Butch Walker at The Recher Theater

I've been a huge Butch Walker fan for years, but his concerts local to me always seem to happen when I can't make it. Not this time. I took the afternoon off, hooked up with a hot date, and headed North to Baltimore.

Slowly. Really slowly. I mean really freaking slowly. A combination of Friday traffic and numerous accidents conspired to interfere with my plans to get to Baltimore around dinner time and have dinner at the Papermoon Diner. Instead, 2:45 after we left we were we just getting to Columbia MD, and we were hungry. So dinner ended up being at The Cheesecake Factory and we actually made it to Baltimore just before 8. I had gotten lucky and snagged a cheap room at the Doubletree. So we stopped by just long enough to check in and drop our bag, and then we headed back out.

Butch Walker live was everything I expected, and more. He played for 2 full hours, and nobody will ever accuse him of going through the motions on stage. He leaves it all on the stage, pouring his heart, soul, and seemingly every ounce of his being into every song. He came out during the opening act and played a song with them. I have never seen the headlining act do that. Then he broke rock concert convention again by opening his set by sitting down at the keyboard and playing a couple of ballads (Cigarette Lighter Love Song and Passed Your Place, Saw Your Car, Thought of You) before moving to the stage for a solo acoustic tune. The band finally joined him in song 4 and they mostly kept the volume up from there on. The encore featured a rousing rendition of Rich Man by Hall and Oates with Butch on banjo, before he closed the night by joining the fans on the floor for a frenetic extended take of Hot Girls in Good Moods.

Last half of Cigarette Lighter Love Song - taped by somebody at The Recher last night.

Butch doing Rich Man