Joshua Radin in Bern

Dimmed light, gentle gittering candles and wonderful folky songs. The audience was sitting quitely listening, inbetween there was cheering, some burst into storms of enthusiasm. Before the concert I had rather doubted, that it would become such a beautiful Wednesday evening.

I sat at Bierhübeli and had no idea what to expect. I had bougt a standing ticket, but was sitting then. The whole Bierhübeli was actually arranged with seats. Definitively never seen Bierhübeli like that before. Is it maybe always like that with Joshua Radin? Or did they arrange seats, so it would look like more? Cos when I actually received the newsletter and they gave away a free ticket for each bought one, this didn’t seem the best sign. I expected a small audience. The seated area though was crowded to the back then.

I had discovered Joshua Radin about 10 days ago on the website of Mainland Music while browsing. Just had a look, what was coming up and had a listen to him. I liked the song on the website and remembered, that Loads of Music already had been raving a lot about him. So I simply bought a ticket. I didn’t know any more songs than this one before the concert.

Rachael Yamagata opened the evening as a support and like for Joshua Radin it was her first visit in Bern. She accompaned herself on the keyboard or on guitare. With an impish smile she mentioned, that she was from Woodstock – yes THIS Woodstock – and made the audience laugh with her tellings and stories about ex-boyfriends and dangerous slippings. What also was topic no. 1 in her songs – love and ex-boyfriends. On the one side soft and quite pieces, then quite agressive ones as well. A very funny and entertaining woman, who thrilled the audience with her rough voice during her 40mins performance. I quite liked her, but Joshua Radin definitively even more.

The former art teacher entered the stage with both his band mates Brandon Walters (guitare and keyboards) as well as Chris Farney (bass and drums), put his drink on the stool next to him. This stool was during the whole concert only there to hold his drink. He grabbed his guitare and already after the first two songs he definitively had me convinced, with each other song even more. The US american musician calls his music „whisper rock“. Calm, folky songs with super nice melodies and great lyrics. He was super funny, kept joking with the audience and his band mates. I was told though, that this was rather new and he was usually not that funny. Maybe it was the jetlag? Though he was always jetlagged, he said. Whiskey would help against it. For that matter he asked, if he was looking super tired? The straight honest person, who answered „yes“ loudely, could only be German speaking Swiss. The French would have politely been fiddling. He tried to tell the German and the French speaking apart, as well as remembering some words in each language. He told about his city walk in the afternoon and gave clues, where to get the best coffee in the city. Really likable. Next to many older songs, they also played several new songs, that didn’t even really had any titles yet. For the last few songs he asked the audience then to get up, because he would have fallen asleep to his own slow songs with the jetlag, so he palyed uptempo ones.

It was a very nice atmosphere and an incredible great evening. After the concert he would have taken some time for the audience, but it was already pretty late and I had to head home. Go and listen to Joshua Radin. He’s worth it.

Bandwebseiten:
Rachael Yamagata
Joshua Radin