The Lumineers and CAAMP light up the evening in Detroit

You know it’s going to be a good night when you pull up to the venue and there is a double rainbow
hanging over the entrance, not that we thought we’d be having anything else knowing that The
Lumineers would be gracing our ears in the not-to-distant future. The Brightside World Tour kicked off in
May and they didn’t just bring their infectious sounds and everyone-sings-along tunes with them to
Detroit, they also brought the boys of Caamp.

Ohio’s Caamp was originally scheduled to tour with The Lumineers back in 2020, but as the pandemic
forced a quite a bit of change, it luckily didn’t change the plans to treat everyone to a night with both of
these delightful bands. Caamp has been on the rise in the post-pandemic days with some rather
heavy rotation on the SiriusXM indie and alt-rock stations. Tonight though, they played through a mix of
songs like “26” and “Peach Fuzz” from their previous albums in addition to some newer music like this years single, “Believe.” Caamp was the perfect group to set the mood with their raspy-bluegrass-folk music and as their set came to an end you could see the music had the nearly packed Pine Knob Music Theatre in the mood for the sun to set and the stage lights to come on.

The Lumineers took the stage one at a time with drummer Jeremiah Fraites’ taking the stage first and
finding his place nestled under the giant video screen above him. The rest of the group soon followed as
the percussion of the drums started beating out the lead track off The Lumineers April 2022 album
release of the same name, “Brightside.” This song has been out for a little while with the single having
been release last year and there was no doubt that the crowd was already familiar with this one.

The next few songs of the evening gave us some a handful of classics the group has become known for with back-to-back-to-back tracks “Cleopatra,” “Ho Hey,” and “Angela.” There is no doubt that these are
absolute fan favorites and to play them so early in the set didn’t seem to bother guests one bit with
“Ho Hey” getting maybe the biggest crowd pop of the entire night, then again there was no way of
measuring this, but it was loud and fun and amazing to see a crowd in such unison with fingers pointing
to the stage with each and every “Ho” and “Hey.”

The energy on stage was incredible no matter where your eyes focused with piano/keyboard player
Stelth Ulvang seemingly always in motion or if you were transfixed by the vocals coming from lead singer
Wesley Shultz, it was non-stop pure entertainment from start to finish. The group played more of their
hits with “Gloria” and “Ophelia” while still making sure not to neglect their latest album with “Where We
Are,” a song that reminds us that even if we don’t know where we are in this crazy world, it will be okay.

The Lumineers closed out their set with a 5 song encore including “Donna” before finishing the night
with “Stubborn Love,” the second single (after “Ho Hey”) that began the launch of the group on their
way to stardom. It’s hard to quantify the love fans have for this band but it truly is quite the experience
to be surrounded by this music and 15,000 or so other people. There is something special about this
music in particular and you do need to experience them live to understand that for yourself.