Soul-patched Everclear frontman Art Alexakis provided an intimate walking tour of his solo and band's songbooks with a well-received, loose solo set before a receptive audience at Detroit's Hard Rock Cafe. While he'll be back in town at Motor City Casino's Soundboard with the rest of the band on the Summerland Tour (or as I'd call it, "The Monsters of Nineties Rock" along with Sugar Ray, Lit, Gin Blossoms, and Marcy Playground) on August 2, tonight's show was just the man and his acoustic guitar along with "special guests" recruited from the crowd.
When he blanked out on the lyrics of one tune, he brought a bloke up from the crowd to remind him what the next lines were. He invited a half-dozen ladies to provide ersatz backup choir on "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom" and on "Everything To Everyone," he had a guy (who he said played the keyboard part on keyboards last time he was in town) hop up to sing the lick. If you were seeking hits like "Heartspark Dollarsign", "Santa Monica", "Father of Mine", and the other usual Everclear greatest hits suspects, you weren't disappointed, though he did demur at attempting "AM Radio", saying the guitar chords sounded too much like John Mayer.
Tossing out short, humorous comments before most songs throughout the set it was a relaxed evening which found him hanging out watching openers Tone and Niche beforehand and hitting the merch table and posing for photos afterward, easily accessible to the fans. When he stepped to the side of the stage for the obligatory break between his main set and encores, he goofed with me as I held my arms up in a half-hearted attempted to be a "human shield" to obscure him from the crowd before he promptly returned to take requests, which got brief attempts to comply most of the time.
