Badflower at Bottom Lounge in Chicago

29 Sep, 2019 John Kosiewicz Concert Reviews, Rock

After chants of “Loose the shirt!” lead singer Josh Katz, returned to the stage for encore, shirtless, “Welcome to dad bod, day 1 of the tour!” or officially titled, The OK, I’m Sick Tour. The tour is in support of Badflower’s first full-length album, OK, I’m Sick, which released on February 22, 2019 via Big Machine/John Varvatos Records. It’s their first official headline tour, and its spread to cities across the U.S. throughout the fall. On Sunday, September 29, 2019, the tour kicked off in Chicago at The Bottom Lounge. Katz genuinely seemed excited about the start of the tour in Chicago, “This is surreal. This is amazing. This is our first like real, for real, for real headline tour. And we’re selling out all over the place because you guys care.” “Tiny little packed places and singing all the words.” “I just wanted this so bad!” “It’s really incredible.”

The tour should have been called, Badflower, The Badass Tour, because from the start, that is exactly what it was. With two amazing supporting artists in Dead Poet Society and Weathers (2016 101WKQX TNWSC, 2019 The Metro, 2019 Roscoe Village Ribfest), it was nearly 3 ½ hours of non-stop energy. At one point, fans were thinking the show was nearly over and started chanting, “One more song,” Katz referenced the setlist with, “Wrote a lot of songs down on this thing.” Even before “Girlfriend” which was the last song of the main set, “And this is our last song,” with a wink wink.

The 18 song setlist included a nice mixture of songs off the new album, as well as previous material. Included in the night were two covers: “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis cover and Bury a Friend by Billie Eilish. The audience sang along with all the songs throughout the night. During “Animal,” Katz was found singing and crowd surfing in the audience. As the band led into, “Girlfriend,” the audience erupted. Katz jokingly questioned, “Oh you know this one?”

One big surprise of the evening was during a guitar exchange when Johnny Galecki, known for The Big Bang, brought Katz his guitar. After a brief embrace, Galecki informed Katz that he had come from Nashville to see the show. During the song “Girlfriend”, Galecki took his first stage dive into the audience showing his crowd surfing skills.

Closing out the night, Katz talked about Dead Poet Society and Weathers with “This is like three bands, I mean we’re okay, but those two… the three bands that are gonna be massively huge, and you got to see them in this tiny room, I think that’s so cool.” He’s right about that.

Be sure to keep up with the latest information and tour dates at the Badflower website.

Badflower Set List
Bottom Lounge, Chicago
September 29, 2019