I can't say enough good things about Butch Walker. Maybe I'm just trying to make up for being late to the party, since I really only started listening to him a couple months ago. There's just something about his live show that sounds simultaneously intimate and bigger-than-life. He played Webster Hall, and I was standing pretty much all the way in the back of the balcony, but it still just felt like we were a bunch of people in a room hanging out, and some of them were playing music. At the same time there are songs that, when they're played live, there's not really a way to describe it except to say that they sort of fill up your heart.
I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that if I had to choose only one song to hear performed live for the rest of my life, I'd be satisfied to choose Butch Walker playing "The Weight of Her." (I don't know under what circumstances someone would make me choose that, but play along. And since you asked, my runner up might be Envy on the Coast "Sugar Skulls" or The Graduate "Justified".) Back in November when we were setting up for our interview with Butch at the Blender theater, they started sound checking The Weight of Her and I stopped what I was doing to watch sound check on the monitors downstairs because that song is too ridiculously good live.
As an encore, Butch leaped off the stage and dragged his mic to the middle of the venue and sang Hot Girls in Good Moods from the middle of Webster Hall while partying with the crowd. Unbelievable. Such an absurdly good show.
Friday night I went with Maggie and Sarah (who shot most of our Warped Tour stuff, and now works at Newsweek.com on an awesome webseries called "The District," among other things) to see Vinnie and Mike from I Am the Avalanche play acoustic solo sets at Angels & Kings. So good. Check out Mike's solo stuff HERE and go HERE to find out about more shows like this.
