Back in 2019 Down announced that they would be touring in 2020 to celebrate the 25th anniversary of their debut album NOLA…then the pandemic happened. A compromise that would still allow them to play the entire album came in the form of a livestream slated for August 29th, which was awesome except that was the weekend that I was going to be in Nashville with no realistic way to watch.
Fast-forward a couple days to when Joe saved the day by sharing his link with me and giving me a heads up that I needed to watch before the link went dead. Had I known the link was good to re-watch the livestream for 48 hours afterwards I would have just ponied up the $9 but that’s what friends are for. I started the stream about 20 minutes before the deadline fully expecting to have it cut out but much to my surprise the links worked all the way through both parts.
This livestream was professionally produced and just well done overall, a stark contrast to the couple raw ones I previously watched. It was more like a concert film minus a live crowd combined with vignettes about how the band/album came to be and the indigenous people of New Orleans. The quality of the video and sound were both outstanding, as was the band’s damn near flawless performance of the songs. In between songs Phil expressed gratitude by giving a shout out to different countries of the world in a way that was both sincere and unintentionally hilarious. Down did not play the songs in the same order as they appeared on the album but they did play all of them and then ran through a handful of choice cuts from their other material. The songs from NOLA have stood the test of time and thankfully the band members were still standing long enough to give this gift back to the fans.