Date: Sunday, April 21, 2019
City: Peoria, IL
Venue: Peoria Civic Center Theater
Opening act(s): City And Colour
Headlining act: Alice In Chains
Alice In Chains Setlist:
Bleed The Freak
Check My Brain
Again
Never Fade
Them Bones
Dam That River
Hollow
Grind
Rainier Fog
Down In A Hole
No Excuses
Stone
Red Giant
We Die Young
Nutshell
Angry Chair
Man In The Box
———————
The One You Know
Got Me Wrong
Would?
Rooster
Notes:
- Second time seeing Alice In Chains live, but the first with a full headlining set rather than a shortened festival headlining set.
- First time seeing “Bleed The Freak,” “Never Fade,” “Grind,” “Rainier Fog,” “Red Giant,” “Nutshell,” “Angry Chair,” and “Got Me Wrong” live.
- A snippet of Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” was played before “Would?”
- Show #1 at this venue, which resides in the same complex as the Peoria Civic Center Arena (where I’ve seen five concerts to date).
Videos:
Review:
Alice In Chains were a bucket list band that I finally got to see live for the first time at last year’s Pointfest in St. Louis on May 12, 2018.
Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy them as much as I wanted for a variety of reasons. For one, they were closing out a long day with what was likely a fatigued crowd, but they were also following several high energy acts (The Struts, Stone Temple Pilots, and Shinedown) that made their performance not quite mesh with what came before it.
That’s not to say I didn’t like the show, as I certainly did. But I ended the review of last year’s show with this:
I really enjoyed Alice In Chains and I was happy to check them off my bucket list. I hope to have a chance to see them again after the new album is released, though I think their style of music would be better suited for somewhere like The Pageant instead of a giant amphitheater.
Pointfest fell just days after the band had released “The One You Know” as the lead single from their upcoming new album, Rainier Fog, which was released in August 2018. They’ve been on tour in support of the album ever since and they had a headlining show lined up in Peoria, IL on April 21, 2019.
I put the show on my ‘maybe’ list, but had pretty much counted it out after it had nearly sold out. Only $299 VIP tickets remained and resale prices were higher than I could justify, so I figured the show would come and go without me attending.
But on Thursday, April 18… I just happened to check out the show on Ticketmaster and saw that all of the VIP seats had been dropped to the standard price of $72. And since those seats were in Row A, which was the first row behind the small general admission pit, I couldn’t pass that up.
After checking with the wife, I scored some amazing seats and could only hope that my hypothesis regarding the venue would be correct. The show was taking place at the Peoria Civic Center Theater, which was housed in the same facility as the Peoria Civic Center Arena. I’ve seen concerts at the arena several times between 1999 and 2018, but had only seen comedian Jerry Seinfeld perform in the theater portion of the venue. Regardless, I thought it would be a great place to see Alice In Chains play a full show.
After parking, picking up the tickets, and going through security, we made our way to our seats. As expected, they were fantastic seats and the pit area was smaller than I expected. We were quite far away from the stage for Pointfest, so I was happy to have a much better view for this performance.
I also took pride in the fact that the people directly behind me were talking about their VIP seats and how much they paid compared to what I paid. The last minute ticket trick doesn’t always work, but when it does, it can really pay off. Today was a prime example of that.
Opening the show was an artist called City And Colour, which I figured was a band but was actually just a guy with a guitar. It wasn’t quite the same as the one man show that opened for Last In Line a month ago, but more like a Ricky Warwick type.
He played six or seven songs, most of which were quite subdued. He even introduced a couple of them as being very depressing, and that they were. It was the polar opposite of seeing Shinedown before Alice In Chains, though I wasn’t sure if it was going to help or hurt the headliners.
Thankfully the Peoria crowd was much nicer to this guy than the St. Charles crowd was to that one man opener, but still. Good performance aside, it was a dreary start to the evening.
The good thing about one man (or woman) openers is that it’s a quick stage change for the main act. But while City And Colour was off the stage by 8:40, Alice In Chains didn’t take the stage until roughly 9:10.
I had peeked at Alice In Chains’ recent sets and seen that they ran around 20 or 21 songs in length, which would provide a good chance to see more than the 14 songs I saw at Pointfest last year. The skeleton would remain the same but there were a handful more older tunes as well as more material from Rainier Fog.
Opening the show was “Bleed The Freak” from the band’s first album, Facelift. The crowd reaction to the band walking on stage and getting the show started was much, much better than it was at Pointfest, and that immediately made for a better evening.
“Check My Brain” followed and was one of many highlights on the evening. That’s the song that opened at Pointfest to virtually no reaction, and to hear it go down a storm here restored my love for the song.
Frontman William DuVall ditched the guitar and took center stage for “Again,” once again putting on display why he is a perfect fit for Alice In Chains. What happened with Layne was certainly a tragedy, but performances on this level would not be possible without DuVall.
After “Again,” the first of four Rainier Fog songs was performed. “Never Fade” is one of the singles, and although it’s not one of my favorites on the record, it was a really good live song.
As any experienced band of a certain age does, AIC spread out the new songs and made sure to surround them with classics. Hence “Never Fade” was followed by “Them Bones” and “Dam That River,” both of which got huge reactions. It was clear having an Alice In Chains crowd was way better than a festival crowd, which made the band sound even better and made my enjoyment of the show go through the roof.
In my opinion, AIC’s 2013 album The Devil Put Dinosaurs Here has some of their finest work, and lead single “Hollow” is a prime example of that. The song fucking kills live and was another highlight of the show.
I was expecting “Your Decision” to come next, but the band pulled a fast one on me and busted out “Grind” from their self-titled album instead.
They returned to Rainier Fog for the title track, which is my favorite song on the album and it sounded great live.
I had plotted out only a handful of songs to film for this show, and one of them was “Down In A Hole” since it was one of my favorite parts of the Pointfest show.
So naturally, it was around this point that the couple that showed up late as hell decided to begin full on making out and dancing in front of me. Making out. At an Alice In Chains show. As if this was a fucking Michael Bublé gig or something. I love my wife, but if we’re going to make out, it’s going to be at home where it’s free and can potentially escalate into other things. Not surrounded by strangers at an expensive concert.
On top of that, the girl committed one of the cardinal sins of concert going by constantly holding her phone up as high as she could reach for shitty photos or video clips. Yes, I film songs at shows I go to, but I have very strict rules for doing so. I NEVER move the phone in front of anyone else’s view. I don’t raise it above my head or move it side to side. It stays in front of my chest or if necessary, my face (below my sight-line). Plus I am gathering that video for a reason… It’s a full song to be documented here by someone who takes his concerts seriously. Not this fucking idiot in front of me, taking shitty clips she’ll never watch for no goddamn reason.
Anyway, I gave up trying to shoot “Down In A Hole” halfway through as no matter what I did, someone was always in the way. The dude was constantly moving back and forth (out of rhythm at that) or leaning down to make out or talk. So I said ‘fuck it’ and just fantasized about reaching out and knocking the girl’s phone out of her fucking hand every time it entered my sight-line. Which was often.
After losing focus for a bit, I tuned back into the show for “No Excuses” and “Stone,” the latter of which was paused in the middle while the crowd made a hell of a lot of noise for the band.
The stage fittingly turned red for “Red Giant,” another one of the better songs from Rainier Fog. Not surprisingly, the dumbass couple in front of me disappeared during that song, as these huge posers wouldn’t get any social media credit for recognizing or posting anything from an album cut from the latest release.
With them gone, I decided to film while I could, so I took another video of “We Die Young.” I wasn’t going to do that one since I did it at Pointfest but I do love the song and had to take advantage of the clear(er) shot.
Guitarist Jerry Cantrell dedicated “Nutshell” to late band members Layne Staley and Mike Starr.
The douche bag couple returned from what had to have been a smoke break (since they now stunk too) in time for the close of the main set. First of all, it’s fucking pathetic that people can’t go without smoking for two fucking hours during a concert. Second, THEY DIDN’T EVEN SEE THE FIRST HALF HOUR OF THE CONCERT.
“Angry Chair” and “Man In The Box” closed out the main set, with the latter having the loudest singalong of the evening.
After a brief encore, AIC returned and played “The One You Know” and “Got Me Wrong.”
Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney tinkered with Ted Nugent’s “Cat Scratch Fever” before kicking off “Would?”
“Rooster” closed the show, and then the band send dozens of guitar picks flying into the crowd. Despite my close proximity, nothing came close to me unfortunately.
Drummer Sean Kinney stepped to the mic after the goodnights to start a debate on what people from Peoria were called, eventually settling on “Peorians.” And then he said goodnight.
While Pointfest was good, this show was light years better. The more appropriate venue filled with dedicated Alice In Chains fans made a world of difference. The set was longer and better and the band was clearly feeding off the energy of the crowd. I was so glad I decided to pull the trigger on the show as it was fucking great and I will not hesitate to see them in such a venue again in the future.
Media Review:
Links: Setlist.fm
TurnToDust86 