Upcoming Gigs

It’s not every day that I get free tickets to a show. To expand that, I guess it’s not every day that I get tickets to see a huge artist like Jason Mraz. And on that note, it’s not every day that you get to intern with an organization that represents artists like Jason Mraz and Jamie Cullum (a blatant shout out to my summer 2008 internship at Air).
I guess I’ll stop, but I was pretty damn excited when Jonny sent me a message asking if I would like free tickets to see Jason Mraz in my hometown of Pittsburgh, PA. Initially, I freaked out because I was living in New York City this summer and did not know if I could make the gig, but everything worked out.
I got myself down to the show this past Tuesday evening, and after being misdirected to the ticket window three times, I finally got in to catch the sweet jams of Jason’s opener, K’naan. K’naan was followed up the Pittsburgh favorite, Philadelphia native G Love and Special Sauce. Thanks to the unrelenting, unnecessary amount of construction constantly occurring in Pittsburgh, the enormous tent covering this outdoor venue had been removed, exposing concert goers to the rainy weather. Fortunately, this worked in G Love’s favor, making his grooves that much more slick.
After a Bushwalla introduction (whom I managed to wave to earlier while almost crashing my car parking), Jason finally appeared on stage. It was interesting to see what had changed since I had last seen him at Sheppard’s Bush Empire a year ago. While still playing many songs off of “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things”, I noticed that the introductions and bridges of these songs had become more intricate and developed for the live setting. Being the music geek that I am, I could not help but notice these changes that held the audience. Jason also brought his horn line, which I am huge fan of. The horn line, featuring a Pittsburgh native on trombone, played an additional show at the adjacent Hard Rock Café later that night.
Overall, what can I say? Great tickets, great show, great artist: reasons why after a year, the internship opportunity I had at Air still continues to excite me.

Kyle Smetanka (Air intern, May-August 2008)