The Bronson Arroyo Band
Friday, January 9, 2009 – Showcase Live, Foxboro
Last night I saw Bronson Arroyo in concert in Foxboro. I bought the tickets for myself and four friends as a Christmas gift, then had to make up a story that I was having a dinner party so they would save the date without me having to tell them ahead of time. Showcase Live, in Patriot Place next to Gillette Stadium, was a good venue. We were seated at tables which started right up close to the stage; I was probably only ten feet away. Dinner was available before the show, and waiter service continued throughout. (The appetizers were expensive and small, and drinks were not cheap, but the burgers were huge and delicious.)
Bronson took the stage accompanied by his band – two guitarists, a drummer, a three-person string section, and the versatile Elan Trotman, who played sax, tenor sax, flute, and keyboards. He sang a couple of the songs off his 2005 album, Covering the Bases, plus a lot of new covers. One highlight was Augustana’s “Boston” to which he sang modified lyrics:
I said I think I’ll go to Boston, I think I need to come back. I think I need a ballpark where all the fans are there. I gotta get out of Cincinnati, I’m tired of the summer. I think I need the Olde Towne to fill my heart again… Yeah, Boston, where everyone knows my name.
He also sang a song called “Painted It All Yellow” (thanks to Toeing the Rubber for finding out the title) which he wrote himself. He acknowledged a guy in the crowd with a Wily Mo Pena t-shirt. (Pena was the player the Red Sox got in the ill-advised 2006 trade that sent Bronson to Cincinnati.) He said he had bumped into Theo Epstein at Fenway Park the day before and Theo joked that he was sick of getting blamed for that trade and he was going to start blaming the Assistant GMs who were in charge at the time. I was hoping that Theo would join Bronson onstage, like he had at a 2007 concert I had been to, but it turned out there was no Theo sighting. (With his Hot Stove Cool Music concert scheduled for the next night, I guess he didn’t want to play two nights in a row. Besides, he needs to stay at home and work on signing a catcher!)
Bronson finished up with “Dirty Water”, then autographed CDs and t-shirts and posed for pictures.
Here’s the end of “Dirty Water”:
