On a very rainy Houston night, Diann Marie and I ventured out into the soggy suburbs to take in Matt Nathanson, The Fray, and Train at the Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. A quick summary: all three acts were good, but Matt Nathanson is the only one that I will go out of my way to see again.

This was my second experience with Matt Nathanson. I previously saw him open an Indigo Girls show (whose two-trick pony act I’ve had the misfortune to experience thrice) with a solo acoustic set. This time he hauled out the electric guitar, backed by lead guitar, bass, and drums. The songs were great, the band was tight, the harmonies in tune. I will forgive Matt for using a backing track on at least one song (Horns? I don’t see horns? Do you see horns?). I guess everyone does that now. I’m sure Train and The Fray used them, but I didn’t notice.

Talking Fat Guy

Just as Matt started his set, a fat guy, his girlfriend (?) in tow, sat down in the row behind us, and started… TALKING. And TALKING. He talked non-stop for the entire night.

This I do not understand. He dropped $120 on a pair of tickets, $20 on garage parking (you honestly think he’s going to haul that ass in from a remote lot?), and probably another 50 bucks on beer. Then talks. Why? Why not just go to Denny’s and talk there? It’s a lot cheaper.

There are some people in the world (and there is a very high concentration in Texas) who are congenitally unable to STOP talking. Which I can understand; it’s like the guy who is unable to stop scratching his balls. But the Talking Guys seem to think that everyone is interested in what they have to say. And, I will admit, this guy’s squeeze was hanging onto every word he said. Diann Marie assured me that she was a date; a wife would have just told him to shut up and watch the show. I figure these two met on Match.com, eHarmony’s sleazy little sister (you go on eHarmony to find a spouse; you go on Match to find a Fuck Buddy), this was their third date, and he was trying to seal the deal on that Third Date Rule by dropping some serious coin on a concert in which he had zero interest. Oh well. If he succeeded in his quest, he probably suffered a massive coronary later that night.

Meanwhile, back on the stage, Matt Nathanson was making a genuine effort to connect with the audience, an activity disdained by today’s indie bands who just want to shimmer through their sets behind an aura of emotional detachment. Makes you wonder if they aren’t a bit dysfunctional in real life. Or maybe they just smoke too much weed. Matt’s willingness to engage his fans – and make a few new fans – is evident in his mid-show stroll through the stands.

This is clearly a guy who enjoys his job. And, yeah, he’s pretty sweaty. I’m willing to connect with him emotionally, but I wouldn’t want to touch him physically. Matt claimed that he got that way working out on an elliptical machine backstage before the show. But, hey, this is Houston where you can start sweating like a stuck pig just hauling the garbage cans down to the street in the morning.

My Good Friend Paul Shaffer

Just after Matt Nathanson’s set ended, we were joined by my good friend Paul Shaffer. I guess with Letterman off the air Paul has some free time to get out and enjoy some live music.

As we waited for The Fray to arrive, I was reminded of the famous photograph from the Apollo 8 mission, showing Earthrise beyond the barren, desiccated lunar surface. I also thought about the political cartoonist who, after the resignation of Richard Nixon, complained that it was impossible to caricature President Gerald Ford because Ford’s face bore an uncanny resemblance to the back of his thumb.

Drunk Girl

At this point we were enveloped in a massive thunderstorm and the peasants on the hill behind the stands were urged to come down and take the empty seats lest they be struck down by a thunderbolt hurled by an angry God who is fed up with them watching Duck Dynasty and The Kardashians. This resulted in a flood of Montgomery County Trailer Trash sweeping down from the hillside and filling every available opening. Diann Marie and I found ourselves seated beside a girl who, like the fat guy behind us, TALKED incessantly in the most rasping, annoying, fingernails-on-chalkboard voice that you can imagine. She also consumed two plastic bottles full of cheap red wine.

About midway through The Fray’s set, I leaned over to Drunk Girl and asked, “Why did you come to the concert? You’ve talked through the entire show. Why not just stay home and talk?”

Her response, loosely translated, went something like this: “Whirrgot my sister frumph Philadelphia anchoo thirty years old burrfff sheen four years greeooot murmood birthday…”

I just started laughing and said, “You’re drunk! You’re not even making sense!” To which she replied, “Radh yiach cheeorrrch…”

This is what cheap red wine will do to you, kids. Don’t end up like this:

I think she was trying to flip me the bird, but was too drunk to raise her middle finger. I swapped seats with Diann Marie (lucky you!) because she has infinitely more patience than I do. Drunk Girl then spent the rest of the evening complaining to Diann Marie that “Your husband is judging me. I don’t like your husband judging me.” At least that’s what we think she was saying. Sorry, Drunk Girl. I’m sure you are an excellent human being, but that night you were just an annoying drunk. Hey, we’ve all been there! And having been there I know that, about the same time Talking Fat Guy was succumbing to his coronary, you were throwing up red wine all over your sister’s car. And, if you lived through the night, you woke up with the sensation of being struck between the eyes repeatedly with a 5-pound ball peen hammer.

Now back to the show…

The Fray were technically good, but just didn’t do it for me. Lead singer Isaac Slade dutifully ran through the set list with the air of someone who would prefer to be somewhere else. When he followed in Matt Nathanson’s footsteps by walking about the Pavilion, he was obviously uncomfortable and could not wait to return to the safety of the stage. After a bit, the songs all started to sound the same and I was relieved when The Fray finally wrapped things up.

Now it was time for the main act, Train, which brought out…

Singing Selfie Lady

I have mixed feelings about Standing Up at concerts. In my Past Life, the whole point of going to a concert was to Stand Up and Raise Hell, Man! I remember an Outlaws concert in a dilapidated college gym, the entire crowd jumping up and down on rickety folding chairs. Don’t remember who I was with, but I could probably find her on Match.com if I looked hard enough. But these days, when you are at a place like The Woodlands Pavilion, where most people in the crowd got that jumping-up-and-down thing out of their system thirty-plus years ago, Standing Up needs to have a group consensus. Either everyone stands up, or everyone sits down. You just can’t have one overweight old girl standing up and blocking everyone’s view. But… That’s what my good friend Paul Shaffer and I got.

Still, I’m uncomfortable asking someone to sit down at a concert. Unlike talking, Standing Up is, you know, what you’re supposed to do at a concert. It’s in our DNA. Track down the most primitive tribe, start beating on a hollow log, and the natives will start jumping up and down. Does your foot start tapping when you hear a good song? That’s your DNA yelling, “Get up and dance, dumbass!”

And this lady’s DNA was yelling loudly that night. She was totally into Train. Completely oblivious to those behind her (that is, me and my good friend Paul Shaffer), she spent a great deal of the concert standing up and singing into her phone, getting a video selfie with the band in the background. Or more precisely, with the band’s image on the Jumbotron in the background. Here I’m going to borrow a line from Pete Vonder Haar’s review of a 2013 Mumford Brother’s show at the Pavilion: “She’s not filming the stage, she’s filming the Jumbotron. That’s like … filming your TV while recording the show to your DVR.” I guess the idea was that she would look like she was actually performing with the band. OK!

I have to admit that I started paying more attention to Singing Selfie Lady than I did to Train. At first, I was annoyed. But as the show progressed her act took on a halo of … inspiration. This was her night. She was in the show, man! Heck, she was the show for me and my good friend Paul Shaffer! By the time the concert ended she was completely spent: hair in her face, denim top soaked through with sweat. I hope her selfies were great, and I really wish that I could find them on YouTube.

Oh, and what about Train …

Train was good, probably very good. Train rolled out all the hits, and threw in covers of “Dream On” and “A Little Help From My Friends.” For the latter, they brought out Matt Nathanson and Isaac Slade (the “friends,” get it?). And once again, Isaac Slade was like, “Uh, do I have to be here? Here, Matt, you hold the microphone.” A late-in-the-show highlight was the trotting out of a group of kids, some pre-schoolers, to dance on the stage. I missed the motivation for this, but it was cute as heck and frontman Pat Monahan pulled it off nicely. After an “aww that’s soooooo adorable!” moment with one of the smallest girls, he said something like, “You have to leave now, you’re upstaging me.” Or as W.C. Fields put it, “Never work with children or animals.”

The show wrapped up, we all cheered, we all went home. And what did Diann Marie and I talk about on the drive back? Matt Nathanson, and the weird people around us. I don’t think The Fray or Train even made it into the conversation.

So here’s to you Matt Nathanson, Talking Fat Guy, Drunk Girl, Singing Selfie Lady, and my good friend Paul Shaffer. You gave me something worth writing home about.