Foo Fighters | Concrete and Gold Tour | Nashville, Tennessee | May 4, 2018
Hello again loves!
I'm coming your way today with a fresh review of the Foo Fighters Concrete and Gold Tour from Bridgestone Arena. We drove up to Nashville straight after work Friday night to catch the show, and then drove straight back home so I was running on a pot of coffee to get me through the dreary Saturday after to edit all the photos and videos I managed to capture during the show. The first thing I have to say is that the sleep depravation is completely worth it! I have wanted to see the Foo Fighters for quite some time, but my schedule always conflicted including for this tour. The original date for this show was back in October of 2017 and I wasn't going to be able to make that show because it was on a Monday.
As I just mentioned, the band was originally scheduled to play Bridgestone Arena on October 23rd, and had to postpone the show due to a "family emergency" which Dave Grohl mentioned several times during the show. At one point I recall him stating "when Mom calls and says come home, I come home.", and he thanked the crowd several times and stated that "it was going to be a long night." Boy he was right on the long night part of his intro, the band took the stage at 8:30 and proceeded to play some of their biggest hits for nearly three hours.
As I mentioned above, I wasn't able to make the original date; however, when I saw the Foo Fighters would be in Nashville for this date I put it on my radar. Jon took it upon himself to actually purchase these tickets from Stubhub, I believe, and naturally they were resale tickets due to the rescheduled date. As you can see from the video to the right, our seats were legitimately the very last row in the 300 level seats, but we were there! We were running late getting to the show, so we were going to be missing part of The Struts performance; however, when we went to scan our tickets we had an issue and ended up completely missing their performance so I can't speak about their set other than their lead singer, Luke Spiller, joined the Foo Fighters on stage late in their set to perform 'Under Pressure'. From the little bit I could hear while we were getting out tickets sorted, they sounded like a fantastic performance and I really hate that we missed it but they are certainly on my list to catch in the future.
The show started with a rousing intro with Grohl asking the crowd if we were "ready for a long fucking night" because they had some making up to do. The intro was complete with some drums and shouts from Grohl and a seamless lead into 'Run', a single from the band's latest album Concrete and Gold. I loved the choice to open the show with 'Run' since the song has the opening lyrics of "Wake up/ Run for your life with me", I truly felt this was a perfect song to open a show with. Not to mention I definitely felt like I was running for my life trying to keep up with the show, and the energy of the crowd mixed with Grohl's jokes and crowd interactions. The band went from one song to the next until half way through 'The Sky Is A Neighborhood' when the band stopped playing long enough that the crowd thought that the song was over causing Grohl stating "I'm not done yet mother fuckers" which you can see in the video to the side. The band also had three extended band members on stage to provide wonderful vocal harmonies for songs such as 'The Sky Is A Neighborhood' and 'Dirty Water'.
As you can see in the setlist above, the setlist for Nashville only included four songs from the Concrete and Gold album which was released last fall, 'Run', 'The Sky Is A Neighborhood', 'Sunday Rain', and 'Dirty Water'. The set largely consisted of hit songs from the band through the years including one of my personal favorite songs, 'Learn To Fly'. Just by looking at the setlist above you can certainly see why the band was on stage for nearly three hours. My biggest critique of the show definitely came in the length of the show which was caused by a solo in nearly every song, not to mention there was a bit of a back and forth drum and guitar battle between Dave Grohl and Taylor Hawkins prior to the actual "Drum Solo". I know I definitely zoned out during this bit and when I came back from crowd watching and staring at the rafters of Bridgestone Arena I was confused that the bit was still going on. Technically I think this was the segue between 'Rope' and the drum solo, but it went on long enough for me to completely forget what was going on. As mentioned, the set included a entire drum solo in addition to this back and forth "battle". During this drum solo, the platform that the drum set was on raised up in preparation for 'Sunday Rain' which is vocally led by Taylor Hawkins.
One of my favorite parts of the evening occurred during 'Breakout', a song from the band's 1999 album "There's Nothing Left To Lose". Just before the band launched into another one of their solos, the stage went dark (completely planned) and the crowd lit the torches on their phones which you can see in the video to the side. The band continued the solo while Grohl got the crowd involved with their phone lights before continuing the song into the next chorus with the stage lights back on. I know me writing that doesn't quite describe the situation, so just do me a favor and watch that video.
Another fun segment of the show was during the band introductions. Each member of the band chose a song to play a bit of for their introduction. For example, Pat Smear was introduced (along with the ever present champagne bottle in the ice bucket) and the band launched into 'Blitzkreig Bop' by the Ramones. For his intro, Rami Jaffee began playing 'Imagine' while Dave Grohl went on about this being the perfect song for everyone to sing along to and how we should just all forget all our problems and come together for one night in the arena. Truly speaking from deep down and creating a message before he asked everyone to sing along with him and in a massive twist with true Foo Fighters fashion managed to mash 'Jump' with 'Imagine'. Yes, 'Jump' by Van Halen was mashed with 'Imagine' complete with rainbow lighting.
The last iconic moment from the show that I will recall for years to come was when Grohl invited a young boy on stage He had been calling out this young boy all night and calling him Fonzie, and finally he invited the young man up to the stage after his father started passing him up there anyway. Grohl was laughing but invited the "father of the year", as he called him, up to the stage as well while the son, I'm going to call him Fonzie as well, made it up there. The young lad had the time of his life showing off his impressive drum skills, and clearly young Fonzie didn't want to leave the stage. Every time we thought he was done, he would just start playing again. Grohl was certainly impressed by the young man's skills, and joked that Taylor would never top that. Eventually Grohl was able to convince young Fonzie and his father to head over to the side of the stage for an ice cold Coke, and the show finally continued.
The show certainly didn't disappoint, and was full of iconic moments that I know I will remember for years to come. As previously mentioned, our biggest critique of the show was the number of solos and pauses in the performance, but if you don't mind those things then then this show is for you. In general those things didn't bother me much, because I enjoy hearing a live performance that doesn't sound straight out of the studio; however, I did feel like I got lost and zoned out from time to time. The rescheduled Nashville date was technically the last date of this leg of the tour, but the Foo Fighters will be back on tour in Europe starting June 1 in Germany. The next date in the United States will be on July 7 in Camden, New Jersey. To see all dates in the tour visit the Foo Fighters website. For more videos and photos of the Nashville show, keep an eye on our Instagram page.
