Dallas Green performing at Amos’ Southend. Photo by Ariel Clayborn

Canadian musician Dallas Green, also known as City and Colour, performed at Amos’ Southend last Wednesday. For those who are unfamiliar with Green’s discography, his music can be described as acoustic rock and folk meets blues. In an interview with NPR in June of this year, Green says that “City and Colour” is a play on his name, Dallas, the city, and Green, the color. Green released his first album “Sometimes” in 2005 and later gained popularity in the U.S. with the release of his second album “Bring Me Your Love” in 2008.

Although I had arrived about 30 minutes in advance, the inside of the venue had already been heavily populated, and grew even more populous as people arrived during the opening performance by the band Lucy Rose.

Closer to 9 p.m., the crowd became so dense that a smoke break or a trip to the bar might have caused you to lose your place and a really great photo-op. People crowded around the front of the stage and the balconies to get a glimpse of Green. I was fortunate enough to snag a place close to the stage after risking a few disapproving glances and grunts from people also trying to get a better view of the scene.

I expected a maximum of about 50 people to attend the show, but later learned that I had greatly underestimated the general population of Charlotte’s indie music scene. While Charlotte is a pretty decent hub for indie bands to get heard, this was the first indie show I had actually been to that could match about half the population of a more mainstream musician’s performance.

By the time Green had emerged onto the stage, the crowd was shoulder-to-shoulder.

The most memorable aspect of the show aside from the overall performance was the lighting. In my opinion, lighting can really make or break a performance. The Amos’ Southend tech crew did not disappoint with that delivery. An array of colors gave Green’s performance the perfect edge to complement his more soulful songs. Each explosion of sound was matched by an adjustment in lighting- for the slower songs, the cool ambiance of blues and greens, and for the fast-paced songs, bright reds followed by spotlight and fog effects.

In the middle of the show, Green paused to tell a short, light-hearted story to the audience. In early March of this year, Green performed an opening show for Pink at the Time Warner Cable Arena. When asking the audience if there were any Bobcats fans present, Green was greeted by silence. As an Ontario-born musician, Green expressed humorous sympathy to the audience for also being a resident of a city where its basketball team, in his case the Toronto Raptors, is also hilariously unpopular.

When the show ended at approximately 11 p.m., the crowd encouraged an encore performance as Green and the backup musicians packed their instruments and left the stage. After a five minute waiting period, Green appeased the crowd with an additional three songs, one of which was “The Girl,” a popular song from his album “Bring Me Your Love.”

“The Hurry and the Harm.” Green’s most recent album, was released in June.