TVD wasn’t launched in time to add to the hype about the Avett Brothers’ last-minute show Dec. 29 at the Cat’s Cradle, announced at midnight Dec. 28. Joining the Concord natives on the stage were Rhode Island’s very eclectic The Low Anthem and Durham’s Bombadil. The $40 tickets sold out within a half hour but TVD special contributor Bart Smith was there and had this to say:
I was relatively late to the Avett Brothers bandwagon—I started listening sometime between The Gleam and Emotionalism—which meant I had already mostly missed out on their days of playing smaller venues. The past few years I’ve passed on seeing them live because their sound just didn’t seem suited for the larger amphitheatres and coliseums they were playing. Sure, there was little chance of the band’s popularity waning to the point where they’d be playing small, local shows again, but I was at least hoping for a more intimate, indoor setting like Durham Performing Arts Center.
The Dec. 28 announcement that The Avett Brothers would be playing a surprise show the following night at Cat’s Cradle was a welcome surprise, a Christmas present that I wouldn’t have even thought to ask for from Santa the week before. The show itself was everything one could ask for from an Avett Brothers show. Clocking in at around an 1:45, the band played 19 songs from eight different albums along with two unreleased songs and two covers in front of a small but appreciative crowd that sang along with concert staples like “When I Drink” and “Talk on Indolence.” While the six-hundred-some people packed into Cat’s Cradle on a cold December night was far fewer than the tens of thousands that The Avett Brothers have grown accustomed to playing in front of, Seth Avett admitted that the room still felt as large and frightening as it had when the band first played there.
Support for the show was provided by indie folk band The Low Anthem and Durham-favorites Bombadil, playing their first official show after an 18-month hiatus as bassist Daniel Michalak dealt with worsening tendinitis in his hands.
Check out live videos of the Avetts playing “When I Drink” from the band’s 2006 EP The Gleam and the title track from 2009’s Rick Rubin-produced I and Love and You.
Avett Brothers 12.29.2010
Cats Cradle, Carrboro
Magazines – the Everybodyfields cover
Talk on Indolence – Four Thieves Gone
The Fall – Four Thieves Gone
Rainbow Stew – Merle Haggard cover
The Lowering (A Sad Day in Greenville) – Four Thieves Gone
January Wedding – I and Love and You
Shame – Emotionalism
Tin Man – I and Love and You
Matrimony – Four Thieves Gone
Down with the Shine – unreleased
Kick Drum Heart – I and Love and You
At the Beach – Mignonette
Pretty Girl from Raleigh – A Carolina Jubilee
And It Spread – I and Love and You
Head Full of Doubt / Road Full of Promise – I and Love and You
When I Drink – The Gleam
Sanguine – The Gleam
Traveling Song – Swept Away
Can You Not See – Undressed
I and Love and You – I and Love and You
Slight Figure of Speech – I and Love and You
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Paranoia in B Major – Emotionalism
Bella Donna – The Second Gleam
