Taylor Hanson at the Hotel Cafe
Katie 
Earlier this month we found out that Taylor Hanson would be doing 2 solo shows at the Hotel Cafe in Los Angeles, CA. Before I even was fully awake I had bought tickets for both February and March and figured that things would fall into place later, and sure enough they did. Thursday night I flew into LA and stayed near LAX. I ordered food and went to bed, even though it was about 8pm LA time I was still on east coast time. Friday morning I tried to sleep in as much as I could to try and shift my time zones a bit knowing that I’d need to be awake for the show and then met up with friends who had flown in that morning for brunch before heading to do the Warner Brothers studios tour.
One of my favorite things is to see houses from movies and TV, so I got quite a bit of that on the WB tour – including from Gilmore Girls and Pretty Little Liars (which was the same houses, for the most part) I left real Connecticut for fake 15 degrees warmer California “Connecticut”. We also got to see Young Sheldon’s “Texas”, the fake “New York” which actually does look quite realistic and Abbott Elementary’s “Philly”. They also had a facade of the Full House house that was used for promos for Fuller House. After the tram tour you go into a little museum area with some Sinners stuff, Animation, costumes and fun photo ops. Then you take another tram to the Friends couch and fountain (we opted out on this photo op as none of us were Friends fans and we did a different couch photo op in the museum) and then checked out the DC area, Harry Potter (where I got sorted into Hufflepuff? Please.) before being dumped out into the gift shop.
Then it was time to head over for something to eat before the show. It was much colder than we were all anticipating it being, but fortunately the venue opened doors early. The Hotel Cafe is very small, caps out at about 200 people. There are 3 rows of tables in the front and then standing room behind that. Posters for the shows were being sold. The show was slated to start at 8, but started a bit late. I really wasn’t sure what to expect going into this show or how I was going to feel – we aren’t sure exactly what is going on with Hanson as a band – it seems like they will be taking some time off of playing some shows together but we don’t really know for how long and what is going on there. I didn’t expect we’d get any details from Taylor about that (we didn’t).
When Taylor did come out, he started the show with the song “Tonight” and for a bit I thought I was just going to sit there crying for the whole show – but after a few songs in I got my bearings (and I think he did too) and I was able to enjoy myself. For his second song he did Tinted Windows “Kind of a Girl” which brought up the question – it’s a cover when Hanson plays it, but is it a cover when Taylor plays it? He dedicated the song to his friend Adam who had been in Tinted Windows and passed away and when the crowd seemed sad about his passing he said something like we shouldn’t be sad because we had all of Adam’s music that we were able to share together. In addition to Hanson songs, he played some covers including Billy Joel’s Piano Man, Ray Charles You Don’t Know Me, Dancing in the Street, and Steve Winwood’s Roll With It. 2 of which were brand new that he hadn’t done before. He mentioned to the crowd that he loved them several times throughout the set and that he knew who his true friends are when you say you’re throwing a party and see who shows up. He also made a comment “I keep playing like there’s a band behind me” so like me, he wasn’t used to the change yet either.
At one point in the show he realized playing at the piano he had his back to most of the crowd and turned to use the keyboard and then ended up taking some requests from the crowd, noting that some may have to wait for next month’s show and that show would be different than tonight’s. Requests included Georgia, Crazy Beautiful and Every Word I Say. There was a request for MMMBop and he said while he loved the song it was “too soon” which was a joke but get ready for that comment to be misconstrued at an internet fan group near you. He also threw in Get Up and Go which I don’t believe was a request and he had said he didn’t think he was going to play it but I did hear from others who had been there during soundcheck that he did check it. He ended the set, despite the crowd trying to keep him there for even longer, ‘I want to leave before this gets old’, with String Theory’s Reaching for the Sky.
There was one other song on the setlist that he skipped – a cover that seemed to be labeled “Round Circles” which we think may have been Will It Go Round in Circles? Which seems like it may have been something we could see him covering. We’ll have to see if it makes an appearance next month or not. The “&You” part of “Taylor Hanson & You” we think was that a lot of the songs had sing a long “whoa ohs” and the like for a lot of crowd sing a longs and participation. There are probably more of those for next month as well, but we’ll see what he has up his sleeve as he said there’d be more music to share…
After the show we hung out a bit to discuss how we felt about things, if his comments meant anything (not really) and if he’d come by to say hey or not (he did not). Our LAX hotel was about 45 minutes away from the venue so we made our way outside to grab a ride – which was supposed to be a woman but was not… debated getting some hotel lobby overly priced snacks and made our way to bed before our 6:30am wake up call to make it to the airport in the morning for our whirlwind trip back home.
At first I was a bit bummed I couldn’t have stayed in LA a bit longer, but I beat a small snow storm home that gave us an inch or two of snow overnight and we are prepping for a blizzard that is supposed to bring 1-2 FEET of snow so I would probably have gotten stuck out there a lot longer than I had planned for should I had decided to stay any longer than I did. Also fun was that my layover was in Tampa – the exact same gate and flight I took home last week from the cruise… which I still have no written about but coming to this blog… soon.