Attending the “Jeff Buckley Tribute” at the Cedar Cultural Center was, no doubt, an amazing experience to spend my Thursday night with. I had brought a friend with me, and before the show we spoke on our expectations of the show. We talked about how hard we thought it would be to “equate any vocal range to Jeff Buckley’s”. It’s fair to say that we both left the concert rather impressed.

The show started with a purple light shining on Colin Bracewall, a local musician coming from Stillwater, MN. He opened with a heavy leading voice calling out for love, and that carried throughout the rest of his performance. One of my favorite songs he played was described by him as a “country folk happy tune”. Peter Pisano, the lead vocalist in the band playing after, described Bracewall as a good soul, and that’s rare because it’s often “hard to get a musician to play nice”. Pisano and Bracewall met at the Circle of Peace Movement, and they encouraged listeners to join that community if interested. 

When Bracewall’s performance came to a close, Pisano joined the stage with Mei Ling Smith and Bobby Maher. Pisano was the vocalist/guitarist, Smith was the bassist, and Maher was the drummer. They opened with “Grace”, and if you closed your eyes you would have thought that it Buckley himself singing in your ears. My personal favorite songs that they played were “Eternal Life” and “So Real”. Pisano played “So Real” with a distorted amp towards the end that made the room roar. Pisano’s voice powered through the performance, resembling Buckley’s in the way that he lightly touched on his words while singing. 

Overall, it was a beautiful concert to share with Minneapolis locals. The crowd and the band shared stories back and forth of where Buckley himself had played in Minnesota during his time. Some said a friend had seen him at the Uptown Theater, and others said they had seen him play at the Cedar Cultural Center itself. That being said, it was a community-binding night that definitely honored Buckley’s legacy, with the help of so much love for him from his fans.