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dc Talk Solo Tour... Style over Substance?Feb 26 '02 (Updated Feb 23 '05) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line dc Talk is a wonderfully energetic live band and they know how to please a crowd. But true aficionados of their solo work may be left out in the cold.
Date: Monday, February 18, 2002 Performers: dc Talk, Tait, Toby Mac, Kevin Max Venue Bren Events Center, University of California at Irvine Ticket Price: $25 (general admission) I very nearly skipped out on one of the most interesting tours to hit Christian music in recent years. Just as their respective solo albums were being released for public consumption, the members of Christian rock juggernaut dc Talk announced that they would in fact be touring their records together, likely to help dispel the myth that the group was breaking up. It sounded like a good idea in principle, but I was a bit hesitant. I wasn't sure if I would enjoy a truncated dc Talk set in favor of the solo material, which I assumed wouldn't be as good as the group was together. There were personal reasons, too - mostly a lack of friends in my area who were interested in Christian music and would fork out $25 to go to a concert. It wasn't long until I ran into a few people who were interested, and then just when I was going to get tickets, I found out that dc Talk had postponed the entire tour. Something about Kevin Max needing time off the road or something. I was perplexed, but I figured I'd find other concerts to take my friends to. No big deal. Return of the Singers Well, dc Talk rescheduled their tour for early 2002, and I must say, the timing worked a lot better for them. Not only did the public get a chance to hear Toby Mac's album (the last of the three to be released), but with the tour farther removed from September 11th, the group likely saw better ticket sales (since fall 2001 was a generally dismal season in terms of live performance in Christian music), and overly paranoid fans like me were much less nervous about being in densely populated buildings. I was game to go see an old favorite in concert again, as were four friends of mine (who happened to be two couples, making me the fifth wheel for the first time in a very long time). Actually, those four friends hadn't seen dc Talk live before, so I knew they were in for a treat. Jesus Freaks For those who aren't familiar with dc Talk, they are likely the most popular act in Christian rock. Starting out as a pop/rap hybrid in the late 80's, they evolved into more of a modern rock act in the mid 90's, bringing together the influences of each member of the group and racking up killer success on Christian radio. To my knowledge, they are the only group ever to win a Dove Award for Song of the Year with a song that even remotely rocked (that being the classic "Jesus Freak"). They became known as a highly energetic live act, which of course required the help of an excellent backup band, since all three members of dc Talk are primarily vocalists. Though many cite Jesus Freak as being their most solid album, I'm actually partial to Supernatural, the most recent studio album that they'd done together. I had been to see the group live in 1999 following the release of Supernatural, and that being one of the best concerts I'd veer attended, I knew to be careful about expectations three years later. It's not that dc Talk has lost any of their talent during that time. I respect them even more now that I've heard all three of them hold their own. But I knew that they'd probably spend most of their time together doing all the fan favorite, most of which are either from Jesus Freak or retooled versions of their hip-pop stuff. Every dc Talk album is a bit of an experiment, and most people found Supernatural to be less catchy than Jesus Freak, so a lot of my favorites were played on the Supernatural tour and will likely never get played live again. I understood that going in, and it saved me a lot of disappointment. Time Is Tickin' Away I arrived at the concert with a slight sense of haste. I suppose it could partially be blamed on the fact that one of my friends forgot he was carrying a small pocket knife and security wouldn't let him in until he disposed of it, so he had to run back to my car and then get back in line (Security being higher at the Bren Center than at most concert venues in which I'd normally see Christian bands). I didn't realize our seating was general admission until we got there, so we had to wait for one couple while they went back together. Fortunately, we found decent seats off to the left side of the band just as their opening song, "Mind's Eye", was shifting into high gear. I was both pleased and perplexed at the choice of this song - it's one of my favorites from Jesus Freak and it translates well live - but I had thought the solo acts would be opening up and then dc Talk would finish out the night together. It turned out that dc Talk chose to bookend the solo performances with some of their classic songs - this was actually a good move, because the familiar material got the crowd pumped, maximizing anticipation for the solo sets. They effortlessly worked their way through the smash hit "Colored People" (which always sounds a bit clunky live to me, but it still a lot of fun due to the crowd participation as everyone holds up their fingers and chants Ï, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2..."), an old school mini-medley of "Luv Is a Verb" and "Jesus Is Just Alright", and my personal favorite dc Talk song of all time, the title track from Supernatural. There was no doubt in anyone's mind by the end of that intro that the group still had a remarkable synergy, uninhibited by nearly a year spent going their musical separate ways, and that they could still assemble a tight tour band and put together a dazzling live show. "Supernatural" made for a nice mini-climax - it's one of those high-energy head banging songs that you can't help but headbang along to, no matter how weird your friends think you are. With that, the stage grew dark, and a very smooth transition was made into the first solo set of the evening. Parading around like you're a superstar, is that who you think you are? I must say, any time that was lost on stage banter was made up for by the band's DJ. He did a brilliant job of introducing each solo set with a random mix of song snippets that gave away each artist's musical influences. Tait's influences tend to veer towards classic rock, and some modern stuff like Lenny Kravitz - the DJ even slipped in a sample from Tait's own "Alibi" as the mannequin from the album cover was pulled in at the back of the stage, eliciting cheers of recognition from Tait fans. Toby came out on the stage to give Tait a proper intro, and without much ado, the "chocolate man with the vanilla band" launched into their radio hit "Loss for Words". Tait tends to play it a little more straight than dc Talk, both musically and lyrically - his band packs a wallop, but they're less "alternative". I had seen them live before, and though I was glad to know all the words to their songs this time (the last time being at a Delirious? show before their album was even recorded), I was disappointed by the song selection. Does it ever bug you when bands play a series of tracks all in a row, exactly as they are on the album? That's pretty much what Tait did. Tracks two ("Loss for Words"), three ("Bonded"), four ("All You Got"), and five ("Spy"), all back to back - with two of them truncated Christian-radio style. All great songs, but I can't anything special was done with any of them in a live setting. Tait has all the rock star moves down (at least, the ones that are appropriate for a Christian band!), and he has no guilt over wearing his influences on his sleeve. I guess I just wished he'd been more adventurous. It didn't help that one of my favorite guitarists, Pete Stewart, had recently left Tait's band (on friendly terms, I should point out), to be replaced by some guy from (ugh) Big Tent Revival. Like his dc Talk buddies, Tait has a great stage presence and he is engaging when he stops to talk to the audience. He made a funny remark about how he didn't bring his Bible, because he didn't have a lot of time, and we all know what happens when a black man is given a Bible and pout in front of a crowd! (These sorts of self-deprecating ethnic jokes are pretty common in dc Talk, and they're never made in an uncomfortable way.) He may have talked for a little long while setting up his biggest radio hit "All You Got", but it was an inspiring and personal speech about suffering - not overly preachy. He talked about recent deaths and hardships in the Tait family, which led me to believe he might be setting up the gorgeous ballad "Unglued". Once I realized that he was finishing up his set already, I was really bummed. Surprisingly, no "Alibi" or "Empty". It would have been nice to see him venture into the back half of the album - some of the less popular known songs like "Looking for You" or "Carried Away" would have been simply riveting live. Thankfully, he ended with my favorite track from the album, "Spy", which rocks nearly as hard as "Supernatural" does, with a killer secret agent-style guitar intro to boot. I was definite left craving more of the chocolate man. Let's get this party started Again wasting very little time, the stage darkened and the crew turned things around quickly for the next solo set. It wasn't too hard to tell who was up next as several hip-hop samples from years past and present came through the arena, and a silhouette of a sprinting man replaced Tait's mannequin (which he had joked that some people thought might be Peter Furler from the Newsboys!). This got a huge response from the audience, which I suppose makes sense - Toby is the most extreme and youth-friendly of the three solo acts, with his Kid Rock-inspired blend of in-your-face rock and rap. It was incredibly weird to hear Kevin Max introducing Toby while a sample from a recent Bubba Sparxx hit played in the background. Even more surprising was the fact that Toby chose to open with one of his more laid-back hip-hop songs, "Wonderin' Why". Thematically, I suppose it made sense, since the song hits rumors of dc Talk's breakup head-on, but it just didn't translate well live. He did a nice job of blending the song with the call and response from "Toby's Mac" - "When I say where my freaks, you can say WOO WOO!", which is spoken by his computer on the album. There wasn't as much for a live band to do with it, so the attention was focused more on Toby's vocal crew, made up of signees to his record label, Gotee. Vocalist Nirva Dorsaint and veteran rap duo Grits did add a lot to Toby's set, but I still felt like it was missing something. To Toby's credit, he managed to hit a good number of the songs from his album, but I doubt he did a single one of them in their entirety. It was like he would start a song, get bored with it, and then shift to another one. Lying on the floor, Toby suddenly shouted out the chorus to "Get This Party Started", and a minute or so into the energetic album opener, he shifted gears into another hip-hop cut, "Somebody's Watchin'". From there he went to the bridge of "Love Is in the House", which would have been a great crowd sing-along if we'd had more time to get into it. I will grant Toby this - he has a lot of energy and he's not shy about using it up. He was shouting most of his rap lines, and even at that, it was hard to hear him over the band. There wasn't much melody to his set, to tell the truth - which really betrays the catchy quality of much of his solo album. If I hadn't already heard the album, this wouldn't have made me want to hear it. I suspect that most of the crowd didn't care - all it took was a recognizable vocal or instrumental snippet from a song, and they were bouncing up and down and going wild. Toby did the majority of his smash hit "Extreme Days", taking a surprising detour through the first verse of the similarly aggressive rocker "Yours". I suppose it worked. I guess his set would have been as minimal as Tait's if he had chosen to do full songs. Either way wouldn't have been all that satisfying. Surprisingly, Toby also left out his killer title track, "Momentum". The whimsical "In the Air" would have been nice, too, but I guess you can't please everyone. He certainly put his heart and soul into the performance, if not the song selection. Warning signs are like flares in the night The next bit was also a surprise. At this point, I was fully expecting Kevin's band to take the stage. I had anticipated his solo set the most out of the three, since I knew it would be the least predictable. I was surprised when Kevin appeared stage right with no introduction, while a few band members sat in the center of the stage with acoustic guitars and hand percussion and other "softer" instruments. Kevin begin to read off his poem "Alas My Love", which is the hidden track on Jesus Freak, though this version was easily identified by one of my friends due to its chord structure before a word was spoken. It became clear that Tait and Toby had taken their places on stools as well, right at the front of the stage, where Kevin joined them as "Alas My Love" transitioned rather predictably into "The Hardway". If anyone caught the group's Welcome to the Freak Show tour or has the live album, this was pretty much the same thing, except more stripped down. On the one hand, it's amazing to see a hit song from the group's hip-hop years revamped coffeehouse style - on the other hand, we were already used to a similar performance of these two songs. The acoustic set has been a key element of dc Talk's live show since the Jesus Freak years, but what was a pleasant surprise on the Supernatural tour was all too predictable here. "The Hardway" became "Into Jesus", which took advantage of a pause mid-song to move effortlessly into the praise song "My Will". This was brilliant three years ago, and I'm sure my friends loved it, but oh so predictable! At this point, I was hoping for something different to spice up the set. An old Amy Grant song, "Thy Word", was added after "My Will" in place of the expected cover of U2's "40", which did work a little better for me, and it was a nice intimate, worshipful moment for the crowd - nothing to complain about there. All the same, I found myself annoyed at this point that a good third of the show I had paid for was essentially a rerun, and another third (the solo sets) had so far fallen extremely short of my expectations. I think I need to let go, 'cause it's killing me A short intermission followed the acoustic set, and as I sat and thought, I realized that a factor beyond dc Talk's control was adding to my disappointment. Without going into great detail, I do have to admit that my life was a lot different when I last saw the group live, and though I know I'm better off now, I was new in a relationship at the time and I'm single now. So I spent part of the evening resisting the urge to wander down memory lane and feel sad that I didn't have that "special someone" with me on this particular night. I suppose it probably helped, in this case, that some of my favorites like "Consume Me" and especially "Godsend" were not on dc Talk's set list this time around. What is this mess? The lights dimmed again, and a familiar photo of Kevin came in behind the stage as a more eclectic mix of music came out of the DJ's console and Tait came up to introduce the mysterious Mr. Max. My excitement was at a definite high point when I noticed a band member on the left side of the stage playing a sitar, of all things. I figured this was going to be something special, since Kevin used a broad array of sounds on his album and I was curious to see how it translated live. I should have known better. Like everything else that evening, most of what was going on was drowned out by the drums, bass, and guitar. Maybe that worked okay for Tait and Toby, and maybe everyone knows dc Talk's songs so well that they don't care, but this especially hurt Kevin. He opened with the predictable "Return of the Singer" - I guess that's forgivable, given that he designed it with the whole rock concert vibe in mind, and since it's the most aggressive and percussive track on the record, it translated well live. Kevin's usual business of purposefully not singing it exactly the way it is on the record didn't faze me this time out. It used to annoy the living crud out of me, which was why Kevin was the member of dc Talk I merely tolerated in a live setting. Since then, he's proven to be the strongest of the three lyrically (his solo album is of course my favorite of the three), and he's released an autobiographical book entitled Unfinished Work that's made me feel like I must have been him in a past life! I have a lot of respect and admiration for Kevin. So I almost felt like I didn't want so many other people and instruments and lights and whatever else vying for my attention. Kevin made a good attempt at being unpredictable - he inserted a few covers into the mix, the first being that "Hallelujah" song that was used during a crucial scene in Shrek. Remember that? I love that song and I don't even know who sings it. I should have known the lyrics would grab Kevin's attention as well. It was kind of an odd fit so early in his set, but given that it was as disappointingly short as the other solo sets, that's a minor quibble. He went on to do my favorite track from his record, "Existence", which kind of lost its eastern vibe and a few other key elements that made it so great on the album. I mean, I don't get it. They had a sitar readily available and didn't bring it back out. Coffee, who was on stage with Toby as part of Grits, didn't come out to do the rap part that he does on the album, so it just got skipped over. At least the lovely piano chord progression remained intact. Kevin stopped to offer a few insightful thoughts to the audience before launching into another upbeat tune, "Angel With No Wings", which he curiously dedicated to the women in L.A. He even dragged a girl from the audience on stage during the song, which must have put her in seventh heaven, but knowing what the song's really about, I couldn't help but find it ironic! It was kind of funny when Kevin decided to "Sinatra-ize" the bridge of the song, and from there thing just got weird as he meandered completely away from the song to do a cover of Queen's "We Are the Champions". That ended up being the last song of the set, leaving many of the more intriguing songs from the back half of the album untouched. I was furious! He didn't even do "Be", the cornerstone song of his album. I love Kevin, but his set just seemed half-hearted. I wanted to hear more than three of his songs, thank you very much. Three songs would usually be what only a no-name opening act had time for. Come and take a dive I realized, as dc Talk closed out the evening performing together, that this tour was more about theatrics and about proving they weren't breaking up than about the actual songs. Don't get me wrong - I admire the energy that dc Talk and their crew put into each and every show. It must take a lot of endurance to be part of something like that - to have a guy standing on your back while you're playing guitar, to run into an obsessive audience multiple times, to have people running around like maniacs and crashing into you all in the name of giving fellow "Jesus Freaks" a good time. All the same, I have to wonder if this would look like "style over substance" to a non-Christian. I guess I've realized that dc Talk is better ion record, when the energy doesn't drown out the artistry and the message. The one song of the evening that I hadn't heard dc Talk perform before was "Say the Words". They essentially performed their remixed version from their greatest hits album, instead of the original, which I actually think was more musically satisfying, even if it was a relic from their Free at Last years. From there it all became an exercise in crowd-pleasing. "Day by Day" seemed to lack the energy it had on the album. "In the Light" never sounds as good live as it does on record, and though it was fun to watch the guys play a little balloon volleyball with audience during this one, the power of the song got lost in all the call and response between them and the fans. They took some time to intro the band, but even that wasn't as interesting as it has been on past tours. I couldn't help but feel at this point that they could have pout on a much more musically satisfying show. What When We Stumble? When the band left the stage and everyone was chanting for the dreaded encore, I was pretty much ready to pack up and go home. Of course I wasn't going to leave before they were finished, but as everyone else was chanting "JE-SUS-FREAK! JE-SUS-FREAK!", I was tempted to chant "SOME-THING-ELSE! SOME-THING ELSE!" I mean, I love "Jesus Freak" just as much as the next freak. I'll never get tired of it on the CD. But it's another one of those that's never appealed to me as much live - it gets lost in the theatrics and the ridiculous pause that the band always feels the need to do between the bridge and guitar solo. So it was nice that the band took a little bit of time for a heart-to-heart with the audience (during which Toby had to tell a group of screaming girls to "hold up" like five times so that he could actually be heard - honestly, audiences at Christian concerts can be so immature sometimes!). Toby's generally known as the front-man for the group, the one with the most say over their creative direction, and he's also very good at "keeping' it real" when he speaks. He doesn't come across as preachy. It would help if the audience wouldn't drown him out with cheers every three words, but that's not really his fault. In any case, he had some good things to say about not putting the band on a pedestal, which made it obvious with the soft chords playing behind him that they were gearing up for the introspective classic "What if I Stumble?" He made an excellent point that the song should have been titled "What When We Stumble?" Because all celebrities are going to let people down. They're all going to sin. (If you don't believe that, read Kevin's book some time - I admire the man's honesty, but that's another review.) The song itself was a little more electric than usual, not being part of the acoustic set this time out. Decent, but nothing special compared to previous versions. I don't have much to say about the finale of "Jesus Freak". It was more or less the same as it is on the Freak Show CD. At least they made that silly pause more interesting with every band member freezing in an odd position and a cool reverb effect being used to fill the silence. I don't tend to like how bigshot rock bands drag out the endings of songs forever to close out a concert. It gave every band member ample time to do the obligatory stage dive - Kevin even had time to coax a band member into doing it, singing "Come on and take a dive", which got a laugh out of those of us that actually paid attention to the Supernatural album. I'm not going to say that the concert was a ripoff or anything. I had a genuinely good time, and I still think dc Talk is one of the best groups out there. I just wish their live show focused less on getting a reaction out of the audience, that's all. I wish they didn't have so many good songs that got left in the dust due to a couple more obvious rock hits overshadowing them. I'm really hoping that each of the solo acts gets some time to tour on their own. I already know that Tait can put together an excellent set, and I'd love to see Kevin in a more intimate setting where he had the freedom to do random songs at will without the pressure of the clock. Maybe all of this is a pipe dream, but I know that at least Toby is doing his own tour for the Momentum album, so maybe Tait and Kevin will follow suit. To make a long story short (too late!), dc Talk is worth seeing live if you haven't done so already. But if you caught them during the extensive touring they did for their last two albums, you're not missing much if you opt out of this tour. Go if you have friends who haven't seen them. Go if you are genuinely pumped up by all of the tomfoolery on stage. But if you're hoping for a truly quality set from these guys, you're better waiting until they have a new album out. Give 'em a year or so. I don't think they'll be winding down any time soon, judging from the energy level I saw on this tour. Set List: Mind's Eye Colored People Luv Is a Verb/Jesus Is Just Alright Supernatural Tait Solo: Loss for Words Bonded All You Got Spy Toby Solo: Wonderin' Why/Toby's Mac Get This Party Started Somebody's Watchin' Love Is in the House Extreme Days/Yours Acoustic Set: Alas My Love The Hardway Into Jesus My Will Thy Word Kevin Solo: Return of the Singer Hallelujah Existence Angel With No Wings/We Are the Champions Say the Words (Now) Day by Day Band Intros In the Light Encore: What if I Stumble? Jesus Freak My Ratings: Tait: 3.5 stars Toby Mac: 2.5 stars Kevin Max: 3 stars dc Talk: 4 stars Show Overall: 3.5 stars Websites: http://www.taitband.com http://www.tobymac.com http://www.kevinmax.com http://www.dctalk.com  |
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