Playlist Rewind: The Color Fred at The Barbary

We were obviously psyched to see friend-of-Phillyist The Color Fred perform at The Barbary last week. After all, Fred would be doing a solo acoustic set, and he'd told us when we talked to him that he writes all of his songs on acoustic—so it was an opportunity to see him do his songs live in their original form, so to speak. But as we got ready for the show, we couldn't help but feel that something was a little bit off—the fact that it was an all-ages concert in a Fishtown dive, and it started at 6 p.m. It was just an odd location and format. But hey, that's where Fred would be, so away we went.

When we walked into The Barbary, we were surprised—but not really—by what we saw. The average age of the concertgoers was probably 15; the kids crowding the stage in the oh-so-small room, a group of parents lingering in the back. It was kind of cute, actually. This Phillyist has griped about obnoxious kids at shows before, but not so with the group at The Barbary. Properly enthusiastic, well behaved, they were the kind of teenagers that we actually hope we were once upon a time (though, admittedly, we were probably more like the obnoxious ones that we gripe about now).

Once we got over our initial shock at being amongst the oldest people in the room (by a good ten years, no less; 34-year-old Fred must have felt ancient), we turned our attention to the band on stage at the time, The Ready Set. Actually, much like The Color Fred is really Fred Mascherino, The Ready Set is really 19-year-old Jordan Witzigreuter. Witzigreuter certainly has charisma and stage presence; his young enthusiasm for being out on the road is obvious in the way he commands his teenage audience. The funny thing is, he's clearly a very talented musician. The trouble with his songs is that they are horribly, horribly overproduced. Too many keyboards, too many samples, too much fluff. Stripped down, we think Witzigreuter actually probably writes some really good songs, but who can tell under all the garbage piled on top of the lyrics and chord progressions. Hopefully, as he gets older and more confident in his music, he'll take a less-is-more approach, and then his obvious talent can really shine through.

Which brings us to The Color Fred, stripped down and acoustic—a [grown] boy and his guitar. It takes some serious cojones to put on an acoustic set like Fred did, because he didn't "mellow out" his songs at all. He just took the intensity that's normally conveyed through vocals and electric guitars with the support of bass and drums, and packed it all into just his voice and his acoustic guitar. A full band set can help cover up, or at least distract from, a singer's voice cracking or missing a note slightly. But with a solo acoustic performance, it's all hangin' out there. The audience is going to hear every crack, every missed note—and Fred, amazingly, makes that work to his advantage. When his voice cracks, it's because he's channeling the intensity of the song, and it fits in context. It's not a missed note; it's letting go, not thinking about the "technical" side of performing because conveying the emotion of the song is more important.

It's clear that much of the younger audience wasn't familiar with The Color Fred heading into the show. The people who were singing along with the songs tended to be the older members of the crowd (and by that we mean the smattering of people in their mid-to-late twenties), and the teens were more in pure listening mode. But he clearly won them over; after his set, there was a pretty long line of people at the merch stand to buy his music and wanting photos and autographs from him. He'd told us that his goal in doing this acoustic tour supporting The Scene Aesthetic was to reach a younger audience and win some new fans. If Fred continues to perform on the tour the way he did in Philly, he will certainly have great success.