Concert Review: Maddie and Tae shine on the ‘All Song, No Static’ tour
By: Sydney Hise
On a rainy, bitterly cold Wisconsin Thursday night, Maddie and Tae started the second leg of their All Song, No Static tour, with opener Patrick Murphy. Murphy took the stage for approximately twenty-five minutes, engaging with the crowd and singing his country-pop style records. He shared with the audience that he just had a song, written by him and a few fellow songwriters, picked up by country legend Tim McGraw, who sent it to #20 on the country charts that week. As he started to play the track, everyone went crazy. Murphy’s energy and charm certainly set the crowd up for a fun night with headliners Maddie and Tae.
The second best friends Maddie Font and Tae Kerr walked out on stage, their energy was infectious. It spread throughout the entire sold-out audience almost instantly, as the opening chords of “Spring Cleaning” echoed throughout the Majestic Theater, Madison’s 600-person-capacity venue. As Maddie and Tae sang the refrain, “It ain’t spring but I’m cleaning house / come get your shit out”, the crowd screamed along at the top of their lungs.
Breezing through song after song, Maddie and Tae had the audience captivated. With honest and raw songs like “Woman You Got” and “Friends Don’t,” it was like the girls spilled their hearts out for almost two hours while dancing around the stage in gorgeous teal and lilac glittery outfits. I personally had only heard their big radio hits, but after hearing how insanely talented they are vocally (especially for live vocals) and their heartfelt lyrics, I am so glad I attended this show. Only a few songs into their performance, the girls looked at each other as Font declared that they already thought Madison would be their favorite crowd of the whole tour--a testament to the energy and passion a Wisconsin show can bring.
In the middle of the set, a stagehand brought out stools for the entire band, creating a very cozy and intimate atmosphere. Font told the story of how she and her husband met, explaining that the next song, “Trying On Rings” was her love story for her husband and was written the day after they first went engagement ring shopping. She shared that they had been together 13 years, as long as she and Kerr had been a band. They performed “Trying On Rings’ as a mash-up, with a transition to Shania Twain’s “Forever and For Always” at its conclusion.
After a few more songs, including the 2015 hit “Fly” and another song for the duo’s husbands, “Every Night, Every Morning,” Kerr and Font leaned into a more energetic sound right before the encore. With tracks like the post-breakup girl-power drunk-dancing anthem “Bathroom Floor” (“Get up off the bathroom floor / let’s wipe the tears off of your cheeks / put on a dress and get out that door / girl, the first shot’s on me”), and the massive hit “Girl In A Country Song,” which criticizes the sexualization of women in the country music industry, they truly knew how to get an audience moving and energized, even almost an hour and a half into their set. The audience danced and sang along to seemingly every song, belting their hearts out and connecting with the duo.
Photo: Sydney Hise
As the night wrapped up, Kerr played the piano for the first encore track, the deeply-personal love song “Strangers”: “Loving you is like breathing, don’t you know? How were we ever strangers? Seems crazy to me now”. They then performed the witty and genuine “Wish You The Best” (“I’d wish you the best, but you already had it”), and ended the night with “Die From A Broken Heart,” and the audience screamed along to every word of the break-up song.
You could feel the earnestness that both Font and Kerr put into their songs and performances the whole night. It’s like they open up the wound they made when writing the song during a live show over and over again, and it is truly beautiful to experience. I don’t think I have ever been to a show where the performance felt like ripping a page out of the artist’s life story, but Maddie and Tae make it feel as if you are living their life experiences through their music and storytelling in their songwriting. Even if you aren’t a country fan, a Maddie and Tae show is a legitimately once-in-a-lifetime kind of magic that you will never experience anywhere else.
View the rest of the live gallery from this show here.