Freak of the Week at Ram\’s Head Live
In 1999, Butch Walker’s power pop band, The Marvelous 3, scored a top five hit with “Freak of the Week,” a song about an indie band getting a taste of fame. When the song fell off the charts, the band was promptly forgotten by their label, and left to wallow in Buzz Ballads purgatory.
When Walker played “Freak of the Week” during his acoustic set at Ram’s Head Live, the crowd roared. Not because it was the song they came to hear, but because it has become a rarity. Butch Walker is no longer the lead singer of The Marvelous 3, but his own man. The Marvies and Left of Self-Centered certainly introduced some of the crowd to Butch Walker (myself included), but nobody was there to huddle under a warm blanket of nostalgia.
Butch Walker has a few well-known songs, but not a signature. Because of this, he can play what he wants. He can open the show with an acoustic set, or he can storm the stage with his Les Paul blazing. Like any artist with a robust body of work, there are a few songs you can generally count on, but nothing is a sure thing. That is what makes a Butch Walker show special. Even “Cigarette Lighter Love Song,” the closest thing he has to a signature song, gets played with. The first time I saw him, he did it with a full band, like on the album. The second time, he was on the piano. At Ram’s Head last week, he scrapped the instrumentation entirely, performing the song a cappella.
Hardcore fans often lament the fact that Butch Walker isn’t a bigger star, that he should be selling out theatres instead of playing clubs. He should. However, watching Butch at Ram’s Head, I realized that if he had a huge hit single, he would have to make certain concessions. The loose, freewheeling structure of his show would be gone. He would have to play the hits, and concentrate on what the fans of that single wanted to hear. They wouldn’t want to hear the evolution of Butch as a songwriter, which is what the crowd at Ram’s Head was lucky enough to get. They didn’t get a Butch Walker show, they got his musical history; from the guitar duel of “Freebird”, to the Marvelous 3, to The Black Widows. Butch wouldn’t have it any other way.