Phosphorescent @ Mercury Ballroom - Louisville
September 27th, 2024: Phosphorescent at Mercury Ballroom - Louisville, KY
Phosphorescent | Photos courtesy of: Emily May
Nashville-based artist Phosphorescent (stage name of singer-songwriter Matthew Houck) brought his current tour, An Evening With Phosphorescent, to Louisville, KY on September 27th to a modest but passionate crowd of fans. What might have normally been a larger turnout was hampered by rain and the Louder Than Life Festival this same weekend. Houck has been performing as Phosphorescent since 2001 and has amassed a dedicated fan base over the past 20+ years with his electric stage presence with his backing band and his thoughtfulness and talent as a songwriter. This evening was a bit of a different approach, in that Houck opened for himself. “Good evening”, he said after coming out on stage. “I’ll be opening up for Phosphorescent tonight! Thank ya’ll for coming out in the rain.” With just him and his electric guitar, he explained to the crowd that he would play some of his older and popular tracks acoustically before bringing his band out for the full band experience. “With a new album out, I didn’t know if we, as a band, would have time to play a lot of the old favorites, so I had this idea.” Performing such favorites as “C’est La Vie No. 2”, “The World Is Ending”, “Any Old Miracle” (a Vern Gosdin cover from his Full Moon Project), “My Dove, My Lamb” (mentioning that he doesn’t get to play this song too often but loves it), and “Terror In The Canyons (The Wounded Master)”. A really impressive part of his solo set was how quiet and respectful people were while he played!
Towards the end of his solo set, he talked about how he’d had the chance to score a movie directed by a Canadian documentary filmmaker named Paul Schrader called ‘Oh Canada’. “I got the idea to look over my own life and some old songs I had done, some of which gelled so well with the movie. So, I got to re-record a few of my old songs from when I was young and didn’t know what I was doing. They sound much better now!”. He ended the set with some of those songs! He then brought out his band and revved up the energy a bit, starting the set off with “Revelator”. He and his band had fun together on stage and with the crowd, who was singing along to each song. Houck would periodically acknowledge fans in the crowd with fist bumps and seemed particularly enthusiastic about a young boy in the crowd, to whom he gave one of the set lists as they finished their set. Performing 9 songs with the band, including “Impossible House”, “Wide As Heaven”, “Wolves”, a cover of “Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain”, and their popular hit “Song for Zula”, they left the stage briefly before coming back out for a 3-song encore that had the crowd singing their hearts out! It was a great night of music and well worth braving the rain to come out for!
