We have FIFA to thank.
Ed Sheeran booked football stadiums for his North American “Loop” tour this summer – at the same time the World Cup has been taking over those venues.
Consequently, Sheeran’s booking team found themselves with a hole in the routing, Scott Ziel, Summerfest’s Vice President of Entertainment, told the Journal Sentinel earlier this year.
They ended up filling it at Summerfest’s American Family Insurance Amphitheater, a venue Sheeran enjoyed playing in 2015 before becoming a stadium headliner, back when it was the Marcus Amphitheater.
And that’s how Sheeran ended up playing for about 23,000 people in Milwaukee June 25, about half the capacity for every other show of his tour this summer.
Milwaukee fans were clearly thrilled by their incredible fortune to see Sheeran in a vastly more intimate space. But Sheeran too was also elated, referring to this performance as a “special night” and repeatedly talking about the joy of playing an amphitheater and a festival for the evening in lieu of his customary stadium setting.
He took full advantage. Expressing his excitement to perform where the seating is more compact and closer to the stage, Sheeran asked the crowd to take pictures on their smartphones with their flash on for certain lyrics of “Camera,” creating a gorgeous glittering effect across the sea of people. He also praised the acoustics in a venue like this specifically designed for music, calling for hush, and achieving it, for a gentle and stirring rendition of “Tenerife Sea.”
But Sheeran still gave Summerfest’s amphitheater a stadium-sized spectacle – in a way that only Sheeran alone can do.
There was a band on stage – the Irish quintet Beoga – who joined Sheeran for their collaborations “Galway Girl” and “Nancy Mulligan,” plus the aforementioned “Camera.” Their arsenal of fiddle, bodhrán, accordions and Irish bouzouki brought rich textures to Sheeran’s ultra-polished and processed Justin Bieber collaboration “I Don’t Care.” Those instruments also enhanced the emotion of “Old Phone,” from Sheeran’s latest album “Play,” inspired Sheeran said at Summerfest by looking through a phone he had shut off nearly a decade earlier and coming across old texts from a friend who had since passed, an ex-girlfriend, and a relative that has since become estranged.
Sheeran relished sharing the stage with musicians, but anyone who has seen any of his Milwaukee shows, from the Pabst Theater through the Milwaukee Brewers’ stadium, knows that, unlike his stadium-filling peers, Sheeran largely goes solo. That was the case again at Summerfest, for 16 of the night’s 21 songs.
Sheeran performs with a looping station, which largely keeps him tethered to a rather small circle, although he often bounces around in those tight corners like a caged animal. One exception at Summerfest was “Shape of You,” where he strolled the stage for about 60 seconds or so, before he had to be back to hit his sonic mark.
But watching Sheeran layer his songs is a mesmerizing marvel. Early career hit “You Need Me, I Don’t Need You” saw him doing beatboxing; hand claps; crisp backing vocals; ethereal vocals; melodic strumming; clipped, jagged strumming; and pounding on his acoustic guitar with his fist. Triggered by the looping station with taps of his feet, Sheeran conjured heart-racing sonic storms, before just as quickly creating space for a riveting retreat.
Expertly knowing when more was more and less was more, Sheeran, as a one-man band, turned pop gems like “Azizam” and “Shivers” into simmering then shimmering singalongs, and infused dramatic numbers like “Bloodstream” with breath-pausing, then pulse-quickening, tension. But he also didn’t need to lean much into the looping station to stun, most notably for his triumvirate of wedding-dominating songs, all strung together in concert – “Photograph,” “Thinking Out Loud” and “Perfect.”
Actual perfection did actually come before the night was through. Sheeran revealed that he had been slotted to play 90 minutes. He ultimately gave Milwaukee 115 minutes, closing the evening out with a gorgeous, largely a cappella rendition of the traditional Irish folk song “The Parting Glass” – with the sold-out crowd becoming as quiet as humanly possible.
It was a magical finale, the kind not fit for a stadium – which is why Milwaukee, and Milwaukee alone, is the only place where it’s happened this year.
Myles Smith, Aaron Rowe opened
The Sheeran show really didn’t need a later Myles Smith addition to the bill – ticket sales were already strong – but the British Smith was clearly eager to promote his week-old debut album “My Mess, My Heart, My Life.” with a 50-minute set. It could use more mess and more heart honestly, the songs resorting to predictable stomp-and-clap sweep, the lyrics a bit surface (a revelation about a hard childhood by Smith at Summerfest was ultimately more revealing than the song that followed, “Hold Me In The Dark.”) But it’s still connecting – closer “Stargazing,” which prompted Smith to run through the aisles for his exit, has over a billion streams on Spotify alone. And while his soulful voice was a bit overwhelmed in the mix live, his caffeinated band brought a lot of literally bouncing energy, complete with the fiddle player jamming behind her back for “Nice To Meet You.”
The night’s first opener, Aaron Rowe, recalled Ed Sheeran at his core: a guy, with an acoustic guitar, singing his heart out. The Irish Rowe brought busking on Grafton Street energy to his 20-minute set, making a vast space feel intimate with raw words and vulnerable pipes for originals like “Hey Ma.” And while this was the smallest venue of the Sheeran tour, Rowe was elated to perform for his biggest crowd so far with the amp already filling up with early arrivals.
Ed Sheeran’s Summerfest setlist
Contact Piet Levy at (414) 223-5162 or plevy@journalsentinel.com. Follow him at facebook.com/PietLevyMJS.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Ed Sheeran swaps stadiums for Summerfest for tour’s most intimate stop
Reporting by Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel / Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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By Piet Levy, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel | USA TODAY Network
