Review: In Ybor City, City and Colour calls for an increase in empathy

About three quarters of the way through his first Tampa Bay set in seven years, City and Colour frontman Dallas Green set up “We Found Each Other In The Dark,” the opening track to his third album Little Hell with a remark about showing more kindness and understanding to our peers. When only 10 people cheered that sentiment on, he repeated himself, which made the entire Ritz Ybor respond.

“Everybody in this room woke up today trying to figure out this ridiculous thing called living on Earth, right? Everybody’s going through something, everybody’s dealing with their own shit,” he remarked, amplifying the sensation of togetherness that live music brings.

When you experience loss as heavily as Green recently did, it really hits you to hug your loved ones a little tighter, and take them less for granted. That’s a big part of what his latest album The Love Still Held Me Near, is all about. It’s really a therapeutic record, tackling that aspect of his personal life (his best friend and producer drowned while on tour with Green in 2019), as well as his woes of living in an increasingly careless and selfish, post-COVID world.

On this tour, Green has a four-piece repertoire backing him up, which entered the stage at The Ritz all at the same time on Monday night. Green, rocking a light brown vest, black tank-top, and a glorious beard, kicked off opening night of his last tour of the year by vocalizing the intro bit to “After Disaster,” a song about promising to do better if given a second chance. We love a good slow jam, but it wasn’t until the next track, a faster-paced “Strangers” that fans saw the band really kick into gear.

While everyone in the band maintained Green’s traditionally underproduced garage band-style sound, there was still room for a little extra pizazz. Counting the man himself, there were three guitarists in the band, including Matt Kelly—who has been with Green since 2013—rocking a steel pedal, keyboards, and third guitar. And to add a bit of an unlinked Tom Petty effect to it all (other than the Heartbreakers also having three guitarists in its last 25-or-so years), Green wielded a Rickenbacker for a pretty damn good amount of songs.

He’d switch his axe every now and then, though. Green tore up an orange Gibson ES-335 on a rarely-performed “Mizzy C,” and went for an acoustic on a singalong of “Meant to Be,” a devastating eulogy for his best friend off of The Love Still Held Me Near. But though the album was the best sad hour of 2023, Green doesn’t aim to make his shows the same thing. Sure, there are some real bummers in there, like “Fragile Bird,” which depicts a girlfriend who has brutal nightmares, and “Lover Come Back,” a desperate attempt to get a partner back, but he can blend some optimism in there, too.

Before kicking into “Waiting…,” Green lamented its “bad rap.” He mentioned how certain critics and die-hards alike saw it as a hopeless shrug of a song that would confirm he was a “miserable cunt.”

“But I don’t see it that way. I think this song is quite joyful,” he declared. The song’s hook comes off as telling the listener to be strong in giving up love, but at the same time, wait to die alone. In actuality, Green meant to be strong after a crappy relationship, and not to rush looking for a new partner. And as for the “waiting to die” bit, isn’t that all of us?

There was also “Silver and Gold,” defined as a “happy song about the end of the world,” and to kick off the encore, Green and his acoustic guitar were the only ones in sight for the ultra-poetic love song that is “Northern Wind.”

Green also made it blatantly clear that he absolutely adores his country-western opening act Vincent Neil Emerson and his Red Horse Band. Emerson—who cites Green as the reason he picked up a guitar in the first place—rocked a white cowboy hat and an electric acoustic guitar all night, and while you could tell that he’s a true country boy by his songs about rodeo clowns, truckers, and chewing on a nicotine patch, he gave off more of a Johnny Cash vibe in his banter than say, anybody in the bro-country movement. The instrumentation provided by his own four-piece (which also included a pedal steel player) sounded inspired by the cowboys and girls of the 20th century, too.

And that’s part of why it’s crazy to imagine being friends with Green. He can make you love country music for 40 minutes, turn a super negative message into something uber optimistic, and get an entire room of struggling millennials to love each other eight days before yet another hectic presidential election, even if it’s just for a few minutes.

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This article appears in Oct 24-30, 2024.