Citizen Cope.

I guess it's about time I write about the Citizen Cope show in Raleigh.

First of all, it's easy to sum it up by saying it was amazing. I've always liked his sound (Side note: "Citizen Cope" refers to the lead singer, Clarence Greenwood, so he's a person, not a group. I didn't know this until Tuesday), but I never knew much about him or his music outside of a handful of songs. The show was at the Lincoln Theatre, so being a smaller venue, the tickets were a good deal and Amanda and I knew we'd be able to get close to the stage since it was general admission. In weighing all of this out, we decided it would be worth the money and the drive to catch the concert. We were right.

Doors opened up at 7, but we took our time trying to get there and stopped by an old friend's house. It was my first time going back to Raleigh since November, so I felt a tug of sadness and realized that I really do miss the place. Thinking about it though, it's more the people that I'm really wanting to see again soon. And the memories that I'm missing. But that's not what I'm writing about now, so no more tangents...

After driving around town for a bit, we got to the Lincoln Theatre at 7:30 and the line stretched down the street. My problem with shows is that I get to the ones I DON'T need to get to super early and nobody's there, but when I take my time, every ticketholder ends up being in front of me. As it turns out, this didn't matter, because as soon as we got inside, we crawled our way to the front of the group and ended up standing behind only one row of people.

The opening act was a chick named Mieka Pauley, and she rocked the stage with a solo acoustic performance. Her guitar playing was very Jack Johnson-esque, and she had a real chill vibe going on. She was definitely entertaining, starting strong by using her guitar to drum a beat and singing her heart out. The highlight of her performance came towards the end with a cover of Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah". She teared up during the song, and definitely did it justice.

Citizen Cope came on around 9:30 and the crowd went wild. It was his second night in town, and he recognized a few of the fans from the previous show, which was cool. I only knew about 5 of his songs going into the concert, but I immediately became a fan of everything else he did as he played. Most of his music is very anthem-like, and a lot of it has a marching feel to it, which is great. He was really good about getting the crowd involved, and everybody loved singing along.

Their version of "Let the Drummer Kick" had everybody bouncing their heads, and "Bullet and a Target" had everybody doing backup of the chorus while Cope sang the verse. Another highlight of the show came when he played the song "Holdin' On". I'd never heard it before, but it was slow, so I started swaying with Amanda, and as he got into singing, he said "I love it when people start touchin' on each other when I play this song" and looked right at us with a smile. The lyrics of the song really fit our situation, and after that, we officially found "our" song (cue the "awww"s).

After the show we stopped by the Village Draft House and chowed down on their fried pickles. They were amazing, and I freaked out even more when I realized it was Tuesday, so it was RIB NIGHT! Talk about the memories, eh? It was definitely a great way to end the evening, and we drove back to Greensboro talking about how great the show was, and how we'd found our song (cue the "awwww"s again. No shame here).

Definitely looking forward to the week ahead, but before that gets here, enjoy a few pics from the show.

Latas,
Drew