I recently had the pleasure of seeing Father John Misty at Kemba Live. Although I had a press pass through AROUSE, I bought a ticket and took my partner Kenzie with me. We arrived at the venue well after doors, pushing through a sea of denim and flannel. To my surprise, we were greeted with a crowd much older than us \u2013 the man next to us rocked a full head of white hair. The man in front of us, likely in his 50s, appeared to stand by himself, but that did not stop him from having a great time. The age of the crowd held nobody back from keeping the energy high.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The lights went down, and Father John Misty took the stage. Screams erupted from the crowd with women screaming about his appearance. Father John Misty makes for a pretty average-looking guy, dressed in a white button-down and slacks with a beard that reached his chest. He opened his show with \u201cFuntimes in Babylon,\u201d setting the energy high as listeners got higher. Smoke rose above the crowd \u2013 an incense consisting of cigarettes and marijuana creating a haze over the pit. Following his opener, Father John segued into a chapter of ballads with \u201cJosh Tillman and the Accidental Dose\u201d and \u201cBeing You,\u201d dragging slightly, with longer songs and little crowd interaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, despite the lull, he picked up the pace with \u201cNancy from Now On\u201d followed by one of my favorites, \u201cShe Cleans Up.\u201d A man, presumably in his thirties, standing close to us headbanged passionately to the beat with contagious energy, so my girlfriend and I followed suit. Misty ended the main set with two hallmark tracks: \u201cMental Health\u201d and \u201cMahashmashana\u201d (quite the mouthful). He introduced \u201cMental Health\u201d with a classic sermon about reaching out when times get hard. The song was beautiful live with all the band\u2019s instruments kicking up to drive home the song’s purpose. The lengthy closer \u201cMahashmashana\u201d spectacularly ended the show with a bang.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He remarked at the start of the song about viewing Saturday Night Live\u2019s 50th Anniversary schedule before recalling his experience performing on the show several years ago. He claimed he had no clothes, so SNL gave him a garbage bag of designer clothes for him to choose from. He was nervous about the performance and said he does not remember much of it due to blacking out from anxiety medication. However, he confessed that the opportunity was insane, and he could not believe Saturday Night Live wanted him on their show. This marked a peak of his most open he had been all night. While he apologized for his lack of interaction throughout the show, the enthusiasm from the pit was extreme, yelling back at everything and whistling hysterically. The sea of millennials worshipped this man as if he were a true, ordained prophet and this was his megachurch. My girlfriend and I found ourselves jokingly saying \u201cThank you, Father John\u201d all night. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Of course, he vanished, only to dramatically reappear two minutes later for his encore. Kenzie and I anxiously awaited the first chord of \u201cChateau Lobby #4 (In C for Two Virgins).\u201d This is her favorite song, so we danced around excitedly as he played the quirky serenade about his wedding night. The jaunty melody puts the listener in the place of newlyweds frolicking and dancing around excitedly in a vintage wedding dress \u201csomeone was probably murdered in.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Father John Misty blessed the crowd with a rich encore, consisting of five additional songs. To our surprise, he played \u201cReal Love Baby\u201d for the first time on this tour. Despite being his biggest hit, it did not appear on any other setlists, so it came as a fun surprise. Roused by the show, all of the couples swayed together and hugged. Finally, Father John Misty played his true closer \u201cI Love You, Honeybear,\u201d thanking his backing band before departing the smoky stage. Overall, the show was lively, and my partner and I had a wonderful time dancing alongside the hipsters that Monday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I recently had the pleasure of seeing Father John Misty at Kemba Live. Although I had a press pass through AROUSE, I bought a ticket and took my partner Kenzie with me. We arrived at the venue well after doors, pushing through a sea of denim and flannel. To my surprise, we were greeted with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1739,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[24,27,19],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1740,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions\/1740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/arouseosu.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}