Kaley Patterson
A&E Editor
@KaleyKayPatt
Cain’s Ballroom blacked out, then the crowd roared, cheered, clapped and rejoiced because City and Colour finally took the stage.
People packed the legendary Tulsa venue. There was hardly any room to sway to the songs, let alone sing along without belting in someone’s ear, but the crowd didn’t care. Dallas Green, the lead singer, was who everyone gave attention to.
I’ve listened to City and Colour since my high school days. The first song I heard was their classic “The Girl,” a heart-fluttering tune of love that can make any girl swoon.
Sadly, City and Colour wrapped up my concert season for this year, but they did it with an enormous bow.
City and Colour started off the night with a full band and played a couple of songs from their latest album, “The Hurry and The Harm.” My favorite song from the album, “Harder Than Stone,” was performed beautifully.
My favorite lyrics of “Harder Than Stone” are in its ending chorus.
“When my time comes,” it sounds, “when I was young I didn’t know too much. I thought that I could rule the world. Then I grew up, I found out life was hard – harder than stone.”
When Green performs, you can see the emotion in his face. He takes you back to the place he was when he wrote the songs – times of joy, loss, discontent, uncertainty and self-loathing.
Green played a couple of his older songs by himself – an intimate one-on-one conversation. He performed the crowd favorite “The Grand Optimist.” At the end of the song, Green let the crowd sing the low murmuring of the ending lyrics, “I guess I take after my mother.”
The crowd cheered especially loud when Green announced his next song to perform was his classic “Comin’ Home.” The song is about his travels and how he has been so many places, but nothing is better than going home with the hope of seeing someone meaningful. Green let the crowd belt out the heart aching lyrics, “Will it be my heart, or will it be his?”
The band rejoined Green to play a couple more songs from their newest album, as well as their previous ones: “Sometimes,” “Little Hell,” “Bring Me Your Love” and “Live.”
Neither the band nor Green spoke much; they just played and played and played. On one occasion, Green approached the crowd with gratitude and explained that the concert was his first time back at Cain’s, or Oklahoma for that matter, in eight years.
City and Colour ended their set with “Death’s Song” from their newest album. Every band I’ve seen live performs an encore, and they usually take awhile to get back on stage, but City and Colour took no time at all.
The band came back out and played three more songs, including the first song I ever heard by them, “The Girl.”
“But you don’t ask for no diamond rings,” it sounds, “no delicate string of pearls; that’s why I wrote this song to sing, my beautiful girl.”
I checked City and Colour off my list, and their show was better than I had dreamed.