The first time I experienced Mumford & Sons live was during their summer tour in 2015. I danced, I laughed and I cried.
The second time I experienced Mumford & Sons live was this past Thursday, April 14 in Charlotte’s Time Warner Cable Arena. Once again, I danced, I laughed and I cried.
I advise everyone to add attending a Mumford & Sons concert to your bucket list. There is nothing like it. It is a whole-body experience that will leave you incredibly refreshed, but also very sad as those four quirky British men exit the stage for the last time.
Marcus Mumford and his bandmates are natural rock stars. This may come as a surprise to some, as the band has come to be known as a folksy and poetic group. They are folksy and poetic. But they are absolute rock stars.
Ted Dwane will lift his stand-up bass above his head with one arm and wave it around.
Marcus will run upstage, sit down behind the drums, jam on them for a song or two, and then kick them over on his way back to his lead mic.
Ben Lovett will take a break from his passionate keyboarding, attempt a dance move, fall over in the process and then get up and take a drink from the beer bottle behind him.
The strangest part of it all is that the guys will be in absolute chaos on the stage for a moment, and the next moment they will have you silent and feeling tears well up in yours eyes.
Their music is so diverse and so hard-hitting. Mumford’s voice is absolutely gut-wrenching when he wants it be. And so natural.
At one point during the show, Marcus decided to jump off of the stage and into the crowd. He ran through the pit of people below him and made it all the way up to the top of the lower bowl. People were hitting him in the face, pulling his arms and screaming into his ears. And yet, he was still singing the lead on “Ditmas” the entire time. The crowd loved it.
The audience was the loudest, however, very early on in the show.
After playing about three songs on the set list, the band put their instruments down and allowed Marcus to speak for a few minutes. He acknowledged that a few artists have refused to play in North Carolina due the passing of House Bill 2 and all that it symbolizes. He expressed the band’s hesitation to cancel the show, but their steeper hesitation to play the show for profits. And so, they concluded, all profits from the Charlotte concert would be donated to charity in support of the LGBTQ community.
The crowd went ballistic. And the show went on.
Simply, Mumford & Sons are captivating. Please do yourself a favor and find a way to see them in the flesh.
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