by Roy Scopazzi
Steven Wilson knows his audience.
Two songs into the second set of the night at The Masonic, he brings the lights up on the audience and asks them “Who here has no idea what is going on?”. People chuckle and he clarifies that he’s talking about the people who have been asked and/or dragged by a family member or close friend to this show but who are not fans themselves. He asks those people to raise their hands and around 5-6 people stand up and do so, the most prominent to me being a middle-aged woman who, by the resigned expression on her face and body language tells me she’s been brought by her husband to a number of these shows. Steven wanted to get the reaction from these people on the fact that despite an entire hour having gone by which involved an entire first act, only four songs had actually been performed. That, plus the fact that none of shows were could be considered “Pop” and then said that the next song would be the shortest and “Poppiest” one he has, clocking in at 4 minutes. Even then, he mentioned that 4 minutes is long for a pop song these days
I usually don’t mention the demographics of the audience I notice, but it’s not hard to recognize the type of people who go to a Steven Wilson concert. A solid mixture of 20% people in their 30s-40s wearing Polyphia or Between the Buried and Me shirts and 80% people in their 50s-60s wearing Yes or Dream Theater shirts. This was the same audience that saw him at the Fillmore a decade ago while Porcupine Tree was on hiatus, albeit obviously older. When I told people I was going to see him, no one I knew was aware of either him or Porcupine Tree in general. He’s the kind of musician that isn’t popular in the typical sense but also doesn’t have what I would call a “Cult Following”. He’s is just comfortable with his specific audience he has cultivated over decades that you know exactly what you’re going to get with one of his shows, which just so happens to be 20 minute long songs.
And I think that’s beautiful.
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