American Aquarium Open November Run of Shows with Fantastic Rev Room Performance

by Julian Spivey

Julian Spivey Photo

American Aquarium opened its November tour with a stop at the Revolution Room in Little Rock, Ark., on Friday, November 1, for a fantastic night of rock music.

It was a bit of a cathartic experience seeing the band, one of my favorites, just a few days before the Presidential Election, almost certainly the most important one of my lifetime, with songs like “The World Is on Fire” that speak on the choices this country has made in the past and the impact they’ve had on us.

Few songwriters these days are as empathetic to the plight of the American middle class as AA frontman B.J. Barham, who, as he says in his song “Tough Folks,” comes from a long line of Carolina farmers and writes music full of small-town life and the dark side of it.  

The band kicked off the set with “Crier,” the first single released off its latest album The Fear of Standing Still, which tells us all that it’s OK to be a crier but with the force of rock & roll behind it. We’ve all felt pain in our lifetime, and holding back tears can only lead to more of it.

The band would perform four songs from the latest album, which dropped in late July: “Messy as a Magnolia,” “The Curse of Growing Old,” and, my favorite, “Cherokee Purples.” Before “The Curse of Growing Old,” Barham told a touching story about one of his grandmothers and her 91st birthday, upon which she told him how much pain and loss she’s had to go through to spend more years with him. It immediately occurred to him that growing old can be a curse as much, if not more, of a gift.

As with any American Aquarium show, the band does a fantastic job at mixing in songs from its entire history and hit the Rev Room audience on Friday night with a mixture of new from albums like Things Change and Lamentations and old from Burn.Flicker.Die and Wolves.

The audience of loyal fans sang along with nearly every song the entire night, with performances of “Losing Side of Twenty-Five,” “Casualties” and “The Luckier You Get” among the crowd favorites.

One of the greatest live music moments I’ve ever been a part of is seeing the band wind down the main part of their set with the back-to-back performances of “I Hope He Breaks Your Heart” and “Burn.Flicker.Die,” which always seem to be the most raucous moments of the show. You’d honestly have to experience it to understand how great of a moment it is.

This is where the night took an unfortunate turn, though. I’m not sure if the whole audience knew what was happening, but those around the stage, including Barham on stage, were all too aware of it.

Following “Burn.Flicker.Die” the band left the stage to give Barham his usual solo spot of the show – a spot where he usually tells a beautiful story about something in his life that has inspired a song and then plays said song. Based on the original set list, which we were close enough to the stage to see, Barham intended to perform “The First Year” off the 2022 album Chicamacomico. He called an audible and decided to do the title track from that album, which is about a miscarriage he and his wife had and how it devastated them. He had gotten a handful of requests to perform the song. He tells this heart-wrenching, tragic story of the worst thing that’s ever happened to him and his wife and then performs the song. While telling the story and performing the song, solo, just his voice and guitar, an obviously drunk woman somewhere close behind where I stood, so near the stage, talked loudly throughout the entire thing.

Following the song, he thanked most of the audience for their cooperation and response to his sad story and song and said, “For those who talked through it, that was a choice.” Which was a far kinder way to handle the nuisance within the crowd than many musicians likely would have chosen. Still, based on the printed setlist on the stage, he decided to skip a second solo song and invited the band back to the stage early. I also believe this to be the case because the band didn’t seem to know they’d be returning so soon.

The band began to perform “Me + Mine (Lamentations),” another emotional, heartful performance, and the same drunken woman talked throughout it, as well, at one point causing Barham to shoot an annoying glare her way that might’ve knocked someone who wasn’t so oblivious to the ground.

The show ended with that song, despite a more raucous closing number, “Katherine Belle,” remaining on the printed setlist.

In my years attending shows, I’ve seen some pretty annoying and despicable behavior from drunk concertgoers, but I’ve never witnessed something as rudely infuriating as one talking through the most devastating song of someone’s career. I sincerely hope this doesn’t put Barham and the band off of coming to the Rev Room in the future.

The evening was opened up by the emotional songs of Ken Pomeroy, a 22-year-old Cherokee folk singer from Oklahoma whose beautifully written songs ache with the realism of someone much older. She’s undoubtedly going to be a singer-songwriter to keep an eye on.

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