Alabama Shakes Live

August 14, 2016 ~ Irvine Meadows Amphitheater

Yes this is numerous weeks late, but I feel it’s necessary to talk about how awesome the last Alabama Shakes show was at the Irvine Amphitheater. First off, I was completely surprised by how cool the venue was. Normally, not too much intrigues me when I hear an event is in Irvine (no offense to those residents). However, despite my ignorant opinions, the old fair-styled venue was pretty damn cool. The smell of Jim Bean and Kettle Corn filled the air and it looked like every seat had a decent view and amazing sound coverage. Overall, kind of bummed that it was my first and last show there (they are tearing it down in January).

The Dawes opened for them and I have to say I was kind of let down. Was a little too country for my taste: Cowboy hat dude, overused vocal harmonies, lyrics about tequila, and guitar solos that went on for way too long. We get it dude, you can SHRED your scales on guitar. But if your into that suff, well that’s cool too. Again, I am talking about an artist I have little knowledge on so take my rant with a grain of salt (and lime). They did play their hit song “When My Time Comes” pretty well. So yeah…The Dawes…

After a pretty short wait the Alabama Shakes walked on stage to a Snoop Dog track, which obviously really hyped everyone up. They used this opening Snoop Dog track to transition into their first song. It was clever and really well done. Brittany’s powerful voice is as beautifully stunning live as it is recorded. Sometimes bands, like the Alabama Shakes, that rely heavily on the sound of the vocals really let me down when they play live. Lets face it, singing well live is hard AF. Her powerful gospel sounding voice combined with the strong audio of the venue made her sound hit the audience so hard, and definitely put to shame my singing “skillz.”

All of the musicians in the band were great performers. There was no “forced hype” acts as I like to call them. No guitar tricks, no “hands in the air!” no bullshit. Just purely great music. You could see that everyone on stage was passionate for the music they were playing and humble about their stage presence. Every strum, every drum hit and every organ note carefully placed resulting in a very clean sound. Another thing I really admired about their performance was that they powered through almost all of their songs. No unnecessary solos. No drunk ranter to the crowd between songs. After all, most people go to shows to see bands’ hit songs, so it was awesome to see the Alabama Shakes put together a well rounded set with basically all of their best songs. Overall, I thought they absolutely killed it last month and would see them again any day! RIP Irvine Amphitheater…and Wild Rivers.

Header photo by: Fred Rockwood