The Incredible Ingrid in Concert…

Maybe I should ask Santa for a time-turner *wonders* Until he will give one to me for christmas I should go on and use the few idle minutes I have left of this afternoon to write about the Ingrid Michaelson concert. I am sooooo happy I found out about that on time, even though I failed to notice the show announcement on Ingrid’s myspace site. But on twitter she talked about being in Germany and I checked her site again and only an hour later I had bought the ticket.
The concert took place in “Gebäude 9”, a really really small club in Cologne (@oceans77: direkt an der Messe, also falsche Rheinseite *g*), which I never have heard of before. But of course Bro2 knew it and has been there before. He has been to all of the regions’ tiny clubs for some kind of obscure concert, I’d guess.
There were about 150 – 200 people at the concert, probably closer to 150 than to 200, so it was small and intimate, which was really nice. Ingrid isn’t know in Germany at all yet, and from the conversations I listened to before the show started, I gathered that most of them knew her music via myspace, Grey’s Anatomy or her support on the Jason Mraz tour earlier this year. There were a lot of students and listen to all this talk about classes and lectures and finding roommates  made me feel sooo old.

I had no idea what to expect and I should have figured before that Ingrid wouldn’t have brought a band, but I just realized that, when I saw the sparsely equipped stage. There was a electric piano and a mike on the right side, a mike in the middle and bongo drums and another mike on the left. I stood right in front of the stage and regretted that I didn’t take the time to buy new batteries or recharge the rechargables for my camera. I could have taken so many wonderful photos. But on the other hand I wasn’t distracted by my camera or the need to take pictures and could completly enjoy the concert.
Ingrid came on stage around 09.15 pm and played until 10.30 pm and came back for a few additional songs. And she was fabulous, awesome and just incredibly sweet and funny. I had such a great time. I’m always happy when during a concert the singer sounds a lot like on CD, because that proves that he/she can actually sing. And Ingrid can not just only sing but play the piano and the ukulele and the guitar, although she says herself, she isn’t really good at playing guitar. For a few songs she was joined by Katie Herzig, who is a singer/songwriter in her own rights.

Ingrid started with “Overboard”, which is one of my absolute favourite songs and so I was ecstatic even during the first song and I stayed ecstatic throughout the concert :-) She played all kind of songs, from the first album “Boys & Girls”, which was just released in Germany and the new one “Be OK”. Somehow she reminded me of the german singer Sasha, although the music is so not like the music he does. But just like Sasha Ingrid likes to talk a lot during the songs and to tell funny things and stories from her life or recent days. They both don’t take themselves too serious, they like to interact with the audience and they definitely enjoy being on stage. I’ve seen a lot of concerts in my life, but this kind of performance is rare. Most singers and bands have their set routine on stage and they don’t change it a bit even over the years.

I would have been happy to just hear Ingrid sing, but it was so much more entertaining this way. Before she sang “Keep Breathing”, which was the song of Grey’s season 3 finale and her breakthrough in the US, she talked a little about that . How she was lucky to have her songs been placed in commercials or TV shows, even though she didn’t have a record contract yet. I can only agree to what she said about Grey’s “They pick some kickass music for their show” and she also talked about how the music supervisors always try to find new artists. I got to know a couple of singers/bands through this show and I love it for introducing these artists to me. She also mentioned that after th song was on the show she could finally quit her day-job and be a musician. And “I actually started selling things… well, records, obviously. I didn’t sell mugs or tapestries.” :-)

It was such a rewarding and incredible evening and I’m sooo happy I got the chance to be there. I even got my “Be OK” CD signed afterwards. Yay! I would have liked to say a few more words to her and tell her how much I appreciate her music, but there were quite a few more fans around who wanted to take a picture and have autographs, so I didn’t dare to say anything more. And I didn’t dare to hang around either. Maybe the next time. Because there definitely will be a next time!