Saturday evening on the lawn just south of Lucky Star Casino in Concho, Oklahoma, Susan, the kids and I saw Weird Al perform live, with Puddles the Pity Clown as his opening act. This was my fourth time to see Weird Al live, Mason’s third, and Susan and Morgan’s second.
Lucky Star’s Amphitheater is an outdoor stage located south of the casino that sits at the bottom of a hill and faces east. Because we had general admission tickets and brought our own lawn chairs, we arrived a little over an hour early only to discover we were staring at the sun. The sun eventually went down (it tends to do that) but for the hour before the show and the first 15-20 minutes of the concert, the sun was still up making it difficult to look toward the stage and/or see anything.
For this year’s tour, Weird Al’s opening act is Puddles Pity Party. Puddles has been performing live for several years, but most people discovered him through his appearance on Anerica’s Got Talent in 2017. Puddles Pity party is a depressed clown who doesn’t speak much, but the moment he begins to sing audiences discover that the man behind the makeup (Michael Geier) is actually a talented baritone vocalist. Throughout his show, Puddles pulled multiple crowd members onstage to put them in costumes during different songs. Most of the songs he performs are rearranged covers, with a few parodies thrown in (it is a Weird Al tour, after all!). One of the newer parodies Puddles performed was “Let’s Give Them Pumpkin to Talk About,” sung to the tune of Shania Twain’s “Let’s Give Them Something to Talk About.” From the Gilligan’s Island theme sung to the tune of “Stairway to Heaven” to a cover of “Crazy Train,” Puddles put on a great show and got the crowd ready for Weird Al.
After Puddles’ performance it was time for the main show. On this year’s “Bigger and Weirder Tour,” Weird Al is touring with a total of eight people, which really added to the overall sound.
Weird Al has been releasing music for more than 40 years now and there is no way he could play everyone’s favorites. Instead on each tour Al changes up his setlist a little, adding a few different “deep cuts” each time. Another “trick” Al uses to get more songs into the setlist is smashing multiple songs into a long medly. A third of the way through the show, Al launched into a medley containing several classics like “Eat It”, “Like a Surgeon”, and I Love Rocky Road”, and more. Fans have heard those songs so, so many times over the years that hearing a verse or two and the chorus is enough to make you feel like the whole song. In addition to old classics, Al played a few newer songs like “Mission Statement” and the “Captain Underpants Theme” which was a big hit for the younger crowd.
There are certain songs that I suspect Al will perform on every tour, and Saturday night we got them all. Songs like “Smells Like Nirvana”, “Amish Paradise”, “Fat”, and “White & Nerdy” were all staples of MTV back in the day and as always Al donned costumes for each of those songs.
In between costume changes and presumedly to give the band occasional breaks, Weird Al shows random video clips on large screens. They include fake/parody interviews he does with celebrities, video clips in which he has inserted himself, and lots and lots of television clips in which he has been name dropped. Some of these clips are decades old while others are brand new. They’re always fun to watch and ensure that there isn’t a second of silent throughout the performance.
Weird Al is not the young weirdo he once was. At 65 years old, there were a few, tiny glimpses of the man beginning o age. His voice sounded sore as he screamed the choruses of “Smells Like Nirvana” and in the middle of his set, the band performed a slightly rearranged by straight-forward cover of “The Letter” by the Box Tops. Apparently the band as been rotating in other “serious” covers throughout the tour, including covers of “You Can Call Me Al” by Paul Simon and “What Is Life” by George Harrison, among others.
The show ended the same way it has for at least the past two and a half decades, with the band returning for an encore to perform “The Saga Begins” in full Jedi regalia followed by Al’s other Star Wars tribute parody, “Yoda”. This year’s “Yoda Chant” (an a cappella break during “Yoda” consisting of song clips and gibberish) seemed mostly similar to previous years’, but there’s so many parts to it and it goes so fast that it’s hard to tell what’s been added and/or dropped.
Like I said, this is my fourth time to see Weird Al live — once for every decade I’ve been listening to him, I suppose — and it’s hard to find a more like-minded crowd of fans. Some people came in costume, lots of people came wearing Hawaiian shirts, and everyone there sand along to all of Weird Al’s hits. There were no fights, no drunks and no crowd surfing… just lots of people embracing both Al’s weirdness and their own.