Chris Cornell and Juliette and the Licks at Congress Theater

Wednesday night I went to see Chris Cornell and Juliette and the Licks at the Congress Theater. I was asked to shoot Juliette and the Licks for a spin magazine website feature and I, of course, agreed.

Juliette and the Licks

After driving through some really bad traffic to get to the city, I met up with Dark Dave outside the venue and we got inside about 20 minutes before showtime. The place wasn’t very crowded when we got there, largely due to the early start time I’m sure. I noticed they have done some work inside the old Congress, including ripping out the ancient seats on the first floor that covered the back two-thirds of the theater.

Juliette and the Licks

Juliette and the Licks promptly took the stage at 7pm. She was dressed in leather pants, a yellow top and was wearing some Indian headdress and had paint under her eyes. The band played about forty-five minutes of their dirty rock and roll. Juliette was pretty energetic, moving all over the stage and the band members were playing with a pretty good energy and everyone on stage was enjoying themselves. In between songs Juliette would play up to the crowd or provide a little information about the band or song they were about to play. Having only heard a couple of their songs online, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed their set.

Chris Cornell

After about a forty-five minute set change while I was taking photos of the people the writer I worked with was interviewing, Chris Cornell and his band took the stage. Everyone but Chris came out and played some sort of into until he joined them and they went into their first real song. From there it was a steady mix of his solo material mixed in with some Soundgarden songs as well (as I was told as I’m not familiar with them) an Audioslave song or two. The crowd were pretty into it, especially the Soundgarden numbers, which included “Jesus Christ Pose”, “Outshined”, “Spoonman” and “Black Hole Sun”. The band played for close to two hours including a three song encore and gave the crowd more than their money’s worth withe the long and rock-solid set. They even played a cover of “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson.

Chris Cornell

After the show ended I drove home in a massive thunderstorm that knocked out the power to Combustion Manor, which I had to wait up for it to return so I could upload the required photos to Spin. All in all a pretty good nite and a very entertaining show.

Chris Cornell