Woove Editor-in-Chief Rosalie Wind reviews CAKE's performance on July 17th.

I always wondered what John McCrea, lead singer of CAKE, sounded like when he spoke. If you have heard CAKE, you know that McCrea’s voice, to use his own words, “is dark like tinted glass.” Though low and rough, it meshes unquestionably well with CAKE’s overall upbeat energy. On July 17^th, CAKE performed a sold-out concert outdoors in Newport, Rhode Island, where WUVT Business Manager Stephen Goode and I got to hear and enjoy McCrea’s dulcet baritone. The band played for about two hours, playing mostly old songs and handing out giveaways to their loyal fans.

After their opening band, an indie folk group called Winterpills, performed with apologies for their absent and “comfortably resting” bassist and drummer, CAKE came onstage in front of a woodland backdrop and opened with the driven “Comfort Eagle,” letting their audience lead the song. Their slow and melancholy Willie Nelson cover “Sad Songs and Waltzes” followed, after which McCrea set his audience at ease with laid-back conversation, dressed incognito in a hat and sunglasses.

The band has true style in keeping an audience engaged. They let the crowd lead the choruses: separating the vocals into all men, then all women; the left side of the crowd, then the right side. After a while, McCrea gave away the pear tree that had been in plain sight during the show to the audience member who could guess its type, stating: “We’re giving this tree away not because we’re environmentalists, not because we’re hippies, but because we like trees. And freedom.” Towards the end of the show, McCrea tossed out a second and final giveaway, an older CAKE shirt.

Other than the two new songs performed, the show brought only sweet nostalgia with “Guitar,” “Wheels,” “Mexico,” and the audience-rousing “Sheep go to Heaven.” CAKE even played songs off their 1994 album Motorcade of Generosity with “Rock ‘n’ Roll Lifestyle,” “Jolene,” and “Pentagram.” They closed with “Never There” and took a short break before their encore.

Returning to the stage (and to a loud, excited audience), the band started their encore with “War Pigs,” a Black Sabbath cover from CAKE’s 2007 album B-Sides and Rarities (and the first song I ever played, with the help of Alex Simon, as a WUVT DJ), as CAKE fans cheered, danced, and sang along with gusto. A mostly audience-led “Short Skirt/Long Jacket” came next, and the crowd enjoyed the rhythmic: “Hey! Ho!” as well as the back and forth: “I want a girl who gets up early-” “Gets up early!” “-I want a girl who stays up late-” “Stays up late!” “-I want a girl with uninterrupted prosperity-” “Uninterrupted!” The show closed with “The Distance”, in another repeat-after-me fashion: “He’s going for speed/ She’s all alone-” “All alone!” “-In her time of need-” “In her time of need!” After this shared performance, CAKE and their audience closed the show and went their separate ways around ten o’clock.

CAKE has been making albums and playing shows for almost twenty years, but their music still sounds fresh and catchy, and the band clearly loves performing over and over again. They play to show their gratitude for CAKE devotees, and though they have been around for decades, they show just as much loyalty to their fans and the fans do to them.