Ruben Studdard at The Kate

Thursday night Ruben Studdard came to The Kate.  He played for about an hour and a half doing 10 songs.  Most of them were covers.  Almost all of them got a story about why he was singing it, and most of those stories went back to his Mama.  After the first 2 songs he said he was not used to being the one having to carry the whole show lately as he had been on tour with some legends and he just had to come out, do his song, have the crowd go “Was that Ruben? It looked like Ruben” and get off the stage.  He also said he was feeling every minute of his 47 years and had woken up at 6:30am.  He seemed a bit annoyed when the crowd didn’t stand when he told them they could – then said he gave instructions that weren’t followed and said that we all were like “Thanks for the suggestion”, but by the end of the show he had most of the crowd up and dancing.  He went off on a couple of tangents – one being about how he wanted some Air Jordan shoes and once his Mama saw the price she said no way – which he looped back into a story about how he was supposed to be babysat by his cousin so his Mama could go to a concert and his cousin had a date so poor little Ruben got dragged to see Luther Vandross.  I found him to be very funny with his stories and understood most of his references from growing up – but it seemed to fall flat with some of the rest of the crowd and he kept saying he was done with us all and shaking his head.  Overall the show was a really fun night, I think he ended up only playing 1 original song and mostly Luther covers, but he did a great job with all of them!