With the Steelers and Ravens playing Monday night, Megan grabbed some tickets for the Citizen Cope show, and that became my Sunday night excursion. The show was at the Carnegie Library of Homestead Music Hall. The quaint 1,022-seat venue was a pretty cool little venue that would be perfect for any solo show – which was what was on the menu for my Sunday – a Citizen Cope acoustic show.

While I’m not a huge Cope fan, I attribute my lack of fandom to not having a lot of his music (not that there’s much). I do have one of his albums, The Clarence Greenwood Recordings, and it’s pretty decent. I absolutely his song, Sideways, but I always thought that a lot of his songs run together and don’t really change pace too much, which tends to give his music that “every song sounds the same” reputation with me. Of course, I’m going to revisit some of it now, after the show because there were definitely some great songs in the mix.

Anyway, the show was decent. He played for about an hour-and-a-half, but it was more than enough for me. As previously stated, a lot of Cope’s songs are pretty slow and simple, which are sometimes fine, but I felt like the show ran at a snails pace at times. He wasn’t really a vibrant performer and didn’t engage the crowd very much. He more or less stood up there with minimal movement, strummed simply structured songs, and sang. While his voice was actually excellent and many of his songs are really good, the idea of him putting on a solo acoustic show should’ve really been reserved for a place like Club Café in the Southside, as he didn’t even sell out the music hall.

While it may sound like I’m bashing the whole thing, Cope just sort of gets a bad grade because the last show that I saw was Eddie Vedder’s solo shows in Chicago and because I’m not really all that into Cope. Granted, Vedder’s been a big time front man for almost two decades and made his reputation from swinging from lighting rigs and being sort of a spaz (albeit 500x less than Iggie Pop), but Cope just didn’t captivate the crowd. He was as stiff as a board, and while the music was excellent, he just made me feel like he didn’t want to be up there, or that he was uncomfortable. Of course, in watching him online with his band, he’s really not much more of an entertainer, but at least with a band there’s more interest going on. Despite some quality songwriting and great voice, his minimalist skills on guitar, his lack of energy in both song and body language, and his nearly non-existent crowd interactions just made me feel like doing solo acoustic gigs aren’t his thing. Again, this is a highly skewed viewpoint thanks to Mr. Eddie Vedder’s captivating performances a month before. I think I just had high expectations of walking away a bigger fan than when I walked into the show – similar to how I felt after I saw G. Love and Special Sauce at Lollapalooza two years ago.

Regardless, I don’t think I would rush to see another solo acoustic Citizen Cope show any time soon. I’d definitely give his whole band a shot, though, and I’m going to pick up the rest of his music because there are definitely some gems in the mix.