Tuesday night Lindsey Stirling kicked off her summer tour with Walk Off the Earth at the Hartford Healthcare Amphitheatre in Bridgeport, CT.
Walk Off The Earth opened the night at 8pm and did a variety of covers and originals including Gnarls Barkley’s Crazy, Tina Turner’s What’s Love Got To Do With It, Wheatus’ Teenage Dirtbag, an amazing cover of AC/DC’s Thunderstruck and medley that had to have no less than 15 Beatles songs in it, and a medley around a large odd guitar the entire band played with probably like 10 songs mashed in together. For their last song they did their latest single My Stupid Mouth and were joined by the Luminati Suns – 2 of the band member’s 3 sons that my Mom had told me about because they were on Kelly and Mark (Or was it Ryan then?) and they reminded her of “little Hanson”.
At 9:15 Lindsey took the stage and got a few minutes in before we lost sound to her violin and the dancers all left the stage. Whatever the problem was seemed to be corrected and they picked back up where they left off, only for it to happen again during the next song. Lindsey went over to her mic on the side of the stage which also didn’t seem to be on. A decent amount of time went on with no one in the crowd really knowing what was going on, and Lindsey seemed embarrassed but was giving us heart hands and then started doing charades of a sky diver in the middle of the stage. When sound seemed to come back on, they decided they’d start with The Arena for the next song and Lindsey mentioned they don’t teach you how to deal with that in performance school, probably because there is no performance school. I read that a fuse was blown or perhaps there were computer issues but I’m really not sure what it was that knocked out the PA twice within a period of 2 songs but fortunately after that point things went on without a hitch so whatever was wrong must have been properly corrected. Another point within the show Lindsey joked that we had made it through about 8 songs and the PA was fine so she had a good feeling for the rest of the night. She had caught a cold in Europe and was coughing quite a lot, hopefully she will be ok.
I was front row for this show and while it was nice to be that close, the speakers on the edge of the stage led to me missing out on being able to see some things. At one point there was a dog on stage, but because of the angle I was at, I could barely see him. Whenever Lindsey went up the risers in the center of the stage, I could only see the top of her head over the speakers/monitors. So while front row might be great for some shows, I learned it’s not great for all and I probably would have been able to see more from a few rows back. Also, everyone sat for the entirety of her show anyway, so I would have been fine if I opted to sit anywhere else, but sometimes that front row ticket is right there and right next to all the high priced VIP and you just have to snag it.
For “The Upside” she was joined by a member of the audience, Offbeat Bryce, for a special performance. Bryce joined her on stage playing a kazoo for the song after winning a contest. Overall the show was a fun time and I always love seeing Lindsey’s energy and now her acrobatics with the ring being added that she swings from and plays violin from. I was also incredibly impressed that she was able to keep up with all that she does being sick! Definitely very impressive.
