Tour Recap - The Robin Theatre - Lansing, MI
The Sheddio On The Road Tour began with a once in a lifetime night of an entire community coming out to send me off on a national tour. It was a genuinely humbling and inspiring evening.
When I arrived at The Robin Theatre on the evening on June 5, 2024 I was as nervous to play a show as I had been in decades. For months, I’d been booking, planning, prepping, and promoting. The day of the tour had finally arrived and I found myself with the nerves of a bride on her wedding day.
I began loading my gear into the theatre and saw that the owner, Dylan McNaughton Rogers and my Stick Arounds bandmates, Jason Lantrip and Jeff Gower had just begun to set up their gear for a set in their terrific classic country duo, Deer & Elk.
While Deer & Elk got their stage setup in place, I was able to take a few minutes to set up the merch booth for the show. For the tour, I designed a brand new two color Sheddio On The Road shirt. The new shirts, plus my existing inventory made for a really nice variety of Matty C swag, if I do say so myself.
My dear friend and metal sculptor, Andrew Sandstedt made me a custom metal tip jar in the sharp of the sheddio. It features the tour bird form the poster and shirt flying above the sheddio. It’s amazing. My mother-in-law also picked me up a vintage Samsonite suitcase for display on the merch table. I got everything set up and looking good just in time for my own soundcheck.
Once we were checked and had the stage setup all locked in, I walked next door to Sleepwalker Spirits with Jeff, Jason, and my friend and musician Jennifer Toms who would be joining me for a song during the evening. I realized as I sat down that I had eaten nothing all day long due to nerves and a packed schedule.
The pizza went down quickly, as did a couple of beers and I began to feel more self-assured for the evening to come. The nerves abated a tad, and after a brief meal, we made our way back to the theatre where folks would soon begin to arrive.
We returned from dinner to find my old friend and Harborcoat and Pantones’ bandmate, David Baldwin sound checking for his set as Teutonosaur. Dave was joined by friends Nicholas Merz and Nate Moore. It would be Dave’s first stage appearance as Teutonosaur and I was very excited to see my old pal and his new project live, and in-person.
Once the Teutonosaur check was out of the way, we opened the doors to the venue and folks began to stream in. As the doors unlocked, I took a deep breath and attempted to remind myself that I should enjoy this, and to slow down if at all possible. Throughout the evening I made it a point to take in the proceedings with care and intention. I wanted to remember as much of this as possible.
Friends and family began to trickle in with a half an hour to go until show time. I gave myriad hugs and smiled wide at each new familiar face. My wife Kimmy and my Mom arrived and I was able to take a minute with them, which was nice in the flurry of the proceedings.
Let me take a minute to address a point of pride. This show at the Robin Theatre was a sellout! That’s a huge deal for me. While it may be a small listening room in my hometown, it was the first official sellout of my career as a musician and it felt pretty goddamned great to fill a room because a bunch of people came out to hear my songs and stories. This night had been a long time coming. Now, I was going to revel in the joy of it.
At 8:00 on the nose, Teutonosaur hit the stage and delivered a tight and angelic twenty minutes. David’s songs are beautiful pastiches of tender lyrics, delicate guitar parts and lovely harmonies. On his forthcoming album, Dave presents Teutonosaur as a full band affair, but seen as a trio you are witness the vulnerability and fragile beauty of these songs.
It was a treat to watch my old friend who has always been my sideman for years, get to front his own outfit and show off his own songs. David also treated the crowd to some very funny stage banter, that I could tell was inspired by how nervous he was. Only this that new him very well could see that side f things. For everyone else, they simply marveled at David’s talent and the chops of his bandmates for the evening.
Next up, fellow Stick Arounds Jason and Jeff stepped to the stage as Deer & Elk. The Sticks have been on a bit of a hiatus with only a three show run in the last several months due in part to my focus on playing solo shows. But, the Sticks have also slowed down as Deer & Elk have raced off to a first year filled with shows across Michigan.
My absolute favorite element of being in the Stick Arounds is getting to sing with Jeff and Jason. That simple act of melding voices is almost supernatural to me. The next best thing to singing with them, is to sit back and hear them sing together. The folks inside the Robin got just that treat as Deer & Elk cruised through a half hour of originals and classic covers that went down as easy as an Old Fashioned at the end of a long work week.
We took a ten minute pause after Deer & Elk finished their terrific set. The intermission allowed the patrons to stretch their legs and for us to reset the stage for my set to end the evening. The nerves ramped back up and settled at the base of my throat. Oooh boy.
Robin Theatre owner, Dylan Rogers made a lovely introduction about the space, our community and his admiration for my work in putting the tour and this kickoff show together. It filled me with a sense of pride that I probably should have generated on my own, but I finally heard some of that praise as an eavesdropper on the conversation as I stood behind the curtain waiting. Then Dylan, shouted, “Please give a warm Robin Theatre welcome to Matthew Carlson!”
I came out to thunderous applause, again not something I am used to, and jumped right into ‘Transit Town’, a tune about living in a college town and feeling like you’re in stasis as folks come in and out of your life and you stay in the same space. Standing on that stage I realized that while the song might have been written from a perspective truth, I was anything but static. I played a couple more songs solo, including ‘Thursday (It’ll Be Okay)’, a new tune that I previewed here in the Sheddio Sessions.
David came out to join me for a trio of songs by Harborcoat and The Pantones. Then, our friend Jennifer Toms of A Rueful Noise came up to join us on the old Pantones classic, ‘Better By The Day’. It was such a wonderful pleasure to hear our three voices singing in harmony. David, and Jenny and I have been friends fro more than twenty years, and Jenny and Dave go back even further. Singing that song in that moment was a nudge to get together with the two of them if only to sing together.
Jeff and Jason joined me next for a mini-set of Stick Arounds acoustic numbers. We began with ‘Getting Into You’, a new tune that we’re prepping for release as a single later in the year. We also got to play ‘Redtail Hawks’, which is always a favorite of mine that we do together. David came back out to end the evening with a group rendition of my song, ‘Cabin By The Lake’.
The after show segment was a flurry until the room finally emptied out an hour or so after the sho had ended. The merch table was crammed with folks. I signed posters, took photos with patrons, and gave out another million hugs. I felt like a rock star.
I also felt humbled as hell. Each time I turned there was another friend, another denizen of the music community in Lansing. My show fell in the middle of a remarkable week in Lansing that featured me, and a pair of release shows by our friends in The Wild Honey Collective and A Rueful Noise. In the midst of a terribly busy week, all of these folks came out for me on a school night.
As I loaded out to my car, I thought of the journey ahead. The next morning I would head for Pittsburgh and four weeks of shows on the road away from home. No matter what awesomeness happens during those twenty-one shows to come, they cannot be the same as this night at The Robin was. After all, there is no place like home.
Cheers,
Matty C
Special thanks to Ian Walker for photographing the show.
That makes my heart swell 3 sizes❤️❤️❤️
Big Congrats, Matty! And Godspeed, bud!❤️