March 11, 2018
The Van Buren
Phoenix, Arizona
What a hoot! Renae and I had the pleasure of photographing Walk Off The Earth (WOTE) when they played the Van Buren on March 11, 2018. The Van Buren just opened last fall and may just be one of the coolest music venues in Phoenix!
WOTE played to a darn near capacity crowd of 1800 very enthusiastic fans and they put on a heck of a show! They play an eclectic mix of covers mixed in with original material. They exploded on the music seen a few years ago with an amazing 5-people-playing-one-guitar interpretation of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know”. It garnered 35 million views in under 2 weeks! Here is a link to their video. They have a boat-load of other videos and it would behoove you to check them out – you will not be disappointed!
Sarah Blackwood (Ukelele, guitar, vocals, percussion) belts out vocals not unlike Gwen Stafani and together with husband Gianni Luminati, (Bass, drums, guitar, ukulele, vocals) Ryan Marshall (Guitar, harmonica, trumpet, bass, vocals) and Mike “Beard Guy” Taylor (Keyboards, vocals) create amazing harmonies and play off of each other very nicely. Joel Cassady (Drums, percussion, samples) keeps everyone together (and entertained) on drums.
They played a variety of “Uniquely WOTE” covers including Ed Sheeran’s “Shape of You”; Pharrell William’s “Happy”; a captivating version of Adele’s “Hello” and their now famous signature version of Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know”. And they enticed the crowd with their own material including “Gang of Rhythm”, a very fun “Taekwondo” and ended the show with what could be their anthem “Sing It All Away”. Darenots opened the night and got the crowd fired up for a fun evening of fantastic energy and music.
Renae and I want to give special thanks to Sarah, Gianni, Ryan, Joel and Beard Guy for providing us the credentials to photograph the show!
We have included some of the photos here, but you will want to see all 139 of our WOTE photos HERE!
