Mr. fabulous British ginger, Ed Sheeran kicked off his first North American headlining tour in Texas last weekend, first in Houston on Thursday and at the Palladium in Dallas on Friday.
Sheeran had two supporting acts, Foy Vance and Rizzle Kicks. Foy Vance, looking like and Irish Luigi from Mario Brothers with his baldhead, wore a barrette cap and sported a rather nice mustache. When he grabbed that guitar and sang, he is like a singer songwriter type of Bono, which is fitting for being with Sheeran.
At this point, I had spent an hour in a standing room only venue with thousands of emotional teenage girls either gossiping or talking about One Direction. We would have listened to just about anyone at that point. But Foy was very entertaining and fun to hear, that accent man.
Next up was Rizzle Kicks, a two-man British hip-hop/pop type group. Their rap sounding exciting sounds soon changed the room’s mood from mellow yellow, to raise the roof.
After a 30-minute set each from the opening acts, it was time for Sheeran.
Sheeran opened up with “Give Me Love” and dubbed the crowd as the Dallas Gospel Choir for the night. After that he went straight into the music with “Drunk”, “U.N.I.”, and “Grade 8”.
As we went into one of the soft periods of the night, he stated his rules as last time; be quiet during the soft parts of the show and if someone is talking by you, gently stroke them, no angry shushing or violence. He is not one for loads of screaming during his performances. Then he proceeded with his loop pedal to perform “Wayfaring Stranger” and then “Small Bump” which was a close intimate moment with the crowd.
After that he pursued the crowd with a jazz cover of Nina Simone’s “Be My Husband” with us as the Dallas Gospel Choir again.
Vance came back on stage for a duet of Sheeran’s song “Kiss Me”. Once again another quiet moment, and it was a perfect quiet moment.
Sheeran played “Lego House”,then came back for his encore which might’ve been one of the best encore shows I’ve seen in awhile.
The encore started with a 16 minute long version of his song “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You”. He went into it and then in between each verse he did something a little fun. He split the crowd into the Sharks and the Jets just like in the play ‘West Side Story’ and the Sharks would sing the chorus “you need me man I don’t need you”
And then the Jets would scream, “My eyes are red”. Then Rizzle Kicks came back on and there was a three-way rap going on between them all. Then Sheeran finished the song out strong with the whole crowd singing/screaming along.
I almost cried at how beautiful it all was, how in that moment we were all in a musical unity.
It was a pleasant surprise when he mad the night even cheerier when he played a bonus track from his album “+”, “Gold Rush”.
He warned us that after that, the show was going to come to an end in a traditional way, by Sheeran playing a traditional Irish/Scottish folk song “The Parting Glass”. On his album, “The Parting Glass” plays right after “Give Me Love” so there was surprise number two from the ginger. And without even a pause after “The Parting Glass”, he cut right into playing his hit single “The A Team”.
It was a beautiful show preformed from such a giving, talented artist. Sheeran is one of those performers that just want his music to be heard.
Sheeran will also be on tour with Taylor Swift this upcoming summer.
