The Super Bowl coming to the North for the first time ever has brought all sorts of related events and commotions to the New York City area, from big name, big sponsors concerts to Governor Chris Christie having to assure everyone that they’ll be able to use the George Washington Bridge to get to an event that is actually in New Jersey (though it’s not like it’s the ‘New Jersey Giants’ who play at MetLife Stadium…). FOX Sports kicked it off the Monday prior (and the day after The Grammys, which set a high bar for NYC music business excess) with their ‘Super Bowl Kickoff Spectacular’ in a frozen Liberty State Park (QRO photos). There have also been VH1 concerts in every borough (and the Garden State), ‘Bud Light Hotel’, Blondie at the ‘Super Bowl Boulevard’, and more (QRO NYC Show Preview). But for a complete change of pace, Citibank presented two intimate ‘Evenings With the Legends’ at McKittrick Hotel, in John Legend and Band of Horses, on Wednesday & Thursday, January 29th & 30th.
McKittrick Hotel is an actual hotel on the west side that has a downstairs bar, which has been recently hosting performances. It’s a classy place, with classy (read: high) drink prices, but that worked in its favor for John Legend, who had a rare intimate performance. With no live band or back-up vocals, Legend came on stage with his piano and played many old and new songs off his successful Grammy Award-winning albums. Legend told stories between each song, and the night was a beautiful mix of laughs and the audience singing along to hits “Ordinary People” and “Stay With You”. It was quite a homecoming type of show for John Legend, as playing to a small crowd brought him back to his days performing at the smaller clubs in NYC. John Legend is a classy musician and definitely deserves the title of “Legend”.
While Legend and the audience were seated at that show, that was not (mostly) the case with Band of Horses, despite the show being billed as “acoustic”. Instead, fans clustered right up to the stage, which is barely a foot off the ground, and surrounded by thick curtains. Those curtains seemed especially frustrating and pointless for Band of Horses, cutting off view from either side, especially when they opened by playing “Neighbor” from Infinite Arms (QRO review) with just vocals & piano – all the way on one side of the stage, basically invisible to most of the crowd. Thankfully, the Band did spread out after that, though pianist Ryan Monroe, drummer Creighton Barrett, and guitarist Tyler Ramsey stayed seated/invisible throughout, meaning you could basically only see main man Benjamin Bridwell and bassist Bill Reynolds (though it was neat to see the usually very scruffy Reynolds ‘dressed up’ – even if that meant looking like Ned Flanders’ jazz hepcat dad on his upright bass…). The set surprisingly had a lot from Infinite, and only one from the most recent Mirage Rock (QRO review), not to mention a honky-tonk version of “Weed Party” from debut Everything All the Time. Many say that Everything and perhaps follow-up Cease To Begin (QRO review) was/were the band’s highpoint(s), and it was a little disappointing to see Everything eschewed for the definitely weaker Infinite, but some Infinite pieces really shined live, like back-to-back “Older” and “Laredo”, while Cease got some great ones in at the end with “Is There a Ghost”, “No One’s Gonna Love You”, and “The General Specific” (though there was no performance of breakthrough Everything single “Funeral”).
‘Citi Presents Evenings With Legends’ continued the next night with The Black Keys (QRO album review), but the more-popular-than-‘legendary’ act were booked at the huge (if soon to close) Roseland Ballroom (QRO venue review), making that show just another of the big Super Bowl related concerts the Big Apple gets in Super Bowl Week. Not actually intimate and special like John Legend & Band of Horses playing a hotel bar.
-John Legend words & photos: Luis Ruiz
-Band of Horses words & photos: Ted Chase
