TRAIN AT FREEDOM MORTGAGE PAVILION IN CAMDEN
In celebration of their most recent album AM Gold (released back in May), Train are on the road and bringing one hell of a show with them. They stopped in Camden, NJ this week at the Freedom Mortgage Pavilion (previously BB&T Pavilion) with support from Thunderstorm Artis, Blues Traveler, and Jewel. Each act had the audience fully attentive and rocking out.
To open up the show, Thunderstorm Artis took the stage solo with a guitar in hand. It’s unfortunate that the amphitheater was still filling during this time, because he sounded great during his set. At one point he even brought out a harmonica, which was a great way to prep the audience for what was to come next.
Taking the stage after was Blues Traveler. I’m not going to lie, the name was familiar and I couldn’t quite recognize them at first, but the minute they started to play “Runaround” it’s like I was hit in the face with a bag full of nostalgia. Blues Traveler had the crowd bopping around as they played their set and you could tell the band was having a good time on stage. You can’t go wrong with a good harmonica jam. At one point they even brought Thunderstorm Artis on stage to perform a cover of John Lennon’s “Imagine” together.
Jewel was on next and opened up right away with her hit “Standing Still”. Spoiler alert: nobody was standing still by that point. The audience was super into her set as she played a good mix of older songs and some tracks from her latest album Freewheelin’ Woman. She also played my personal favorite of hers, “Intuition”. During “You Were Meant For Me”, she started acapella due to some technical issues with her guitar, but the audience happily clapped and sang along.
When it was finally time for Train to hit the stage, the energy from the audience was unreal. You could feel the venue buzzing with anticipation as the lights went down. They opened up their set with the title track off their new album, and shot confetti out into the audience towards the end. They threw it right back for their second song with “Meet Virginia”, and mashed it up with a Steve Miller Band cover of “The Joker”. By this point the audience was honestly a little feral up front, tossing their phones on stage non-stop. Vocalist Pat Monahan was picking up the phones to take selfies from the stage and throwing them right back to the screaming fans. He also threw a ton of t-shirts into the audience that said “Meet Virginia” on them, while wearing one himself. He signed the shirt he was wearing, had the rest of the band sign it as well, and threw that out to the audience too. This energy never waned throughout the performance.
Honestly, Train pulled out all the stops for this tour. Think of any cool concert stuff you might see - they did it. At one point they had a ton of bouncy balls being whacked around the audience, firework sparklers coming down from the top of the stage, and of course, confetti. A larger than life LCD screen covered the back of the stage to provide the audience with visuals throughout the performance and their lights were nice and bright throughout most of their performance, but turned down to be moody when they needed to be.
Not only was Train very visually appealing to see live, but you absolutely HAVE to experience their live sound at least once in your life. The band absolutely killed it on stage. Their instrumentals are tight as can be and Pat’s pitch is dead on the whole show. They played a ton of incredible tracks such as “Bettin’ On Me”, “50 Ways to Say Goodbye”, and “Marry Me”. At one point Jewel joined them on stage for a really fun cover of ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” and The Doobie Brothers’ “Listen to the Music”. Speaking of covers, they audience also got a Dirty Heads’ “Vacation” cover, as well as an out of this world “Dream On” Aerosmith cover (and yes those insanely high vocals at the end were absolutely nailed - my jaw dropped).
The show wouldn’t have been complete, of course, without their final song of the evening - “Drops of Jupiter”. I didn’t make it past the first chord before my eyes started leaking if we’re being honest. Train is a band I’ve known since I was a kid, and it’s been really cool to see them still going and making music. “Drops of Jupiter” is arguably one of my favorite songs of all time - it’s 100% a no skip song when it shuffles on. The entire audience was singing along throughout the song and at one point the whole band dropped out quite suddenly during the iconic “Na na na”s at the end of the song so you could hear how loud the crowd really was. Pat screamed out that the crowd was “better than New York’s!” which had everyone screaming even louder, before the song was finished. Firework sparklers rained from the stage ceiling and confetti shot off during the end of the song, leaving the audience feeling full and satisfied. The band do a phenomenal job of getting the crowd involved and keeping them entertained through the whole set. Even though they played over 20 songs, it felt as if the set flew by. If you have the chance to catch Train on this tour, I would highly recommend making it out to a show. You’re in for a killer time.
Nicole DiBenedetto is a photographer based out of New Jersey. She likes making new friends and meeting new people so catch her out in the pit and say hi!