2006 Hotel Cafe Tour

[Ravvenn]

Has anyone gotten into any of these shows? I got lucky and scored tickets to see them at the House of Blues for one of the last shows of the tour and even luckier that they added two of the more 'unknown' artists that I really enjoy.

The main 'popular' ones there would be Rachel Yamagata and Josh Radin, but they slipped in Priscilla Ahn and Schulyer Fisk (woot). Priscilla is one of those amazing coffee shop singers, has a voice that is similar to Lisa Hannigan, and she's a local and cool as hell.

I heard she may be getting bumped to play in LA the next day which blows because it's sold out and even if it weren't, it is still LA which has suck-ass traffic and more social climbing retards than we have 'round here.

I've seen Rachel perform before, but not the rest of the people on the lineup. I don't even know who some of them are, to be honest. Rachel is one of those petite girls (similar to Priscilla) who shock the hell out of you when they start singing.

Anyway, a lot of the performers that will be there are the same ones that Zach Braff hand-picked for the soundtrack for his new movie. Cary Brothers, Rachael Yamagata, Joshua Radin, Sara Bareilles, Meiko "and more" are the people listed to be performing. I will be honest and say I have no clue who Sara, Cary Brothers and Meiko are.

Anyone catch this show? The worst I have heard is that the House of Blues is a shithole with a crappy staff - no cameras allowed and no seating for the show (full standing room). Hopefully it's a good show and makes up for the Damien Rice concert I missed.

[Spare Oom and War Drobe]

Cary Brothers is chill. I've seen him live before in LA. Its sort of a softer indie sound. He'd fit right into the Garden State sound track. My girlfriend had this period in her life where she loved him.

[Zinke]

meiko: http://www.myspace.com/meiko

I've only heard a few Joshua Radin songs, but he's pretty good.

[Ravvenn]

Just to start off here, I can only suggest to anyone who considers going to the House of Blues in Anaheim to reconsider. I wasn't aware that this was an all-age type of place. While I had planned for the massive gathering of social climbers, I wasn't prepared to be surrounded by 100 under aged Asian girls who had no plans to shut their high pitched traps the entire concert.

Having said that, I'll carry on to the performances.

Meiko opened up the show. While I wasn't originally all that blown away by her songs on the MySpace page she has - she redeemed herself with the most amazing performance ever. She's a petite gal, and kept her hair covering a majority of her face. She seems shy, but evil - you could see this evil little grin as she whispered "I've been a bad, bad girl" during her Christmas song. She has a voice that is just stunning and extremely unique. She is one of those people who sound better live than in a studio.

From what I understood, she works at either the House of Blues in Anaheim or the one in LA. They said "here" so I wasn't positive if they meant that location in particular, or just the House of Blues "here" in California. Either way, I'll be trying to find out where she's playing next because only hearing two songs from her was a shame. She was interrupted by a man who appeared to have just woken up or had sex prior to entering the stage. He was announced as a surprise guest.

This guy was Alexi Murdoch. He picks the guitar (See: No pick) very well and had a good voice. I had to ask the guy who ran the tour for his actual name because when he was announced, the retarded shitbags were still talking loud and continued to do so through the entire performance. From what I was able to hear of him (while the girls stopped to breathe between discussing what happened on the most recent OC show), he seems to be pretty good.

Following him (or maybe he was 3rd, whatever) was Sara Bareilles. This may sound weird, but if you were to take Stevie Wonder and Sarah McLachlan and have them create a lovechild, this girl would be it. Her voice and music style (plays the piano) sounds like a perfect mix of the two names above. Her voice is a mix, but the style in general made me think of Stevie Wonder right away. All in all, she was a good performer, although shy as shit.

She also only got to play a couple of songs (Alexis was quite the attention whore and cut off other peoples sets).

Schuyler Fisk was up after that, she came out on stage and my friend and I looked at eachother and realized we knew this girl somehow. It clicked to me she is actually an actress. She has an old school voice, she is one of the more 'legit' modern folk singers. The last song she did for her set was Paperweight which is on The Last Kiss Soundtrack. She did this as a duet with Josh Radin.

Josh kept the stage once she left. While I've heard a lot of stories about him being an arrogant shitbag, it doesn't seem to tamper with his ability to perform and still seem to be intimate with the crowd. I really want to hate him, but his voice is awesome. Not much to say, his music is on most of the retarded shows like the OC and whatnot. He'll end up 'more' famous first because he's good looking and girls like him even though I find the others to be better artists in general.

Jim Bianco was up next, this guy is kind of weird. Very funny and borderline crude, but his music was a bit too 'off' for my taste. He wasn't bad, just weird I guess. I got his EP so I can try and see if I like him or not. By this point, I was outside counting down to the time Rachel would perform so I could just leave.

Finally, Rachel Yamagata was up. She sounded sick and it's very obvious she picked up smoking while on tour (she admitted to it) and you can notice a huge difference in her voice because of it. She opened with Be Be Your Love and had the entire group of performers sing it with her. Almost like they were there to cover the high notes for her. She only did two songs then took a break for Cary Brothers to sing, then for her to come back out (which is why I assumed she was sick). Sick, smoking or not - she still sounded great, but could have been better.

I'm pretty sure I forgot someone here, but thats OK. Out of everyone, I'd suggest if anyone has the chance to go see Meiko perform live, but as stated earlier - I think she is local and stays that way.

My friend who went with me is more into the punk-type scene but still music savvy. She asked me why people like this aren't famous. I told her it's because the kids on TRL don't understand the big words these performers use.

Even if they grow famous, they have a 50% chance of letting it go to their heads or changing their style to sell more records for the platinum goals and end up charing four times the price for tickets, probably to never step foot in a small venue again.

I'm happy most of the people I really enjoy stay this way, it's good to have them while they are still 'real' (and cheap!).

They are all worth checking out at least, but Meiko's performance turned me into a fan overnight. I may have missed something good as I ended up leaving early. We could hardly hear the music over the sounds of voices at this place, it was that bad. A lot of the girls came to see Josh, so they were loud for every performance but his. I left after Rachel finished.