Last night's Mayer Hawthorne concert was everything that I had hoped it would be. The crowd was enthusiastic, Hawthorne and his band were more energetic than their recordings suggest, and a good time was had by all.
Blue-eyed soul at its best, and the music sounded good despite The Loft's questionable acoustics. The audience, the band, and Hawthorne himself all seemed to be having a lot of fun. In the middle of Green-Eyed Love, Hawthorne led the band into a reggae cover of the song. He reminisced about the last time he played Atlanta, a gig at the Drunken Unicorn, the tiny club where I saw Xiu Xiu last weekend (I would have loved to have been there at Hawthorne's show).
Sometimes, though, he was just plain goofy, but in a fun way, like leading the audience in a demonstration of falling rain by wiggling fingers on outstretched arms during I Wish That It Would Rain (see fourth picture from the bottom) and leading a sing-along to a recording of Biz Markie's Just A Friend (you know, "You, you got what I need, but you say he's just a friend, you say he's just a friend" from that beer commercial on TV). But for sheer goofiness, it's hard to top his encore, which he opened with Mahna Mahna, you know, that song from the old Muppets Show.
I didn't get any good pictures, except for the cheesy cell-phone picture up on top, but here's some pics of his recent performance in New York that capture the Atlanta show pretty well (except that he wore a vest over his tie in Atlanta rather than a jacket).
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