Mark Tremonti walked onstage without big arm movements, but with a Gibson over his shoulder and a clear mission: to let the music do the talking. And it did — in a concert where technical ability and sensitivity found each other in rare harmony.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
Store VEGA, as you know, is a room with memory. The walls whisper of past times, and you can feel it in the air when someone tries to play above ability. Tremonti did the opposite: he played himself into the room, like a preacher in stone boots -- with a feel for both stage and hall.
It began without drama. No intro video. Just musicians taking their seats, and a Gibson calling for assembly. The opening number, “Throw It All Away,” came as a kick to the chest -- not to impress, but to clean out. The drums lay low and dense, the bass quivered like a warning flag, and Tremonti's voice -- still rough, still more precise than beautiful -- carried us into a soundscape that was both American and melancholic.
It is in the field of tension between strength and sorrow that Tremonti lives. His solos aren't just technical feats -- they're emotional gestures. In “Dust,” there was a moment when the silence between the notes said more than the notes themselves. The audience stood almost silently, as if intuitively understanding that here something honest was being said.
Of course, there were also moments when you could sense rock's inherent kitsch -- as in “Brains,” when the riffs became a little too template-like, and the lyricism a knowing too easily bought. But precisely because Tremonti doesn't hide the theatricality, even the overwrought passages get a kind of glory. He's not afraid of the extremes of the emotion register -- and in an age when everything has to be “meta” and ironic, it felt almost subversive.
The sound side in VEGA was close to ideal. The guitar lay, as it should, in the middle of the picture -- not shrill, not overpolished. There was room for the breathing, and even beneath the most explosive pieces there was an underlying clarity. That's important when playing music that constantly balances between raw energy and melodic longing.
The bands around Tremonti were precise but never mechanical. The drummer, who at times seemed like he'd snuck in from a jazz session, added a playful complexity. The bassist stood calmly, almost meditatively, and let the instrument work as a foundation rather than the peacock.
A highlight came with “The Things I've Seen” -- a song that on record might seem like a ballad in the crowd, but which live opened up as an almost liturgical ritual. Tremonti didn't sing to us, he sang with us. And for a while it felt like the whole chamber had shared experiences we didn't need to put into words.
Let's just put it like this...
Tremonti isn't the most original musician you'll hear this year. But he may be the most honest. And in an age when authenticity is often reduced to a strategy, it felt liberating to stand in a room with a man who means it. Every single note.
