Last spring, Kina Grannis and Imaginary Friend played a heartwarming acoustic show at Brighton Music Hall in Boston. This spring, the same thing happened, except it was down the street at Paradise Rock Club. This was a clear visual representation of Grannis’ surge in popularity over the past year, thanks to some creative videos on YouTube and help from national television shows.
Kina Grannis started out as a singer-songwriter posting videos on YouTube, and soon her music was reaching worldwide fans due to her adorable personality and beautiful songs. In November, her incredibly elaborate stop-motion music video for the song “In Your Arms” (which features images composed of over 288,000 jelly beans) went viral and landed her on the Ellen Degeneres show. Her ascension to the larger Paradise Rock Club was most definitely a product of that publicity, but there were a number of fans in the audience who raised their hand when she asked who saw them perform in Boston last year.
Imaginary Friend, her seemingly life-long touring partner, opened the show with some songs I recognized from his set last year, as well as some new ones that he claimed to have written only a few days before the show. Grannis and Jesse Epstein (Imaginary Friend’s real name) toured all over Europe, Asia, and America this past year so their show is very fluid and practiced. But their gentle attitudes always appeal to their audiences, making each show an intimate experience.
Grannis took the stage accompanied by a cellist, who received quite a bit of love from an audience who ended up chanting his name when it was time for him to leave the stage. Grannis has been releasing albums since 2005, but it wasn’t until her 2010 release “Stairwells,” that she garnered all this attention.
Her ideas for songs come from different places, such as dreams or important family members. She is a captivating story teller and while it may seem hard to keep a venue full of people quiet, Grannis manages to do so.
She ended her set in a risky way as well: she unplugged her acoustic guitar and stepped away from the microphone. She sang “Message from Your Heart” with the audience supporting her and it sounded just as powerful as her other plugged-in songs.
Sometimes acoustic performances can lull an audience to sleep with their soothing melodies and gentle strumming, but Grannis’ excitement shone through in the smile on her face. During her set, she took a long pause to just look at the audience, saying “I just like to stare at you for a bit.” Grannis is used to interacting with her 520,000 subscribers on YouTube through video comments and tweets. Seeing her fans in real life is just as exciting as it is for the fans to see her.
Imaginary Friend: http://www.facebook.com/imaginaryfriendmusic
Kina Grannis: http://kinagrannis.com
By: Deanna Archetto