Actually Bastian Baker has released his 3rd album “Facing Canyons” already last November. Back then on the same day he played his final show of the Swiss post sponsored “The Yellow Tour”, where he already had introduced some of the new Songs. But only now he started the actual “Facing Canyons Tour” and played the second concert of it in Solothurn. I originally only planed the shows in Bern and Zurich, but I couldn’t resist another one. At the beginning I went to so many more shows, so a third concert had to be possible. So I was off to Solothurn on this Thursday evening.
Thursday evening by car to Solothurn Kofmehl meant a ton of traffic and endless traffic jams. But getting home after, was a lot easier this way. And: Practice makes perfect. I am too rarely on the road by car. And even I arrived at least half an hour later than planned, none was queuing at the concert location. Well, almost none. I even could go queuing with a friend. There was a short run on front row though, but it was a lot easier than expected. During the last months, the last concerts, it generally seemed way too easy. What’s up? Are the fans indeed older now and more reasonable? Not queuing for hours anymore to reach front row? Or do they have simply no more time with getting older? Cos it wasn’t much different recently with 77 Bombay Street, Bligg or Stefanie Heinzmann. I won’t complain, but it just feels a bit weird 😉
1. Star Crossed Memories
2. Darkness
3. Some Things Never Change
4. Baby Was The Devil
5. Junebug
6. Nightfall
7. One By One
8. Mescaline
Bastian Baker announced Robert Francis, who was Support act for most of Facing Canyons tour, personally from backstage. He was one of his favourite musician and happy to have him there. Probably the least knew him. Well, not the Name anyway. If you hear the first tunes of “Junebug” [Video here], it’s quickly clear, who was standing on stage. The singer/Songwriter is from Los Angeles, USA, and told that it was about 4-5 years ago when Swiss Radios played the song up and down. Uff, this long already? Last year he released his 5th album “Empire blues” and it was nice to hear more than only “Junebug” from him. Cos I didn’t know anything else by him. He played beautiful folky ballades and uptempo Songs, which sounded really awesome accompained by Martin on the violin.
About half an hour after Robert Francis had left the stage, the concert of Bastian Baker started with „We Are The Ones (# FF)“ from the new album “Facing Canyons”. First the band entered stage, started the song and Bastian followed along with loads of cheering and screaming. Bastian is accompaigned on this tour from his usual band: Nathan Bonjour on drums, Simon Jaccard on keyboards and backings, Priscilla Formaz as backing vocalist and multiinstrumentalist (Percussion, violin, whistle), Chris Zindel on bass and Joris Ammann on guitare. New with them are Zacharie Ksyk on trumpete as well as Leon Phal on saxophone. The concert was huge fun! I love Bastian Baker’s pop songs in this folk/country style so much. Actually very simple pop music, that gets these extras with violine, banjo, mandoline, ukulele or now with trumpete and saxophone. A bit jazzy, then a little more funky and even with some latin flair… without all these synthies, that are so “in” recently. Not, that I am against synthies. Not generally anyway. You know what I mean?!
About 4,5 years ago everything had started with “Lucky”. Of course the fans could sing along word by word. Inbetween the songs Bastian told stories, incidents and commented the orgins of some songs. Once he told about embarassing incidents at the first Prix Walo visit, then about his time in Paris, when he took part at the dancing show “Danse avec les stars”. Back then he wrote “Prime” – a song about finding something positive in everything. One of my faves of the album “Too Old To Die Young”. And with their charme and the whole interaction the band immediately had the audience on their side.
During the new, very funky “I Want You” Bastian put his guitare away and ran wildy over the stage. He esp. made the female audience scream with his sexy dancing moves and shaking hips. When he suddendly stood on the barriers, jumped into the audience and kept dancing with the girls… what a party! While he was in the audience, Bastian even took selfies with two to three fans before he climbed back on stage.
With the accoustic set it became quiter again. The stage was flooded into red, dimmed lights and the band sat on stools at the edge of the stage. It turned into an incedibly nice atmosphere, when they played “Leaving Tomorrow” first. The “Jeder Rappen zählt” title song of 2014 he wrote after a visit in a Jordan refugees camp. For this tour he even put some latin flair into it. And for the accoustic set they also played on this tour “With You Gone” for the very first time. The song from the first album “Tomorrow May Not Be Better” was never played live before.
They came up with several things to entertain the audience best and I was absolutely thrilled from the first moment. With help of a video by keyboard player Simon, Bastian even learnt how to play the with Alex Hepburn written song “Planned it all” on piano. Before he had played the piano at most only for his mother and sisters, but wanted to learn the song for the “Facing Canyons Tour”. So he sat all alone on the piano, in the middle of the stage, surrounded by darkness, only lit up by one spotlight and did cause goosebumps. Beautiful!
There it became romantic with “Planned It All”, and then they swirled around wildly over the stage during “Never In Your Town” or “Dirty Thirty”. Thereby Bastian went to visit the audience on the balcony as well. They played “Tell The Night”, what is about memories and forgetting, as well as that you won’t tell everyone the same all the time. They played “Kids Off The Streets”, what is about street kids or “Charlie from Sidney” that was written after the terror attacks in Paris and Sidney. Bastian was thanking everyone for coming, even with the actual fear of terrorism. He reminded of the Paris attack at the concert location Bataclan: These were people like us, visiting a concert and having fun. The memories always leave a weird feeling…
Bastian appeared for the encore with his guitare and started “I’d sing for you”. But before he even could sing the first words, the whole Kofmehl had turned into a choir. He only had to join in after the first lines. With this the concert ended – or well, the main part of the audience obviously thought so and quickly left the location. There was a moment of confusion, a wild stop-go started on stage. Obviously they weren’t sure behind the stage, if another encore should follow or not. Then they put the stool up anyway. It probably was the weirdest and at the same time funniest situation I had ever seen. Bastian sat down laughing and started playing his cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” as a very last encore.
About 2 hours of concert with fun, emotions and so much variety. We left Kofmehl with loads of enthudiasm and I hardly could wait for the show in Bern the following week.
Official websites:
Bastian Baker
Robert Francis
