Ben Kweller and Pete Yorn

On Sunday, I ventured into the vacuous gap between Norman and Oklahoma City to attend the Pete Yorn and Ben Kweller concert at the Diamond Ballroom. It was my first time at the venue. On first arriving, one is struck by the gravel parking lot and the vehicle-swallowing potholes one must traverse in order to access it. The building itself looks exactly like it was designed to be a skating rink -- cinderblocks with blue diamonds decorating the sides, long and low, with "DIAMOND" spelled out in white lights above the entrance.

The tickets mistakenly said the show started at 8, and a mystified opening band called The Wellspring started at 7:30 despite the bare handful of people that were present. It was their last night on tour with Ben Kweller and Pete Yorn, and the guys had decided to prank them by covering their instruments in some kind of powder. At the moment they started playing after having described this, some techies ran back out and dusted the drumset again. The drummer (whose name was Lovejoy) took it in good grace, and just kind of tilted his snare so that most of it would fall off on the backbeat. Their set wasn't very memorable, but I enjoyed it at the time. It was kind of generic indie rock, three pieces, where the bassist sometimes switched to piano.

Ben Kweller came on promptly and rocked out as usual. He always brings a rack full of nearly identical, beaten-to-hell acoustic guitars, but only ever plays one during a show. His characteristic strumming pattern wears the finish off of his guitars above the sound hole and beyond the pick guard. He loves to distort his acoustic, and he hops and dances and spins while he plays. This is what is excellent about Ben Kweller: he does not take himself seriously, either on stage or in person. He will meet every fan that shows up and wants to wait in line by the merch booth -- and then, instead of looking bored and scribbling a signature before moving to the next person in line, he will look you in the eye and see what you have to say.

The show was good. He played cuts from all his major records, including most of my favorites. The set was guitar-heavy. I think he only played two songs on piano. "Sundress" is usually a crowd favorite on piano but was transposed to guitar for this one. It's a fairly poppy love song whose main point seems to be "I'll do anything you want me to do". When a bunch of girls in the back started squealing during the song, I wondered if something momentous had happened -- and as it turns out, someone had proposed during the middle of it. Last time that happened at a show I was at, it was during Ben Folds' "The Luckiest". Conspicuously absent from the setlist were "Thirteen" and, my personal favorite, "Wasted and Ready".

Toward the end of the show, Alex came back from wherever he'd been, with a shot of tequila. I assumed it was for him until he started yelling at Ben to take it. I didn't think this plan would work at all. Three songs later, and Ben Kweller is playing "Penny on a Train Track" when a security guard starts hassling the girl next to us in the front row for taking a video. He stops playing in the middle of the song and addresses the security guy through the mic, saying he didn't mind the video being taken. The security guard looked pissed to have had his authority questioned, but backed off. Ben starts the song again, but stops almost immediately, saying that he got distracted and then realized what time it was, and he needed to be done. Alex starts shouting about the shot again, and Ben Kweller says "All right, so I'm out of time. I'm going to take that shot, and then I'm going over to the merch booth. Come say hi." And so he reached across the five or six feet between the stage and the barrier to take the cup Alex was passing him, just in time to avoid the same disgruntled security guard trying to snatch it away. It turned out that Alex had been to the bar and the merch booth asking about how to buy Ben a drink, and all the merch guys had told him was that Ben liked tequila. The security guards had refused him completely, and so were even more pissed than before about not being listened to.

Set change wasn't very long, and Pete Yorn came out with his drummer and a guitarist and a bassist. I had only heard the first half of his very first album before the show. Previous setlists had indicated he was still playing mostly songs from his first record, which was 10 years old. I found this intriguing. Either he hadn't made anything interesting since then, or his fans were extraordinarily loyal or...I didn't know. The first record is called Musicforthemorningafter, and he, true to my expectations, played most of it.

In contrast to Ben Kweller's performance, Pete Yorn's crew took themselves pretty seriously. I don't think anyone but Pete smiled -- which may have been a reflection of his tyrannical rule, but I doubt it. Structurally, his music is pretty straightforward rock, and while I like his lyrics they're sometimes kind of repetitive. The guy next to me screamed "You're awesome, Pete!" or "I love you, Pete!" at the top of his lungs during every song break. And, considering we were in the front row, I'm sure Pete was pretty tired of being screamed at.

He was losing his voice, and continually surprised when people knew the names of his songs, or recognized tracks from the first record. It was his first time to come to Oklahoma (on tour, at least) and so maybe he was surprised to have any fans here. Maybe he underestimates his own fame, though by the number of t-shirt designs for sale, I would be surprised if that was the case.

I wish I had more to say about the set, but since his music was all new to me I guess I don't. It was an interesting stylistic contrast, after Ben's poppy, folky single guitar. I wouldn't have paired them together, but they are apparently old friends. I'm not sure I would have imagined that either, except that, having met Mr. Kweller a few times, I imagine he could be friends with anyone.

They played a pretty short set, probably because Pete was losing his voice, and did a one-song encore of "Closet" before disappearing for the night. It wasn't even eleven o'clock, so Hiro, Alex, Jacob and I drove back to Norman and hung out for a while with Alex's roommate before calling it a night.

Soon, stories of spring break's magical musical adventures and an account of last night's performance by The National with Other Lives at Cain's Ballroom.