It was a surprisingly cool midsummer Friday night at Ruoff Music Center as Live Nation presented the Foreigner Farewell Tour with Loverboy on July 21, 2023.
Recently kicked off earlier in July in Atlanta, Foreigner expects their “Historic Farewell Tour” will take around two years to complete. Their plan to play in all the cities that they have visited previously since 2004, the year the band re-formed and began to tour again in earnest, brought them back to Central Indiana and the event at Ruoff Music Center in Noblesville last week.
Opening the show for Foreigner was the Canadian band Loverboy, originally formed in 1979, and they took the stage promptly at 7:30pm with all their original band members except for the late bass guitarist, Scott Smith, who was replaced by Ken “Spider” Sinnaeve.
With Mike Reno on lead vocals, Paul Dean on guitar, Matt Frenette on drums, Doug Johnson on keyboards, and the aforementioned Sinneave on bass, Loverboy played for a solid hour. They blasted out their 1980’s hits including “Lovin’ Every Minute of It”, “Turn Me Loose”, and fan favorite “Working for the Weekend” to name a few. Every song had the crowd on their feet, erupting in applause and singing every word by heart.
You can pick up music by Loverboy from Indy CD & Vinyl HERE.
Foreigner Brings Historic Farewell Tour To Indiana: After a half-hour break to reset the stage, Foreigner came out loud, energetic, and kicking ass with “Double Vision” as their opening song.
Whereas Loverboy has only one non-original band member, Foreigner only has one original: founding member Mick Jones on guitar. Their current line-up also includes Kelly Hansen on vocals, Jeff Pilson on bass, Michael Bluestein on keyboards, Bruce Watson and Luis Maldonado on guitars, and Chris Frazier on drums.
“Head Games”, “Cold as Ice”, and “Dirty White Boy” were just a few of their numerous hit songs on the setlist for the night.
Midway through the evening they pulled up chairs and played a nice trio of acoustic songs. It took a lot of the energy out of the night, but at the same time some very touching sentiments about the band and its history from charming and funny front-man Kelly Hansen.
Two more hits, “Feels Like the First Time” and then “Urgent” were performed before a keytar solo and then drum solo that I think the show could have done without. A keytar is one of those portable keyboards with a guitar-like fret-handle that artists used in the 80’s. They were certainly throwing it back in time, but it seemed to fall flat.
Closing out the night with their smash hit, “Juke Box Hero” was a real treat. As I looked around throughout the night, there were hardly any fans that were not up out of their seat swaying and singing to the songs.
After leaving the stage for just a few minutes, the band was back out for the encore with their number one hit, “I Want to Know What Love Is,” followed by the show closer “Hot Blooded” ended the night on a solid note, complete with pyrotechnics.
You can pick up music by Foreigner from Indy CD & Vinyl HERE.
Foreigner setlist at Ruoff 07-21-2023
Double Vision / Head Games / Cold as Ice / Waiting for a Girl Like You / Dirty White Boy
(Acoustic Set) When It Comes to Love / Girl on the Moon / Say You Will
Feels Like the First Time / Urgent / Juke Box Hero
(Encore) I Want to Know What Love Is / Hot Blooded
John Geiger for Indy CD & Vinyl
John@JohnGeiger.com
Check out John Geiger’s entire “Foreigner: The Historic Farewell Tour” concert photo gallery below:
