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Charles Esten (3rd May 2024, Hamburg)

Florian Buechting Concerts No Comments

End of April and beginning of May 2024 came with quite some photographic dates for me. Right after the Carrie Welling and Kasey Williams show in Hengelo, Netherlands, I headed to Hamburg. I was really happy to see Charles Esten on stage again, after I caught him the last time at the Country To Country 2020 in Berlin the last time. This time, however, he was obviously the headline artist, supported by Betcha. The show on 3rd May 2024 had been moved from the Fabrik to the Gruenspan.

This posting comes with 363 major size pictures as part of the concert gallery.

 

Gruenspan – About The Venue

I had visited the Gruenspan for a concert report the last time in September 2022. At that point in time, Carly Pearce had her first headline shows in Germany, supported by Sarah Darling. The Gruenspan is very centrally located and is right North of the famous Reeperbahn, the party and red light district of Hamburg. The venue is right at the Grosse Freiheit street. The most convenient way to get to the venue is by S-Bahn commuter rail to the Reeperbahn station. The really nice venue has a maximum capacity of almost 1,000 people.

Charles Esten – About The Artists

Charles Esten became known as Deacon Claybourne in the TV drama series Nashville. The 1965 born artist from Pittsburgh played that role from 2012 to 2018. He is still also active in plays and as a comedian. Especially as Charles Esten is very present in the country music scene, I was a bit of surprised that his 2024 album Love Ain’t Pretty is indeed his debut one.

Betcha is a rock quartet from Nashville. They met while studying at Belmont University. The band members are Ben (guitar), Taylor (bass, keys), Charlie (vocals, guitar) and Chase (drums). The band name is formed of the names of the band members. In 2019, they released their first EP. In August 2023, they also published their debut album Placebo. However, only Charlie Greene was finally on stage, acting under that name as well.

 

Charles Esten – The Show

Almost in time at 20:03, Charlie Greene entered the stage of the Gruenspan. He played songs like Jaded from their Placebo album. He caught the audience with songs like Jaded. However, the songs sounded very different and more gentle than in the rather rough alternative rock album.During I Don’t Wanna Die, the audience sang along with the artist, who later disclosed (during the Our House cover) that Charles Esten’s daughter is his fiance. The set closed with July, a really nice track, after some 28 minutes.

 

Nashville, Originals and Covers by Charles Esten

There was a some 30 minute intermission (which felt a bit lengthy) before Charles Esten stepped on stage. In contrast to the C2C performances, he was solely supported by a keyboard / piano player. Esten’s had two big assets in that show. First, there were the Nashville songs, which simply have a certain popularity in Germany as well. Secondly, you felt the joy and energy the Pittsburgh-born gave to the audience. They appreciated this strong link between them and the artist on stage – not only during popular tracks like the opener Love Ain’t Pretty. The crowd also cheered for songs from the TV series, like Undermine.

A key element of the show were cover songs as well. In the first part of the show, Esten for example referenced MMMBop by Hanson. For some emotional tracks, the audience took out their cell phone lights. The Sound of Silence was one of three songs, where he called his future son-in-law on stage. The cover worked out well at the beginning, but ended up kind of strange. Charles Esten admired the standing ovation as he called it. Not too hard to get that in an all-standing venue. Songs like Sometimes all you need a is a sunshine boosted the audience again. The second half of the set had a couple of covers, for example David Bowie’s Heroes. For the last two songs, Down The Road from his album cover and Oasis’ Champagne Supernova, Betcha was back on stage. The some 100 minute show was closed by The Beatles’ I Saw Her Standing There and A Life That’s Good from the Nashville TV series

 

 

Charles Esten – The Gallery

Here are 363 major size pictures of the show. They are located in the concert gallery:

 

Charles Esten – My View

The audience enjoyed Charles Esten’s performance definitely. I cannot sum it up better than another visitor, who left the Gruenspan in parallel to me. He stated It was a really nice gig, but now it is also enough of it. I felt that Charles Esten did a nice show. However, I would have loved having more of his solo songs. The people did appreciate all the covers, though. More than that, I felt Charles Esten is much stronger and energetic when he is supported by a full band. Thus, a lovely and friendly artist who creates a good evening by connecting to the audience in a great way is the major fact about this show which stays in my mind.

 

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