The Metal Files

Chrissie Hynde rolled through Austin, TX last night at my favorite venue, ACL Live at The Moody Theater.  I was able to score front row balcony tickets and brought a friend who was back in town visiting her friends and family.  The show was dubbed as “A Night With Chrissie Hynde”, which would make one think there was no opener.  Ultimately, The Rails, which features her guitarist, opened up.  We decided to skip them and just be there for the 9PM start of her show.

I’m a moderate Pretenders fan but have always liked her voice.  I’m that guy who is basically only familiar with whatever I heard on the radio over the years, all of which I liked but not enough to buy the records.

Walking in and right before she hit the stage, they were announcing that no photos we allowed, which was fine by me.  It’s nice not to look at a bunch of phone screens during a show.

She went on promptly at 9PM and right into the first song, someone in the front row pulled their camera out and she walked to the edge of the stage and wagged her finger in disapproval.  That seemed to end it.  She opened with 2 Pretenders songs, Don’t Lose Faith In Me and Biker, neither of which I was familiar with.  Her voice sounded great and her backing band, as expected, was very good.  She played 8 songs from her new album, Stockholm, 13 Pretenders songs and a Kinks cover of I Go To Sleep.

They played some of the radio hits like My City Was Gone, Back On The Chain Gang and Don’t Get Me Wrong (a favorite of mine), but left off Brass In Pocket and Show Me (my favorite of theirs).  There wasn’t a lot of talking between songs and she played rhythm guitar most of the night.  Early in the set there was a guy in the front row with a tambourine and she finally said to the guy, “Is there a story to go with this?”  She waved the guy to the end of the stage and he told her that she had given that to him during a show 31 years ago.  She said, “I don’t believe you!”, laughed and signed it and handed it back to him.  About a song or 2 later, he was playing it along with the band and she motioned for him to stop.  haha.

It was a fun show and about 3/4 through the set, the floor crowd ended up just rushing the stage and she was cool with it.  Before the first encore, some woman jumped up on stage to get one of her guitar picks that had been dropped and tried to peel the setlist off of the stage.  Security grabbed her quickly and rolled her off the stage.  Before the second encore started, some other woman crawled on stage and tried to get a pick from the guitarist’s stand and quickly got rolled off of the stage.  WTF, people?  STAY OFF OF THE FUCKING STAGE!

Anyways, it was a good show and worth seeing if you’re even mildly a Pretenders fan.

Goodnight!

Edit this setlist | More Chrissie Hynde setlists