Listening In Live: Tim Fite at the Troubadour

Follow me and do exactly what you see?

Fite projected drawings like this one onto the screen with lyrics to his songs and made his show interactive. [source]

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The stage was set with a faux boom-box, a projection screen, a table and two mics. The showroom of the Troubadour was beginning to fill up and people had already staked out the area in front and center of the stage. Lights began flashing here and there, the smoke machine created a subtle cloud and Tim Fite emerged from the darkness of stage right.

As he began performing his first song, the din of conversation died down and all eyes focused center stage. After greeting the audience, Fite launched into a high energy song that got all the heads in the room bobbing. Completely in character, he jerked this way and that, making exaggerated animated gestures as he sang in a gravely timbre. When he spoke, his voice rose and fell in a quirky, sing-song, almost cartoonish way. Behind him on the screen, Fite had fashioned his own background group consisting of…you guessed it himself; in three parts.

Besides multiplying himself, Fite used the screen to ingeniously make his show interactive, informing the audience that they would be going on a guided tour of their body "by the guy with itchy legs." He pointed to the screen, telling the audience that their participation was need and the activity has three steps: Read the screen, yell what you see, and touch yourself. It reminded me of being in classroom and the teacher makes you do silly stretches to make sure the class is awake. Of course the silliness of it was intentional and the crowd was well into the spirit of things, yelling, bending, touching and laughing. The interaction did not stop there, there was also a song in which the audience was responsible for singing the chorus; a responsibility they took on gladly singing "Burn, burn it down, down, down. Down, down, down. Burn it down!"

I must admit that I was slightly disappointed that he only performed one song from Over the Counter Culture, but that could just be because that's the album that made me a fan. Overall though, the show was a very entertaining, comical, fun exhibition of performance art. If he weren't making music, Tim Fite - with his innocent Alfalfa look and over the top, full body movements - could easily be the next big improvisational comedic actor.

Check out more music, news, reviews and opinions by Kymlee.

Cross-posted to Listen In Music.

© Kimberlee Morrison 2008 for Listen In. Some rights reserved.

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