to my car. So haunting. That’s a hard reality to face after a show. Makes a man treat everyone better on top of saying yes to life. That’s what I took away from my fantastic night rocking at the graveyard. Remember to go out and have fun.
Random tangents. Sorry. But I think some artists are made for certain venues. Passenger was made for Masonic Lodge. Glad I didn’t forget about a moment like this. That would’ve been terrible. Next week I take on two days of FYF. Can’t you tell I’m excited!? But first I have a special night with Blood Orange lined up.
PHOTOGRAPHY NOTES:
Colorful lights made the shoot perfect. Masonic Lodge’s a small, steamy, box with white wall that captures the back light behind the performer. My camera (Nikon Coolpix) had no issues zooming in. Tried not to be a menace with my camera however. Had to hold back because I was annoying the guy in front of me. And I don’t want to be that guy. Sorry, not sorry. Because shooting on digital definitely gets better as the night goes on.
