Aaron Lewis The Venue Horseshoe Casino Solo Acoustic Review

Thursday, February 25, 2010
By Aaron Keker

THE VENUE, Hammond – Aaron Lewis entered The Venue wearing a Jack Daniel’s t-shirt and jeans. As Aaron approached the bar stool, he grabbed one of the four acoustic guitars and opened the evening with “Please.”

Aaron Lewis attempted to dazzle the audience with songs like “Running in Circles,” “Country Boy,” “Massachusetts” and “Anywhere but Here.”

I was dazzled by Aaron Lewis’s latest material and hopefully those songs will find a place on his solo album.

In every Aaron Lewis acoustic show that I have attended, the audience has always shouted out songs for Aaron to perform. It’s a given!

However, certain audience members were shouting obnoxiously. In fact at one point Aaron remarked, “Why is everybody yelling at me?”

The majority of shout-out requests were for Alice in Chains’ “Nutshell.” You could tell by Aaron Lewis’s reaction that he did not want to perform that song and I was extremely pleased that he never did. Why should Aaron Lewis continually be confined to covering that song?

Aaron Lewis managed to pull off cover songs of “Rainbow Connection,” “Turn the Page” and “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” Aaron even imitated the voice of Kermit the Frog as he sang “Rainbow Connection.” The tragic thing about Aaron performing these covers is that the audience seemed to participate more on his Poison cover than any of Staind or Aaron Lewis’s solo material. I am certain there were others who may have participated and sang alongside Aaron Lewis on every song; however they were not in my section.

Before Aaron Lewis performed “Blow Away,” Aaron lit his cigarette and remarked, “Old or new?” The audience remarked with an emphatic, “Old!” Aaron responded, “Do you not like our new music?

Aaron Lewis did perform newer music like “Something Like Me” and “Tangled Up in You,” but I was a little disappointed that Aaron Lewis didn’t perform “The Way I Am,” “Believe,” “Raining Again” and “The Corner.” These are really good songs too! Nevertheless, Aaron Lewis had an astounding performance even with the major collision, which happened to be the rambunctious audience.

The audience distraction may have even caused Aaron Lewis to slip on a chord on “Everything Changes.” I wonder if those talkative individuals realize how selfish they were and that they ruined the reputation of everyone else who was quiet.

For the last song on Aaron Lewis’s set list, he unplugged his guitar and microphone and was going to perform “Intro” without electricity. The rambunctious audience finally received an ultimatum, “If you’re not going to be quiet, I will not play it.”

This by far was the worst energetic audience that I have ever encountered for an Aaron Lewis concert. Unfortunately, it took an ultimatum by Aaron Lewis to get those rambunctious individuals to shut-up. I am really astonished that Aaron Lewis kept it together and continued to perform even with this huge distraction. This begs the question, why should Aaron Lewis ever return to The Venue in Hammond, Indiana? Below is the set list for Aaron Lewis.

The Venue:

1. “Please”
2. “So Far Away”
3. “Running in Circles”
4. “Country Boy”
5. “Everything Changes”
6. “Something Like Me”
7. “Blow Away”
8. “Let it Out”
9. “Rainbow Connection”
10. “Reality”
11. “Turn the Page”
12. “Every Rose Has Its Thorn”
13. “Zoe Jane”
14. “Massachusetts”
15. “Anywhere but Here”
16. “Outside”

Encore:

17. “Tangled Up in You”
18. “It’s Been Awhile”
19. “Intro”