Words & Photos by Rod Snyder
New Orleans natives The Revivalists marched into Philadelphia last night with their brand of smooth, soulful, rock n roll. The roots rockers played to a capacity crowd of 3,500 at Philly’s newest music venue, “The Met”, an old opera house that sat vacant for more than 30 years and was purchased by Live Nation and turned into a music venue. The venue opened last December (with Bob Dylan being the first artist to play there) but tonight was about The Revivalists.
The band played close to 2 hours of music, mostly culled from their latest release Take Good Care, which came out in November of 2018. Front man David Shaw brought his signature high energy presence on stage, but of course each member played a vital part during the set to achieve their sound. Ed Williams showed off some fine pedal steel playing, while Zack Feinberg delivered some scorching guitar solos throughout the performance. The sound really came together when the songs featured Michael Girardot on saxophone, adding yet another rich layer to songs like ‘Celebration’.
The Revivalists finished their main set with ‘Future’, then followed that with two encore breaks that saw some of the loudest cheers of the night. The first encore featured Shaw doing his best Mick Jagger to the tune of the Rolling Stones’ cover, ‘Miss You’. (They played Pink Floyd’s ‘Have A Cigar’ the night before in D.C., so maybe they’ll play a different cover each night of this tour?)
While the band was propelled to semi-stardom last year with their radio hit ‘Wish I Knew You’, they’ve been road warriors for almost a decade. So, on this tour, it’s nice to see them honor their back catalog for attendees who have been there from the start. “This is one we don’t do. It’s for the die hard fans out there”, Shaw said as the band tore into the second encore with ‘Ride the Earth’. The show then finished with another fan favorite, ‘Soulfight’, from their 2008 self-titled debut.
Go see The Revivalists on tour now, until April 2019!
TheWaster.com | Philadelphia
1.14.19
