Back in April 2020, Lawrence was scheduled to play Boston’s Royale, but when things started shutting down due to the pandemic, live music got put on pause.
Two years, and one album later, Lawrence is finally back to remind Boston fans why they missed live music so much.
On November 12 and 13, the sibling duo and their six piece band brought their ‘Hotel TV’ tour to Boston’s Royale for two sold out shows.
Night one began with opener Zoe Sparks, a Berklee College of Music student and artist.
Plucking her cherry red bass guitar and backed by her R&B/Soul band, she had the crowd grooving along to original songs including “Samantha,” “Friends with You,” her latest release, and “Sober,” which had an beautiful acoustic ending.
For her song, “Why’d It Have To Be You?,” she invited the crowd to sing along as they echoed “Oh Lord!,” back to her.
Before leaving the stage, she called out, “Thank you for dancing with me!,” to the cheering crowd.
Illuminated by the glow of televisions and scattered lamps, Gracie and Clyde Lawrence assumed their spots at their nord stage 2 and mics, Clyde wearing his signature “Thank God It’s Chicken Finger Friday” shirt because it wouldn’t be a true Friday Lawrence show without it.
Lawrence kicked off their eighteen song set with “Casualty” and “It’s Not All About You,” two high energy, crowd favorites.
They left it all on the stage with their song “Jet Lag,” which knocked Clyde’s hat right off his head.
However, the audience wasn’t just there to experience live music, they were there to be a part of it. Some of the ways Lawrence engaged the crowd were through a Twitter poll to select what song they would play that night. “More” won by a landslide for every city, including Boston.
Gracie also encouraged the crowd during “Freckles” to respond “You Know You’re Beautiful” every time she said “1,2,3,” while Clyde invited the crowd to participate in a three-part harmony during “Make A Move” and the wind section got in the pit for for “False Alarms.”
The theme of the night was favorite tv shows, so interspersed between songs, Lawrence jammed out to favorite tv themes from The Office, Hey Arnold, and Succession.
TV themes were just a few of the covers that Lawrence put their own spin on. They also made Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” their own with vocal runs, trumpet, and sax.
Lawrence got sentimental with their song “Thoughts From The ER (Silver Lining).” Clyde explained that they began writing the track back in 2019, but with everything that has happened during the pandemic, “A thing that we had written for our family became a globally relevant thing.” Their brother Linus Lawrence joined them on stage for the deeply personal performance, which they dedicated to their guitarist, Johnny who lost his mother during the pandemic.
When playing “Weathers,” a song they released around the time they would have been on their last tour, Clyde acknowledged how it was, “such an awesome feeling to finally get to play this song for you.”
Lawrence teased the end of the show with their dynamic, showstopping performance of their 2021 single “Don’t Lose Sight.”
To cheers for an encore, Lawrence returned to the stage for two more songs, but before jamming out, they picked up a giant hammer and hit a button that had been placed at stage right since the start of the show. As the hammer came down on the button, Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” started playing, RickRolling the audience
They closed out the epic night with two covers, *NSYNC’s “It’s Gonna Be Me” with the Succession theme, and “Tomorrow” from the musical ‘Annie.’
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