An evening with Daryl Hall, John Oates, and Train

Today was the long awaited concert I bought tickets for back in March to see Train as well as Hall & Oates. I’ve been looking forward to this show as has my brother Chris who I bestowed the other ticket upon as a belated birthday present. He’s been a Hall & Oates fan forever, so he was excited as I was to check this show out.

We bused into Toronto around 2pm and arrived around 3pm so we had plenty of time to find something good to eat so we went for a walk. Chris was in the mood for Sushi, so who was I to argue? We found this amazing Sushi place right by the Eaton Centre called Spring Sushi, and since it was all you could eat, neither of us left the place hungry. Three words for ya: bacon wrapped shrimp. Need I say more?

After stuffing ourselves beyond full, we took a walk back to the ACC (Air Canada Centre) which was the location of our show tonight. Upon arrival, we were informed that there was an issue with out tickets and we had to go to a specific gate to resolve it.

I had no idea what was going on, but I went to where I was told to go… only to be informed that our tickets were being UPGRADED.

We were moved from the 3rd level to the floor… 22 rows from the stage!  Shocked is an understatement of how we felt about getting our new tickets, and needless to say our new view of the stage was beyond awesome.

So we took our seat on the floor and were in our new place 20 mins before the show was supposed to start. The opening act was a young blues like singer named Kandace Spring. She was alright, but my brother wasn’t as impressed and was happy to see her go after about 30 minutes. She did a cover of Bonnie Raitt’s “I can’t make you love me” that was pretty sweet, but people were eager to move on to the bigger bands.

The next act was Train, and they were pretty amazing.

I loved every minute of this performance, as they played my favorites such as If It’s Love, Drive By, Sweet Soul Sister, and Play that Song. Train even did a cover of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin'” which was simply breathtaking. I was here at the ACC eleven months ago on July 15th of last year to see Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers last show in Toronto… so that cover hit me right in the feels. Train covered it pretty well, and they performed their asses off.

Here is the set list from their performance tonight:

1. 50 Ways to Say Goodbye

2. If It’s Love

3. Get to Me

4. Heartbreaker
(Led Zeppelin cover)

5. Call Me Sir

6. Meet Virginia

7. Save Me, San Francisco

8. When I Look to the Sky

9. Marry Me

10. Hey, Soul Sister

11. Play That Song

12. Drive By

13. Free Fallin’
(Tom Petty cover)

14. Drops of Jupiter

With Train finished for the night (well, most of them…) it was time to move on to the bigger act, Rock & Roll hall of fame band, Hall & Oates!

For a band that have been making music for over forty years, these guys still had it and the crowd was enjoying every song. They performed a lot of their greatest hits, and sounded rather good doing it too!

One big surprise was that the lead singer from Train (Pat Monahan) came back out and performed a few songs with Hall & Oates, including a new one tune they co-wrote just for this tour, which I thought was very cool. Overall Hall & Oates performed fifteen great tracks, and here is the set list from tonight’s showing:

1. Maneater

2. Out of Touch

3. Say It Isn’t So

4. You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’
(The Righteous Brothers cover)

5. She’s Gone

6. Sara Smile

7. Is It a Star

8. I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do)

9. Philly Forget Me Not
(with Pat Monahan)

10. Wait for Me
(with Pat Monahan)

11. Calling All Angels
(Train cover with Pat Monahan)

12. Kiss on My List

13. Private Eyes

Encore:

14. Rich Girl

15. You Make My Dreams Come True

So overall, big brother and I had a great time at the ACC tonight, and I told him we should do at least one show together every year. He seemed comfortable with the idea, agreeing that we shouldn’t wait so long to hit a concert together again. This one was our first since 2012, so it had been too long… but it was nice to share an event with him again.

So that was my night. Take care and I’ll see you around!

Peter