Daughtry w/ Tremonti & Lyell • March 15, 2022 • The Complex
Reviewed and Photographed by Josilyn Wakkuri Lybbert
On Tuesday, March 15, 2022, fans packed into The Complex for a rocking night of music delivered by Daughtry along with openers Lyell and Tremonti. The excitement was apparent before ever even entering the venue!
Lyell
Lyell took the stage full of energy. She was jumping around and head-banging the entire performance. The crowd loved it!! They would cheer every time she flipped her hair. Before her second song, she announced that the next song, “Bad Habit,” would be in an upcoming Hulu film. During the show, I didn’t quite catch the details for that, so I reached out to her via Instagram. She got right back to me with the information, which was super nice of her and helpful! That was a piece of the night that I didn’t want to leave out!
Between the first and second song, her drummer played a drum solo and the crowd went wild! After her fourth song, she said, “Salt Lake City, this was the most beautiful drive today!” Then she covered Nirvana’s, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which of course the crowd had a blast rocking out to! Throughout her performance, her stage was lit with a pink or blue glow, and sometimes a mix of both! Lyell’s voice was smooth, powerful, and clear throughout her whole portion of the show! The audience really seemed to enjoy her fun, upbeat set!
Tremonti
In between Lyell and Tremonti, people were sitting down around the edges of the crowd snacking waiting for Tremonti to take the stage. Then, the lights went out and bright white lights flashed over the crowd as Tremonti came on stage. Their first song started and the white lights turned to purple, blue, and yellow. They shone onto the audience and lit up the venue! They matched the energy of Lyell while they moved about the stage and were exactly what I think of when the phrase “rocking out,” comes to mind! After their second song, they said, “We are blessed to be in your beautiful city tonight!”
As they continued on with the set, I noticed that not only were they interactive with each other, they were also very interactive with the crowd! One band member could be seen giving an acknowledging nod and another, sticking his tongue out at the crowd. They were a lot of fun to watch and listen to. I could tell that the audience thought so too!
Before their last song, Tremonti announced that they had been on tour for quite some time, but it wasn’t until their stop in, “this beautiful city,” that they were able to get their families to fly out for one of their shows on the tour. They asked that the crowd give them a warm welcome! They ended their set with a song called, “Wish You Well,” which I thought was a great song to close! Before they left the stage, they asked the audience to raise their hands in the air to take a photo with them!
Daughtry
The lights went off and an icy blue rectangle illuminated the dark stage. Letters began randomly flashing in the rectangle. When all of the space in the rectangle was filled out, the letters spelled out, “Dearly Beloved,” which is the title of Daughtry’s newest album and of the tour. When those words were displayed, Daughtry came onto the stage to the sound of screams, yelling, and applause. The crowd was ecstatic! Following the first song, Chris Daughtry said, “Salt Lake you look beautiful tonight!!”
He then started to talk about his next song, “Changes Are Coming.”. He said it was, “about coming out of the dark tunnel we’ve been in for the past two years,” and that he truly believes that changes are coming. After his third song of the night, he said that two years ago to the day, they were leaving Salt Lake City. Because things shut down due to the pandemic. How crazy is that?! During the song, “No Surprise,” without any prompting, the crowd, “Woah-ed,” and “Ooh-ed,” to music, and it sounded beautiful!
A few more songs into the show, Daughtry noticed that a fan had a sign asking him to ask her about her tattoos. He did, and she ended up having a leg sleeve of Daughtry tattoos! He was impressed and signed her sign and the crowd went wild! Daughtry said that he didn’t write anything too exciting. But suspected that the fan would be getting a new tattoo soon!
Following that interaction with the crowd, he announced that he would be singing an older song. He said that it was the song that people would say they liked the most whenever he was recognized out in public. He asked the crowd, “When it gets to the chorus, will you please sing it instead? If you don’t know the words, you can make [something] up instead! I’ve heard the wrong words for a long time. It is, ‘I’m going home,’ not ‘I’m coming home,’ just throwing that out there!” He continued, “Alright, can we kill these lights and you guys can be the light show?”. Then, all of the lights went out in the venue. The stage was lit up only by cell phone flashlights, and Daughtry said, “Oh that’s beautiful!” That led to the song, “Home.”
That is my personal favorite song by Daughtry, so I was really excited to hear it live! The crowd was equally excited, if not even more so than I was! They swayed and sang the song loud and proud while holding up their cell phones up just like he asked them to. When he sang the line, “These places and these faces are getting old,” he followed it with, “Except for tonight in Salt Lake City!” That statement got a lot of cheering and applause!
After, “Home,” Daughtry talked about the strains that the pandemic has had on all of us. Especially how it was affecting mental health, and how we can all have really bad days. He began to play the emotional song, “Cry for Help.” I went out to the common area of the venue just briefly where I noticed that some people were out there in tears. Some were fully crying. As I walked past the merchandise stand, one person said that they had to step out because the emotions of the song were too much to take that night. I noticed that Daughtry expressed emotions very vividly. Not only in his interactions with the crowd but in the songs that he sang, too. The level that he reached with that really impressed me, and I think it makes for a much more intimate experience for the audience.
When the song was finished, Daughtry asked the crowd how they were doing. They cheered. He replied, “That’s the international sign of a good time!” Later in the show, he dedicated the song, “Heavy Is The Crown,” to, “all of the good people in Ukraine.” The audience was excited that Daughtry finished out the night with an encore with hits including, “Waiting For Superman,” “Over You,” and one of his newer songs, “Asylum!”
Throughout the night, I observed people having so much fun. Hands were in the air, mini mosh pits were being formed in various areas of the audience, and songs resonated with fans of all ages, young and old! I also noticed how the lighting on the stage would change colors to match the feel of the song and music. Sometimes the lights would flash to a strong beat. During the song called, “Evil,’ the stage only had a few red spotlights that set the mood, while at other times, the stage was really bright, filled with white and yellow lights! Daughtry’s voice was just like I remembered hearing it when I was growing up on American Idol or on the radio! He provided a great, clear quality of singing that fit perfectly with his wide range of songs.
The Dearly Beloved Tour’s stop in Salt Lake City was just that – dearly beloved by all in attendance! Lyell, Tremonti, and Daughtry all put fantastic shows that really livened up the night at The Complex!
