Wednesday night Ben Kweller made his return to Off Broadway in St. Louis after last playing the venue back in 2014 for his Cover the Mirrors tour.

The night opened with Ben in a pink stocking cap behind a piano for Thirteen and Falling. The rest of the band consisting of Ryan Dean on drums, Parker Twomey on guitar and keyboard, and Chris Mintz-Plasse, known for his rolls in Superbad and Kick-Ass, on bass came out on stage. After a fan realized who he was they yelled out ‘”We love you McLovin”. The band played ‘Family Tree‘ and ‘Make It Up‘ both songs off Ben’s debut album ‘Sha Sha‘. Ben said lets continue the Sha Sha train with ‘No Reason‘. Ben told the crowd that the next song was off his new album ‘Cover the Mirrors‘, and it was probably his favorite song on the album. He said that the song was originally started by his late son Dorian, who was killed in a car accident back in 2023. The song is called ‘Trapped‘ and Ben said that it was about someone being trapped in a relationship. he said that one night Dorian had told him and Liz that his next girlfriend he would get to know her before they started to date as he felt trapped in his current relationship as they had nothing in common. At one point in the night Ben was talking about how he always loves playing Off Broadway and the had been trying to remember the last time he was here. I yelled out 2014 and he was like I think the time before that was when Julia Nunes opened for him right before she became big. He also said that if you want to get big just open for him as it seems that if you open for him you blow up, both Kings of Leon and My Morning Jacket opened for him before blowing up. The band left the stage for both ‘On My Way’ and ‘Lizzy’. After ‘On My Way’ Ben commented that he had started to sing the lyrics “I could love no one” grammatically correct as he was a high school dropout and learned that it should be “I could love someone” and not “I could love no one” but after hearing the crowd sing it back with the original lyrics and not the Ben Kweller cover version of it he decided to continue singing it grammatically incorrect. Right before kicking into ‘Commerce, TX‘, one of my favorite songs by Ben Kweller, Ben yelled out lets drink some Jager. Right before the band kicked into the last song of their two song encore a fan ended up buying the band a shot of Jager and Ben shouted out lets get wasted before closing out the night with ‘Wasted and Ready‘. Ben made a comment that if he can tour and have people sing his songs back to him he would be happy with that. Hopefully its not another eleven years for him to grace St. Louis and Off Broadway.