Matt Nathanson ~ April 23, 2010 ~ St. John Fisher College ~ Rochester, N.Y.

Words and Photos by Joe Koch

It was almost two years ago that I experienced my first Matt Nathanson show. I was blown away; he was a combination of stand-up comedian and singer-songwriter. The way he personally interacted with the crowd made me feel that the experience was unique, compared to the previous or next show to follow.

On April 23, Matt’s show at St. John Fisher College was equally as impressive. This time he performed acoustically with his guitarist Aaron Tap accompanying him. Matt’s interaction with his fans seems to be totally spontaneous. From the minute he steps on stage, he starts choosing people out of the crowd and makes them part of his storytelling.

On this night, he started by picking on Jennifer Love Hewitt’s book, saying how dumb she was. Shortly after, he did a spoof on teen sensation singer Justin Beiber. He said he was going to try and write a Justin Beiber kind of song on stage, while Aaron beat-boxed into the mic. Are some of these skits rehearsed? In the middle of these shenanigans, he performed his songs — “Lucky Boy,” “To the Beat of Our Noisy Hearts,” Still” and “Car Crash.”

Many songs were requests from fans on Twitter or Facebook. He did play a few covers that are staples in his live sets — Rick Springfield’s “Jesse Girl” and James’ “Laid” both resulted in great sing-alongs.

Of course, there’s always someone screaming out “Freebird.” Actually, there were a number of people who did. So Matt and Aaron briefly attempted it, which led Aaron to show us his guitar skills by playing some bluesy riffs, while Matt made fun of John Mayer.

The most memorable song performances came when Matt said one of the most requested songs on Twitter for this show was “Bulletproof Weeks,” a song he doesn’t play that often. He said he doesn’t usually play it because he wrote it about his toughest break-up. Aaron left the stage, and Matt’s solo performance brought the gymnasium of a thousand people to a silence. Your attention is 100 percent on his lyrics. You start to feel his pain.

Towards the end someone yelled out “Come on Get Higher,” his most popular single. Matt said, “Really? I’ve got all these albums and that’s the one song you came here to hear? I think I’m gonna skip it tonight.”

I really hoped he wasn’t going to play it just to prove a point. But, one encore later and he gave them what they wanted — and also performed “Answering Machine.”

I didn’t get what I wanted, which was for him to play my favorite song, “Wedding Dress.” But, one thing’s for sure — there’s never a lull at a Matt Nathanson show.

For more info go to: www.mattnathanson.com/