Justin Pierre goes straight acoustic

No matter how old you get, there will always be that band that you'll never get over. There will also be those songs you can't forget, either.

For me, Motion City Soundtrack is that band, and I've seen them quite a few times.

However, the most recent time was a little different and reminded me of why it's important for fans to support bands (no matter how silly of a location they lead you to.)
Justin Pierre, lead singer, just finished traveling around on the ‘dino trail' to promote MCS's new CD, ‘My Dinosaur Life,' which hits stores this January.

While on the Dino Trail, Justin has been doing acoustic sets, in store performances, and other random shenanigans-like performing on a subway (and then getting kicked off), and rockin' out on the St. Louis Arc.

Making his way to Lawrence, his first stop was at The Love Garden, a record shop on Mass Street. Here, he taped a "New Moon" movie review with scene-stealers.com and joked around with fans while they chuckled at his description of the movie (which was all filmed in one take, might I add-and done well for being impromptu.)

Afterward, the handheld cameras came out as the in-store performance began. And even though I've seen MCS before, there was something about this performance that was different.

Justin's voice ran clear as he sung completely acoustic - no microphone, no other fancy instruments. While he may have been missing his band mates, he made sure they were there in spirit as he said things like ‘here's the solo,' and ‘this is the part where I just sing.'

As chuckles continued, so did his set, which remained flawless. In a crowd of about 30 people-there was no problem hearing-or seeing this performance. I found it interesting that afterwards, he said he was nervous about acoustic shows, which I don't think anyone would have guessed after hearing it.

After a quick photo op, I made my way to the front of the store to a small boom box that was previewing tunes from their new CD. I honestly wanted to start dancing right there in the middle of the store but decided I didn't want to look foolish (I'd had a little too much caffeine, I suppose). I settled for browsing the CD selection while I rocking
out in my head instead.

Several hours later, Justin led fans to Blue Collar Press, a screen-printing business mostly used to promote bands. This drew a slightly larger crowd as he played more acoustic songs and even took requests.

This set too, was flawless as fans were encouraged to sing along (which in my case, is really bad) and be silly.

Overall, this specific stop on the dino trail has also reminded me that no matter the success of a band, where they've traveled, and who they've met along the way-that they can still be down to earth and friendly.

And Justin Pierre is just that.