On Saturday, May 18, Heart made a stop on their Royal Flush tour at the KFC Yum! Center. Guests, Cheap Trick opened the show.
I have to admit that I’ve seen Cheap Trick before and this version of the band felt a little tired. Maybe it was that the crowd is much older now, myself included, or the band itself, but some parts of the set dragged a bit.
However, Robyn Zander seems to always be a hit as a frontman. His voice retains its mid-range timbre though it is showing a bit of wear in his upper registers. It’s hard to do this for 50+ years and not expect changes. Did he deliver? Of course. He’s a professional.
Guitarist Rick Nielsen was also present with somewhat toned down stage shenanigans but shared a great showcase of his custom guitars that are always a lot of fun.
I attended the show with my sister and we were unfortunately distracted at times by the unfortunate waft of bad body odor. I know that folks can’t always help it but if you can, before you go to a show where you know you will be in close quarters with others, freshen up… at least give your essential spots and scalp a rinse.
For the rest of Cheap Trick’s set, the crowd stood for the hits and drifted back to their seats for the songs they didn’t recognize. It reminded me of comedian Leanne Morgan’s skit about concerts with old people. Look it up on YouTube. Morgan is over 50, and I am moving into that direction this year so it gave me a giggle. We’re not getting younger, and concerts are just a little different now. We give what we’ve got but we take rest when we need it.
After Cheap Trick’s set, we were graced (rescued) with a move nearer to the stage with friends who had empty seats next to them.
As my sister and I caught up with our friends, I remembered the years my sister and I (as young, confused, weird Black kids) admired Ann and Nancy Wilson. They were sisters at a similar distance apart as Aisha and I are, and for us, it always felt like Heart understood something unique about sisterhood. Maybe it is that together, they do something that hits on something cosmic. Sister energy is like that sometimes.
They felt brave to us. We harnessed that inspiration, and dove deep into our rock girl years, and have held tight to that part of ourselves for decades now. I think it’s what makes us the brave women we are today both in our careers and as humans in this world.
Heart opened the show with “Bébé le Strange.” The crowd jumped (stood, clambered, did whatever we needed to do) to our feet.
Ann’s voice is truly a gift from the heavens and though it is tougher to hit those high, wild notes, she’s so good that her adjustments illustrated a master class in having range and vocal flexibility. Nancy’s guitar playing hasn’t waned. I feel like she’s become a player with more nuance and color over the years and she showed us that during their set.
When “Little Queen” started, both my sister and I danced and sang with everything we had because for a moment, we forgot that we were in an arena with others and Heart was playing directly to us.
Ann asked for grace due to a knee replacement, as she had to sit at intervals throughout the show. With the voice she gave the crowd — the one we all came to see, and love — grace is easy. The crowd can’t jump around like we used to, and certainly, we can’t expect the band to either. These are women in the septuagenarian years. They can sit the whole set if they need to because the fact that after five decades, they are still lighting stages on fire with their talent is a present to the world.
When they started “Crazy on You,” the master, Ann had to adjust her voice and the version of the song was interesting and rich and, to me, really beautiful. I love a great singer.
Satiated as we were being in the same space as Heart, we tuned in to the crowd around us and watched the faces of our peers glow in the stage lights. It is lovely that we can still do this. As the band played a rendition of Led Zeppelin’s “Going to California,” a young man sitting beside us was moved to tears. He wasn’t alive through their hottest decades but the power of music doesn’t care about age.
When music gets in you, if you have a heart, or a soul, it’s going to do what it is going to do, and for Blanton Boso, it seemed to be a spiritual experience.
Not to be creepy but my sister and I, along with my close friend (of many years) almost forgot about the stage as we savored the happiness of the young Mr. Boso and his young fiance, Elizabeth Capek who was singing right along with him. This joy felt important and we couldn’t ignore it. It felt like passing a baton. We understood his tears. We’ve been moved by art for a long time, and it’s nice to know that good souls are still out there connecting with something created so many years before they were alive.
Heart ended the show with “Barracuda” after a short break. The band said they had one more in them. All of us in the crowd mustered our energy, danced and sang through the final number, right alongside our delightful young friends.
If you’re not a people watcher, start. Sometimes you see something magical beyond the masters on the stages. If you’re lucky, you can bear witness to something really beautiful — a real magic man and his magic partner.
If Ann and Nancy see this, and take any one bit from it, I hope it is that their music has filtered through generations, and whatever they do from now on, the mark they’ve made is legendary. My sister and I went to see these sisters with years of good memories to Heart’s music, and we got lucky enough to witness the kids that come after us to carry on the love of such great music.
It was a blessed night.
This article appears in May 8-21, 2024.