On Tuesday, July 7, Mike Posner and Adam Friedman brought the Ninja Tour to Belle Isle Aquarium in Detroit, MI. Check out the photos, video, Mike’s blog post, and a concert review by The Detroit News!
Mike Posner stages hometown ‘Ninja’ show on Belle Isle
The Southfield singer’s free acoustic show short on razzle-dazzle, high on personal touch
There was no production, no lights and no microphones, but there was plenty of heart when Mike Posner performed an acoustic concert for about 250 fans inside a shed near the Belle Isle Aquarium on Tuesday night.
The free, non-ticket show was part of Posner’s coast-to-coast Ninja Show Tour, which finds the Southfield-bred performer playing in nontraditional venues announced via social media with about 24 hours’ notice. The details for Tuesday’s show were announced Monday night on Posner’s Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Tuesday’s 16-song, 70-minute concert was a deeply personal affair, with Posner performing for a hometown crowd that included his parents and close friends. He played songs that drew on his current and past works, standards from Bob Dylan and Marley and even a spoken-word passage — dedicated in part to his father — that brought him to tears. After the show, he took a group picture with the crowd and hung around to greet fans.
Fans sat at picnic tables and on the ground around the small pavilion that is usually home to picnics and birthday parties. Posner, joined on and off by guitarist Adam Friedman, bent the words to his songs and led the crowd in a series of singalongs while pausing to acknowledge his mother and father when they came up in his lyrics.
Posner is amid a career reinvention following a pair of scrapped albums that were supposed to be follow-ups to his 2010 debut, 31 Minutes to Takeoff. He now has a new label, an updated singer-songwriter style and a fresh outlook, embodied by songs such as “I Took a Pill in Ibiza” and “Be As You Are,” both of which came early in his set.
Those stark, confessional songs are a part of Posner’s four-song EP The Truth which was released last month. They find him discussing his life and career with a degree of honesty that feels like he’s unloading during a therapy session, a far cry from the clubby electro-pop of “Cooler Than Me” that became his calling card during President Obama’s first term.
While his solo career entered a holding pattern, Posner stayed afloat penning hits for Justin Bieber, Maroon 5 and others, names he mentioned during one of several new songs in his set Tuesday. He also introduced the soul-searching ballads “What Am I Supposed to Do?” and “Iris” before dipping into covers of Marley’s “Redemption Song” and Dylan’s “Blowin’ in the Wind.”
He then offered up stripped down versions of fan favorites “Drug Dealer Girl,” “Smoke and Drive” and “Bow Chicka Wow Wow,” closing his set with raw renditions of “Cooler Than Me” and “Please Don’t Go.” An encore of “Buried in Detroit,” the emotional hometown anthem that has the potential to be a Motor City classic, finished the show, and the ballad felt like a celebration.
Since staging his first Ninja show in Ann Arbor in May, Posner has been putting them on around the country, and Tuesday’s concert marked his biggest crowd. He’s said he’s thinking of the trek as more of a road trip than a tour, but either way, he was happy to make a stop in Detroit.
“I can tell you from the bottom of my heart,” Posner told the crowd, “ain’t nothing like coming home.”
Click on any thumbnail to view the entire set of photos in the gallery.
Gallery link: Performances > 2015 > Ninja Tour – Belle Isle Aquarium – Detroit, MI 7/7/2015
Check out Mike’s tour blog post!
A very special THANK YOU goes out to Chester Pink for allowing me to share his amazing photos.
