OneRepublic in Bern

I know, OneRepublic are only really OneRepublic as a band. But what can I say – Ryan Tedder. This guy is amazing! The energy, the songwriting talent, great voice and yes, he’s looking good as well. I was so looking forward to it and hyper, whilst being on the way to the concert at Festhalle Bern. OneRepublic had returned again to Switzerland for their Native tour.

I arrived at the location and actually thought, that almost one hour after doors had opened, I would more or less just walk in. No way! Huge queue. Luckily it was moving a lot faster than thought in this moment. And what I love at Festhalle: It totally doesn’t matter, how many people are standing in front of the stage, you always simply walk into the front rows without pushing or queue-jumping. And when support act James Walsh finally entered stage by 7.30 pm, I was standing sidewards of the stage in 2nd row. Great spot, great view.

James Walsh, singer/songwriter form England and frontguy of the band Starsailor. Next to songs by the band, he played his own ones. Just typical singer/songwriter style. It sounded nice and some of the songs I liked a lot, but I’ve got to say, I liked Josh Kumra, who’s been there last time in Zurich, a lot better. Still I was annoyed, how disparagingly some reacted to him. He was fitting well into the programme and tried to animate people to go along. As soon as James Walsh left stage around 8 pm, it disappeared behind big white curtains. Stage change for the OneRepublic concert started.

Quite in time at 8.30 pm the intro started. The concert began with “Don’t Look Down”. The curtains were still up, you could see the shades of the band behind. The curtain fell then and the stage seemd huge and rather empty. In the background either the currant concert was shown or videos. They continued with “Light It Up” and then cheering when through the crowd, when the first tunes of “Secrets” sounded. Hit after hit followed in best pop/rock manner: “All The Right Moves”, “What You Wanted”, “Stop and stare”, “Apologize” or “Counting Stars”. Even you hadn’t seen OneRepublic live before and neither are owning any CDs by the band, there was barly any title on the setlist, you wouldn’t know.

The catwalk in the middle, I only noticed when Ryan went over it. Once he played the guitare on it, once he was hitting the keys of the piano. Or they sat down on stools in the front part of the stage, playing unplugged, very intimate, with a huge picture of Bern shown on the screens. For the first time they had time to do sightseeing in the Swiss capitol. They liked it a lot, but generally Switzerland. Ryan also told, that he always wished to be somebody’s “soundtrack of life” one day and started another hit with “Good Life”. He kept running and jumping over the stage with so much energy, took videos with fan phones, climbing on speakers or the shaking piano, until he almost lost his breath. But the band couldn’t be stopped.

As an encore we got “Feel Again” and Starsailor’s “Good Souls”, Ryan wished he had written it himself, as a duet with James Walsh. When they said goodbye for good with “If I Lose Myself” after 1,5 hours and disappeared from stage, people were standing in the white conffetti rain kind of in a spell and it took a moment until everyone realized, that they won’t come back. Latest when security started quickly to throw everyone out with a barrier tape, even the last one got it.

Got to say, the atmosphere back at Komplex Zurich was better, but generally the concert was again incredibly great and OneRepublic gave everything. Great songs, simple but fabulous show. I hope they’ll return soon.

Act: OneRepublic
Datum: 19.02.2014
Event: Native-Tour
Ort: Festhalle Bern
Zeit: 19.30 Uhr
Türöffnung: 18 Uhr
Support Act: James Walsh

Videos you can find on YouTube