On October 17th Passenger, (real name: Mike Rosenberg) took to the stage at the sold out Concorde for the second time this year. Support came in the form of his fellow musician/best friend/tour manager/ driver, Stu Larsen. Stu’s performance was simple yet impressive, with beautiful vocals and accompanying harmonica. His rendition of Coldplay’s ‘Fix You’ got the crowd’s attention and provided the perfect warm up for the main act.
Passenger opened with one of his older songs, ‘Table for One’ which was clearly a favourite of his hometown crowd as two lines in, nearly the whole room was singing along. However, when Passenger began to recall the story of how he came to write his new song, ‘Riding to New York’, the crowd was respectfully hushed. The only sound that stirred was the soft strumming of Mike’s guitar as he sang out, ‘Oh, I’m taking this bike and riding to New York’.
The atmosphere could not have been more different when the time finally came for hit song, ‘Let Her Go’. It’s safe to say that every single person in the room joined in and as the crowd sung the radio-friendly chorus, Â Mike exclaimed “Can we just do this for another two and a half hours?!”
After his “final” song ‘Whispers’, Passenger was met with a tremendous uproar from the crowd and a loud demand for an encore which came in the form of ‘Holes’.
Overall it was a wonderful night of mostly-uplifting-but-at-times-heartbreakingly-sad, beautiful, foot-stomping, dance-along, sing-your-heart-out music and I’m sure it won’t be the last time that Mike Rosenberg will return, guitar and Stu in tow, to the town where it all started.
Words and Photography Jennifer McCord
