Review: 2018-05-05 Nola Republic, New Orleans, LA
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Setlist, Attendance, and Recordings for: 2018-05-05 - Nola Republic, New Orleans, LA
After the madness of the first night (and day for the band) in New Orleans with missed flights, sit-ins, bust outs, and debuts, I arrived at Republic NOLA for Spafford's second late-night show with sort of blank expectations. I was happy to see both familiar faces from the night before and some new faces hanging out around the doors and more of the same as all of us were let in. The band came onto the stage at 2:15am.
Spafford continued the "Album Release" show theme and opened with When It Falls which started the night clean as no jam was attached to it this time. Todd's Tots got the jam juices flowing and the lyrics "I don’t like sleeping at night" had a little extra oomph behind them in a late-night setting. Tots was highlighted with an excellent solo from Brian.
The pleasing light and fluffy guitar opening of Simon and Lily was next which come to find out was the song with the biggest show gap of the night (Last played 2018-01-14). To put an emphasis on what comes next only about 20 mins had passed during these three opening songs.
The opening composition section of The Postman began to fill the air and gave us our last bit of fresh air before plunging deep into the psychedelic realm. Postman's jam got locked into a nasty funk rhythm that allowed Red to bust a solo out, Cam to get some E-drum work in, and had everyone including the band dancing and bobbing along. Brian then left faces on the floor with the guitar solo and as the song ended the full volume of the late-night crowd was felt.
Mind's Unchained followed and kept the vibes going as we soared through the clouds on the jam then pushed to space during the peak highlighted again by Brian's solo. All In came next and solid work on the composition half of the song set up for the jam of the night as Cam was absolutely killing it. Wild fills from Cam allowed for the rest of the band to just continually riff on top and had me going hard in the paint. JP and I looked at each other afterwards and just laughed.
America finished off the set which was the only song of the set not off the new album "For Amusement Only." After a quick encore break, Spafford came back on and busted out another new cover Van Morrison's Cleaning Windows which was sung by Red. Cleaning Windows transitioned straight into The Reprise providing New Orleans with their last bit of Spafford late-night Jazz Fest funk.
Those of you going to Summercamp have an awesome time! I'll see the rest of you at Red Rocks
