Graham Parker Tickets

Graham played an hour of his favorites and a half hour of his fans' favorites, leading to a slightly downbeat show. Venue had terrible acoustics.

It was a real treat to see GP with the Rumour again.

A great mix of old and new. The band was amazing and GP is still in full voice!

Great concert! The Rumour still can rock and showed why theyare one of the greatest backing bands of all time. Graham's voice still great!

Wasn't that familiar with his music but my hubby was a big fan and now so am I! Really enjoyed the show....thought he really engaged the audience, was funny and you just gotta love a guy in his 60s who still has 'it' and performs well! Overall a great show! The opening act The Figgs were great too!

I have been a fan of Graham Parker's for many, many years, but had never seen him live. I am pleased that on this reunion tour with his old band, The Rumor, not only was the band absolutely superb, but his singing was better than I could have hoped. Sometimes, aging vocalists disappoint, but Graham was genius.

Bruce Springsteen once said that Graham Parker was the only rocker he'd pay to see. Bruce would have gotten his money's worth at the Birchmere. Parker preened like it was 1976 again and, reunited with his old band, The Rumour, pounded out 90 minutes of new and old hits. Parker kept his patter to a minimum, so there were a lot of songs. While he flogged his newest album, Parker did reach back for some of his old reliables such as "Mona Lisa's Sister," "Hey Lord, Don't Ask Me Questions," and and "Soul Shoes." The sold out house didn't want to go home and the old guys responded with two encores. Even though he still wears sun glasses at night, Graham Parker and The Rumour can light up a room.

Super, as expected, no disappointments. God it's good to see this band back together ... no nostalgia act here! They played for almost 2 hrs, 22 songs including 4 encores ... GP seems to have shrunk as well as grayed, but he was more relaxed than I've ever seen him and even danced a bit. He played a couple of guitars, including a Guilford (sp?) and a pink one shaped a little like a Les Paul; GP said he'd never played it before and that GM (!) had lent/given it to him for the night. He was in great voice, and as far as I could tell didn't change any keys. Did a good blend of old and new songs (so glad I downloaded the new album Monday -- he did 5 tunes from it, all good, though more than three chords!). He intro'd a '70s tune with "we wrote a lot of songs then about mammals and fields ... and a lot of songs about footwear ..." Disconcertingly, in a music-hall kind of way, he intro'd almost every pre-now song with the album and year he released it!. "And now we plunged forward into the future," he said, intro'ing Start a Fire. Bob Andrews did most of the harmony, and Brinsley Schwarz chimed in harmlessly on a few. So, even, did Martin, who cannot dance and shouldn't try. He and Brinsley looked positively burly up there with still-skinny Andrew and Steve (great beats, natch -- in fact ultra-tight rhythm section, which GP noted happily). Highlights among the classics included Start a Fire, Watch the Moon Go Down, "Stupefaction" ... and from Three Chords Good I especially liked "Coat Hangers," Stop Cryin' (About the Rain) and the title song.

Parker and The Rumour play an excellent set list - the best of the 70s albums with selections from the new album scattered about. 80s and 90s are nearly absent this tour and Parker calls them the "dark middle years" and "mostly rubbish, lots of songs about footware and clothes and fields." Five songs from Squeezing Out Sparks - a welcome surprise!

The boys wisely did not reach for all the power and energy that they brought back in the day, but played well within themselves. That is not to say they didn't rock. They were sharp and very much able to work a groove. They played a lot of mellow to mid-tempo stuff, including a bunch from a new recording, along with most of the classic songs fans might have expected. The only post-Rumour tune was 'Start a Fire.'

Great show!Of course most of the set would come from GP & R's newly released album "Three Chords Good"-heavy on acoustic ballads.But when the band reached back to the early albums to rock,they proved time hasn't tainted that ability.The sold out show drew the band back for two encores..much to the delight of us diehard fans.Here's hoping the next tour is longer and reaches a venue near you.

Great show. So nice to see the Rumour back. 2 encores and still not long enough.

I have seen lots of shows at the Birchmere, in Alexandria VA. I happen to have picked the Graham Parker and the Rumour show to get there early enough to have my best seat ever - dead center, 4 seats from stage. This was a great show. I have only seen Graham Parker once - that also was with the Rumour in Washington DC's Cellar Door - somewhere around 30 years ago. I have listened to GP sporadically since then. The group played liberally from their latest offering - Three Chords Good, and also sprinkled in songs from GP's entire catalog. GP's voice is still in fine shape (what I usually find going in aging rocker concerts I attend these days), and while some Rumour members have not played publicly in 30 years, the band seemed like they have been playing together all this time. They did not ask for request, but had they, the only other songs I would have liked to have heard would have been some GP-only acoustic songs like "You can't be too Strong", "Love Get's you twisted" or even 1-2 from the Rumour catalog - like Emotional Traffic. A Great show. I look forward to seeing the Judd Apatow movie, "Ths is 40" in December which will feature the band.

It was a good show, but not memorable. They were a tad rusty, timings were off, and the songs weren't elevated by hearing them live. Die hard Parker fans will enjoy, but if you are marginal fan, might be best to skip it. Thankfully, they didn't try to milk it by charging a ton of money, which was decent of them.

I saw GP with a support band a few years ago and now with the Rumour. and I wondered What have been of them if 30 years ago they wouldn't have split?. Well, lets not cry about spilled milk, lets enjoy the fact that a great band is touring again.

What else can one say? Graham Parker and the Rumour are back together after 31 years for a 15 city U.S. tour. These guys are now all in their 60's, and look the part, but they still have the chemistry and squeezed out plenty of sparks at Poughkeepsie, in their second show since 1981. The set featured a dozen or so gems from that golden era from 1976 - 1980, including about half the classic "Squeezing Out Sparks" album. The rest of the show consisted of new material from the just released "Three Chords Good" CD and a couple of classic mid-career GP gems. The new material is generally slower and more mature than the old stuff, with a few flashes of the piss and vinegar that made the "Sparks" stuff in particular so classic. Nothing could hold up to the great old Rumour material but it's decent in its own right. This may be a once in a lifetime chance so check it out.

On the first night of their reunion tour, Graham Parker and his 70s cohorts turned in a remarkably assured performance that bodes well for even stronger shows as they gain their stage feet. The band's unique chemistry was very much intact in a set that mixed favourites from throughout Parker's career with most (a little too much, some in the crowd grumbled) of their solid new album Three Chords Good, which recreates their classic sound. Parker was in generally fine voice, even if he chose to duck the braying high notes of Discovering Japan and had lost a little vocal power and heft with the decades. Among the Rumourmongers, the standout was an ebullient Bob Andrews, in great voice as the main harmony singer and offering his distinctive vibrato-laden organ and rollicking honky-tonk piano, while lead guitarist Brinsley Schwarz seemed a little tentative (his being too far down in the mix didn't help). Overall, this was mostly everything the two-thirds-full house of 600 or so could have wished for.

There are a few artists when they are in town that I HAVE to see and Graham Parker is one of them. I had no idea what the venue and format were but it turned out to be a fascinating interview and performance. The evening turned out to be the most fun I've had in ages. Only to be capped off by meeting Graham which was an unexpected treat. Kudos to the Grammy Museum for filming the interview for their archives. A project worthy of our support!