Going to a show alone is an odd experience.
Going to a small show alone is an even odder one.
I’ve been to a couple of shows alone over the past few years. Back in 2019, I saw Mike Doughty (of Soul Coughing) and Hop Along in two separate shows at the Ogden, a mid-size venue on Colfax not far from our Denver apartment.
I don’t think either of those shows was sold out, but the Ogden still felt full both nights. There were hundreds of people there at both shows, shouting along with the lyrics, smiling stupidly to themselves in the stage light, swilling and spilling Coors Light on our collective shoes.
It was a different vibe last week at the Hi-Dive, a tiny venue on South Broadway.
The band was Quivers, a (currently!) unknown indie band from Melbourne, Australia.
There are not many—any?—Quivers fans in Denver.
Quivers started their set around 9:30. It was Monday night in Denver, the second set had been passable, the band was already on stage for sound check, and the floor in front of the stage was vacant.
That is, except for me and one other dude in the back.
But then the lights went down and the remainder of the crowd—mostly friends of the second opener, a local band—drifted over into the darkness.
Quivers opened with “Gutters of Love,” my favorite song off their recent album Golden Doubt, and a button depressed somewhere in my brain.
Having challenged myself not to lean into the abyss of my phone, I’d spent the past hour just listening and watching. I had not spoken a word in that span. I broke my silence at the chorus, which I shouted along with the band: After all the serotonin’s gone could you still fall in love with someone?
The rest of the set had a lovely magic to it. For the next hour, the only person I spoke to was the band, singing along with them.
I love seeing shows with people, with the inter-song chit chat, and the long, lazy conversations while the stage is changed over between sets, but there is something special about going it alone, the only people there you know the artist.
Taylor Coe 