Oh boy! Two weeks after giving birth to a beautiful baby girl I had the chance to get all gussied up and head to Kansas City to see Julian Casablancas. And nothing says “Welcome to Motherhood” more than squeezing into your pre-pregnancy jeans and spending an hour putting together a suitable outfit only to have the baby projectile vomit on you five minutes before heading out the door.

After wiping myself down and hitting the febreze, my buddy and I headed to the show. This is the first time in years that I haven’t hit the concert scene with my husband, who graciously stayed home to watch the baby so I could go see a show. My buddy was there to interview the opening band and decided to make me her “plus one” for the night. Wahoo! This came with some perks, including a meet and greet with the man himself, Julian Casablancas.

In my opinion, meet and greets are awkward. For everyone. But it went over pretty good. Casablancas told me that for the most part on his tour, whenever he played a show a storm hit right after. I told him this was Kansas, so that may very well happen after this show (it didn’t).

I was surprised to see that the show attracted a small crowd. I was even more surprised to see what the crowd was mostly made up of: Teenagers. Really obnoxious ones. Several were wearing sunglasses in the poorly lit club, and I even saw some with their parents chaperoning. What in the world?

But the live show more than made up for the annoying teens. Casablancas sure has a set of pipes on him, and had treats for the audience throughout the show. He opened with a new song. I can’t even tell you what it’s called, the set list just said “New One.” Here it is:

I enjoyed hearing songs off his solo album live at the show. He had a stellar backup band with him (the guitarist played in several styles ranging from surf to blues). He even had two drummers, which always scores extra points with me (I heart drummers). One of them was a beautiful girl with the shortest shorts I’ve ever seen.

His new songs were ultra dancy and full of sweet synths. The crowd took to the songs pretty good, he didn’t have to try very hard to get them to dance and sing along. He did whatever was necessary to please them.

He even pulled out old favorites, which makes me even more psyched to see how the Strokes reunion is going to turn out:

I was super impressed with the recently sober Casablancas. He really has come out of his shell and there was plenty of audience interaction to be found. He talked between most songs, and didn’t ever come off as the snobby rock star type.

He wasn’t afraid to do what was necessary to keep the audience happy. He told us he didn’t know why people liked “I Wish It Was Christmas Today,” but they were playing it simply because people liked it. In December I went gaga over the song after he performed it on Jimmy Fallon’s show. You can’t find the clip anywhere now, but he tends to pull it out at every show:

Well played, Casablancas. You impressed me in December, and you won me over again tonight. From a mere fan in Kansas, thanks for not acting like a pain-in-the-butt rock star, giving us old and new favorites and keeping an open mind about what your audience likes.