Kacey Musgraves – Carlswerk Victoria, Cologne; May 5th, 2024

Kacey Musgraves is someone I only know, because some people covered her songs during 100 days of ukulele, I liked them and covered them as well. When I fond out she was playing in Cologne, I spontaneously bought a ticket and I have no regrets. she gave us a wonderful show and hat a great support act too.

On show day, I arrived at the venue around 5 pm and there was already a queue. No massive though, I had a good chance of getting somewhere near the front. Spent the waiting time reading and when we finally got in, ended up in the second row. Not bad. 🙂 Felt a little bit like an imposter, because I barely know her music, yet was very curious about how it would be.

At 7:30, a lot earlier than I expected, support Madi Diaz hit the stage. It was just her and her guitar and the music she played was lovely. She told us how she ha done song she was afraid of singing by herself and asked Kacey for help and in return she was asked to come on tour. The song was ‘Don’t do me good’ and I half expected them to sing together, but it didn’t happen. Great song though. I really enjoyed her set and could have listened to her for longer.

After what seemed like forever (about 40 minutes), the lights went down again and it was time for Kacey. Everyone cheered as her band walked on stage and finally she stepped up to the mic for ‘Cardinal’ – from the first word, a lot of people sang along. I was grateful that some more people in my corner didn’t seem to know the lyrics either. I loved it already. The sound was amazing and the music made me happy.

Next up was ‘Heart of the Woods’. “Oh, a waltz,” I though – it’s in 3/4 time. Made me move with the music. With ‘Deeper well’, everyone sang along again. I couldn’t, but it was nice to be there and hearing it. Kacey greeted us and asked how we were doing. She specifically asked about the people at the back too, assuming that was where “all the weird shit is going down.” It had been long since she was in Germany and replied to someone who said “Fuck yeah, it has!” She explained how she was excited, but was also tired and in a bad mood earlier, but a vodka drink helped and seeing our faces was giving her energy. Did we want to make memories together? Absolutely.

‘Sway’ had me moving with the music again. I loved the guitars on that one. Her band was amazing overall, they played well. ‘Too Good to be true’ was beautiful and ‘Butterflies’ had everyone cheering loudly and brought a nice sing along. It was great how different the songs were. They all sounded wonderful to me, some more familiar and some less. All the fans sang along to every word and I enjoyed being a spectator for once. At one point she asked who had been with her since 2012 and lots of people cheered. 🙂

‘Giver / Taker’ really made people happy and ‘Lonely Weekend’ had everyone sing along again. I think it was here that star shaped confetti fell from the ceiling and stuck to everyone’s clothes. <3 ‘Lonely Millionaire’ had great percussion and piano and ended on a sing along that everyone could participate in – “lalala” is always easy. 😉

After that they decided to get a bit closer and play an acoustic set for us. Kacey made some comments about people being cute and having the moves, asking some for their names. 🙂 It made me especially happy that they played the two songs  had recently covered and thus could sing along to. The first one was ‘Follow your Arrow’ and we all sang along loudly and cheered for all the instructions “Kiss lots of Boys” – “Wooh!”, “Kiss lots of girls” – “Wooh!”. After that, she gave a shoutout to Madi Diaz and introduced us to her friend, Sarah , who played and sang in the band and had a birthday that day. So of course we sang Happy Birthday.

Then, we got to hear a story of how rough the tour start had been and how they all had food poisoning one after the other. in different cities. It sounded more like stomach flu to me, but whatever. Someone in the audience pointed that out too, shouting “I don’t believe it’s food poisoning any more”. Kacey was even joking about renaming the tour into “Deeper Unwell” – Tour. To her question if we should go out after the show, someone replied “It’s Sunday”. Yeah, welcome to Germany! 😀

The next song was introduced as being one big question mark and that there are so many terrible things in the world, yet so much beauty as well. “I don’t know if there is a maker, I am not sure, but if there was one I would ask some questions”. That moment I knew it was ‘The Architect’. Such a great song! <3

The band moved back to their instruments and the show continued with ‘Heaven is’, starting with some amazing pedal steel guitar. I really loved this and very much enjoyed the guitar work. ‘Jade Green’ was a great example of that too and moved straight into ‘Rainbow’ – another wonderful sing-along.

‘Golden Hour’ felt almost a bit jazzy and I was there for it. She told us she liked our energy and played the lovely ‘Anime Eyes’, then rocked the house with ‘Justified’. All night I marveled at how everyone knew the lyrics so well. The interesting adventure of going to shows of people whose music I don’t know well. 😉

Kacey told us she didn’t believe in encores, because she wanted us to be present in the moment, but they’d have a few more songs for us. She continued with ‘I remember everything’; the song she had recorded with Zach Bryan. 🙂 For ‘High Horse’ we had big balloons floating around and at some point during the show we had a giant disco ball on the ceiling too. Fun! ‘Slow Burn’ was one final big sing along. After that she thanked us, thanked Madi Diaz, thanked her band and crew and left us with Bob Marley’s ‘Three Little Birds’. It was a perfect end to the show. It left me with a smile on my face and I was happy I saw it.

Setlist

Cardinal
Heart of the Woods
Deeper Well
Sway
Too Good to Be True
Butterflies
Giver / Taker
Lonely Weekend
Lonely Millionaire
Follow Your Arrow (acoustic)
The Architect (acoustic)
Heaven Is
Jade Green
Rainbow
Golden Hour
Anime Eyes
Justified
I Remember Everything (Zach Bryan cover)
High Horse
Slow Burn
Three Little Birds (Bob Marley & The Wailers cover)