What’s the Hootenanny Tour? Well, it involves Weezer playing six acoustic songs, surrounded by 200 fans all singing along while jamming with the band on their own instruments. provided.
To get access to the show, which was hosted by 1077 The End, fans had to apply to be part of the performance by letting the station know what instrument they planned on bringing along. For those who did not bring instruments, maracas, shakers, finger tambourines and kazoos were
This meant for one hour a few hundred people got to be a part of Weezer and take part in a recording session with the band. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the set was recorded for use on a future Weezer CD.
Playing along with the band was sort of like playing a real life game of Rock Band. But instead of playing a video game along with a few friends, watching my digital avatar kick out the jams on the faux instrument I typically controlling from my couch, I was playing a real instrument along with 199 other people (if you consider the kazoo a real instrument) and I wasn’t watching a fake band on TV, I was watching frickin’ Weezer in real life.
The variety of instruments people brought along made for some awesome musical accompaniment to some of the almighty =W=’s power pop-rock songs. For example, “Beverly Hills” had a violin and kazoo solo (Ear Candy helped rock the kazoo solo in case you’re curious) and “Say It Aint So” had an awesome accordion addition thanks to a member of local band The Lashes.
If you want to know what everything sounded like, you can listen to the session on The End’s Web site and there are also pictures of the session here.
Speaking of local bands, the local scene was well represented with multiple Seattle groups on hand. Members of Tennis Pro, Schoolyard Heroes and Speaker Speaker were in the crowd along with The Lashes gang. I was also told some folks from Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head and Kay Kay and His Weathered Underground, were there too, but I didn’t spot them. Aside from the accordion there were French horns, a bassoon, vibraslap, cellos, an oboe, trombones, saxophones, slide whistles, maracas, xylophones, cowbells and plenty of other crazy instruments represented.
After the short set, =W= frontman Rivers Cuomo mentioned the Seattle fans was the most musically impressive group on the tour (the band also took the Hootenanny on the road to San Francisco, Portland and a handful of other west coast cities). I am guessing part of why Cuomo was so impressed was due to the number of trained musicians playing along.
While Ear Candy definitely wasn’t one of those trained musicians (actually, embarrassingly enough, Ryann Donnelly of Schoolyard Heroes had to show me how to play a kazoo), here is my song-by-song breakdown of it was like sitting in on a recording session with Weezer:
“Pork And Beans” — This was the only song that was recorded twice during the session. The crowd hummed the melody and shouted the chorus. Cuomo conducted the crowd throughout the song, raising his hands higher and higher to have the 100 or so vocalists who weren’t blowing into an instrument raise their voices to reach the climax of the chorus.
“Island In The Sun” — For this song I decided to give into my inner musician’s instinct (which apparently I had just discovered, since I have no musical talent whatsoever) and try my hand at the maracas. A kazoo just didn’t seem right for this sunny-day song. Everyone sang the “hep heps” and Cuomo called the recording “Saucy” after it was complete.
“Creep” — Bassist Scott Shiner sang this classic Radiohead song and he nailed it. Cuomo gave a helping hand by singing the chorus along with the crowd. I mostly hummed along and swayed back and forth during this song because Schoolyard’s Donnelly, who I was sitting next to, was lightly singing the song and I didn’t want to botch her vocals with my out-of-tune voice.
“Say It Aint So” — This wasn’t the best-sounding song of the night but it was my favorite to sing. I stayed away from the kazoo again and opted out of shaking my maracas too. I simply sang my lungs out to a song I had been singing along to since I was 14. And singing along to the real life Weezer, instead of the band that has been trapped inside stereo for the last 16 years, was my personal highlight of the day.
“El Scorcho” — A classic from “Pinkerton” the recording engineer asked Cuomo if he thought the crowd needed any direction and Cuomo responded that “everyone knows this one,” and he was right.
End DJ Harms kicked things off by banging a gong, which was 100 percent appropriate. Cuomo commented that “we should’ve originally recorded it that way.” The crowd took it from there and it became a romp through Weezer’s glorious past. Oddly, the song was sung by guitarist Brian Bell, not Cuomo. But if I remember correctly, the last time Weezer played Seattle Bell sang “El Scorcho” too, so maybe Bell singing the song is the norm in the Weezerverse.
“Beverly Hills” — One my least favorite =W= songs was transformed into a fantastic, show-stopping set closer. Initially the crowd was supposed to stomp along in a “We Will Rock You” fashion to the rhythm, but that idea got nixed. I think it was because it was too loud.
Originally the girls were going to sing the male part of the call and response chorus while the guys sang the “gimme gimme” part that has female vocals, but that got nixed too by Cuomo.
Then of course there was solo. Me, Donnelly, Schoolyard bassist Jonah Bergman, Stranger scribe Megan Seling and a few other Weezer fans rocked the daylights out of the solo while blowing into a microphone above our heads with the accompaniment of a string section. It was a great memory to take away from a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
