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In its second consecutive year on tour, the Traveling Circus and Medicine Show tour rolled into Koka Booth Amphitheatre on Thursday. Fans were in for a hot, humid, festival-style night of nostalgia — with some new stuff thrown in there too.
As a 20-something, I remember the Counting Crows as a part of the soundtrack to my high school years. Their hits were everywhere on the radio and at least half of my friends were huge fans of the band. Given that, it was easy for me to presume that the majority of the people I’d find in the audience would be, well, close to my age. While there was a decent amount of people of this category, there was also a significant representation of the over-40 crowd, which I admit surprised me a bit. And you know what? The over-40s were no less into the show than the 20-somethings. Whatever their age, the members of this audience remained on their feet from the first song to the final encore!
A rustic curtain fashioned to look like an old canvas hung at the front of the stage for the opening of the show. As circus music began to pour out of the speakers, performers reached out from behind the curtain to pull a piece of rope which drew the curtains open. All of the performers were on stage for the opening song, Caravan!
The format of the Traveling Circus tour is an interesting one. Instead of your usual opening band / closing band sets, the performers (mainly Counting Crows and Augustana, with rapper Notar in the mix) swapped places on the stage, moving back and forth between performing eachothers’ songs. The lineup on the stage was consistently fluid, with performers coming and going between songs. Adam Duritz of Counting Crows offered backup vocals to Augustana’s songs, and Augustana’s Dan Laynus offered his to Counting Crows.
As a result, the entire show had a cheerful, laid back tone. There weren’t a lot of special stage effects aside from a simple lighting scheme. It was just a bunch of guys with their microphones and instruments, armed only with their raw talent. The folksy, acoustic tone of the show was amped up at times by instrumentally-backed insets from rapper Notar. While it would seem that a rapper would be out of place among such a lineup, he managed to bring something new to the mix while still fitting in nicely throughout the performances. His freestyle piece during Hanginaround even included some custom lines just for Cary, NC audiences!
Augustana, a band I was admittedly unfamiliar with leading up to the show, meshed really well with the members of the Counting Crows and showed off their own considerable chops in their hits as well as several new songs from their upcoming album. Lead singer Dan Laynus has a pleasingly versatile vocal range, and especially during their song Dust I was very impressed by the raw energy that came from his performance.
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