Seize the storm

I had the awesome privilege to run up to St. Paul, MN and see Shawn perform at Bethel University.   Let me start by completely squashing the rumor that Shawn’s shows aren’t very good.   If you truly like his music, you’ll love his concerts.

Quality of Music

Listening to Shawn perform live and on cd is almost exactly the same.   He’s just as good and most likely better than he is on cd.   After every song all I could say was, “Wow.”   He plays with a couple different guitars and I believe he does some different style tuning for each song to make it easier to play.   I can’t say enough though how much I enjoyed the concert – he did a wonderful job and his music really speaks to my soul.   After I ordered my ticket for the concert, I dusted off Ripen and now I love it!   It just took some time of listening to it, reading into the words, etc.   So I went back and re-rated the review and up’ed the stars to 4/5.

Personality

Shawn seems like a very quiet individual.   I don’t know the average size of the crowds he’s performed for.   The Hall he played in at Bethel was packed.   He didn’t talk too much but when he did, he was very simple and to the point.   There was an interesting “tick” that he had when he talked, he tended to fiddle with the tuners and capo on his guitar.   Was this a nervous tick?   I’m not sure.   It was for sure that he was having a lot of fun with his band though.   They had some things happen that they snickered about to each other.   So there was some sense of comfort.

Stage Appearance

This will come out more harsh than it really is – he’s not very stage/crowd friendly.   He didn’t really get the crowd going to sing along with his songs (unless only a few in the crowd actually knew his songs).   He sings every song with his eyes closed and bare feet (at least for this concert).   He did do some beat-boxing and scat – which totally rocked, he’s really good at it!

Encore?

Don’t even think about it.   Shawn does a lot of songs and he says they’re now over-rated because now you have to do five encores to even be “cool”.   “So this is the last song of the night, thanks for coming!”

After the Show

I guess sometimes Shawn doesn’t come back to the merchandise booth after the show.   This was one of those times unfortunately   I try and get musicians whom I really admire and really inspire me to sign a guitar given to me by my wife (then girlfriend) on our first Christmas together.   So far, I just have Chris Tomlin but was really looking forward to adding a Shawny Mac sig.   Oh well, hopefully he can get down to SD soon.