Three weeks after the last Rival Kings concert I was off to Kofmehl in Solothurn to finally see the band live again. Well yes, three weeks seem not too long, but for favourite bands it’s endlessly long. You may know that?! And besides, the release show has been the last concert with guitare player Dani. We were quite curious, who was going to play with the band from now on. That was somehow a crucial reason to go to see Rival Kings this evening.
It was quite a stupid evening: So many concerts taking place and the biggest conflict: Rival Kings / The Souls. Rival Kings were playing closer in Solothurn and had the new guitare player with them. I wasn’t sure when I could go and see the next The Souls concert, but I finally decided for Rival Kings anyway.
Well, at least I was wondering how many people would come to see the concert in Solothurn. It was their first concert there. How well known were Rival Kings in Solthurn actually? SRF3 played some of their songs up and down, as well as some other radios, but that didn’t mean anything. You can play to many radio listeners 10x the same song, by the end of the day they still don’t know the band. The moment the six of them entered stage, the Raumbar was well crowded though.
Though first the support act played: Ta mère, a local indie rock / garage rock band of three members. They had some well recognisable fans with them: The front row was wearing shirts with big TA MERE prints. The band also brought their new stylist, who had painted them their faces black’n’white for the show. Was looking great, but I still won’t become a fan. I just didn’t like their music well enough.
So, the new guitare player of Rival kings is called Michi, more exactly Michael Wespi. The confusicion of the evening, I tell you. “Huh, Michael Wespi? – But what? – He looks so differently then?”, were about my thoughts. Thanks to Facebook I got a quickly an answer to this: The Michael Wespi now standing on stage with Rival Kings indeed isn’t the one I first confused him with. The one I got an album from standing in my cd shelf at home, is another one. But what was even crazier: The one I confused him with was actually, with the new name “Native”, standing on stage in Zurich on this very evening as a support act of The Souls. Can that be a coincidence? Somehow crazy, if you ask me. Haha.
By the way, it wasn’t Michi’s first performance with the Rival Kings, but he had played it in Vienna before. But it was his first show with them in Switzerland. It fitted. Though at this time it probably hadn’t settled in our heads yet, that there really was a new guitar player for longterm now. The concert was grat though. Raumbar was crowded well and the atmosphere nice. Of course, it was different then at the last concert at Schüür, more quite. But the audience was listening. The setlist was almost the same like at the album release, a little shorter. They started with their album title song “War” again, followed by new and older songs: Like “Fever”, “Back in time”, “Heroes” or well “Walls” and “On The Run”. If it was for me, they could playe some others again, or some additional older songs. I miss the older ones.
There were a few new announcements, but differently than announced at the last concert, frontman Etienne obviously hadn’t found another one for “Echoes” yet. Not really anyway. But another song got one, I already thought it was “Echoes”. How ever there was always something to smile about throught the whole concert.
And finally after “25” there was even another, additional encore. The band came down into the audience and played the accoustic version of “War” as a final. Yeah, by know probably every band’s doing that, but it so incredibly beautiful. At least, if the band can do it: Just their voices, very harmonic and euphonic! Rival Kings are totally able to do it and the version of “War” is fantastic.
Have a listen here:
more videos you can find on my Youtube-Playlist
Yes, at this point none could know yet, that the band would have had to cancel their next concert at Dynamo Zurich due to illness and for me the next Rival Kings concert won’t take place before the new year. If you want to join then, check out the dates on www.rivalkings.net. And infos about the support you can find on Facebook.
If you like to see more pictures, there are some nice ones on the Kofmehl page.
