Daughtry @ Shea’s Performing Arts , Buffalo, New York 3-20-12

Daughtry, who just released his third album called “Break the Spell,” opened up the tour, which bears the same name of the album, in Buffalo, NY this past Tuesday night. Playing to a near capacity crowd, the band came out and launched into the first song from “Break the Spell’ entitled “Renegade.”

Backed by a good band which included Rochester, NY native Elvio Fernandes, vocalist Chris Daughtry proved that he has the pipes to effortlessly blast through songs like “Feels Like Tonight” and “Out of my Head.” Before he played the title track off the latest release, he talked about how he loved going to see bands and hearing the new stuff. A big applause came as he eased into his latest single, “Outta my Head.” During “What About Now,” there were many images and representations of freedom, equality and injustices shown throughout. In listening to most of Daughtry’s songs, I can tell they are very well crafted lyrically and well produced. A great story was told right before Daughtry introduced the song “Home,” that he performed without the accompaniment of his band. He explained how this was the first song he demoed for Clive Davis back in 2006 for RCA Records. Clive asked “What’s he got?” and Daughtry replied, “Nothing much except this song.” He then played it and Davis replied “I got a record contact for you!” Classic songs like Billy Idol’s “Rebel Yell” and Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream” were also thrown in for good measure.

Given the high percentage of female attendees in the audience, it reminded me of another artist from some 30 years ago who took off in this similar fashion, Bon Jovi. I see the beginnings of a similar path towards stardom for the Daughtry band.

Set List:

Renegade
Break the Spell
Feels Like Tonight
Crawling Back to You
Losing my Mind
Out of my Head
Crazy
Start of Something Good
What About Now?
Home
Spaceship
Louder than Ever
Over You
No Surprise
Running Down a Dream (Tom Petty cover)
September