Meet Dean Lewis
in Dublin
by Maddalena
Photo courtesy of Chiara Ceccaioni.
SUITS me just fine…
On a recent visit from my sister this spring, she told me to watch this 11 year-old series called SUITS. A few episodes in, I realized that this music director was just off the hook and it mandated that I keep the SHAZAM going through all nine seasons. At the end, I sifted through the list and one musician kept coming up over and over.
Who is this Dean Lewis? I went iTUNING and found the EP, Same Kind of Different, released in 2017. I went musically nuts. This guy is astounding. A tour check showed me he had just played the Fonda Theater in Los Angeles last month. Not one to be put off by distance or travel methods, I saw he was playing in Dublin and Glasgow in October. Hmmm. I hadn’t been on a plane since lockdown. The gorgeous old Olympia Theater in Dublin it is. There were tickets left, but when I asked my usual travel suspects none were available to go. Ticketmaster now showed only VIP tix left with a hefty price. I changed it to one ticket and low and behold, my ticket fairy godmother comes through with the very last seat in the mezzanine.
A TIKTOK nation uprising….
Dean played this new song, How Do I Say Goodbye, in Stockholm, in September for the first time. He wrote it three years ago when his father was diagnosed with terminal cancer. This TIKTOK take off now prompts every TOKKER to post this song with videos of their own losses and tears. The release of the song now gets sped up as it’s climbing those millions of Spotify charts that have replaced that old one respectable Billboard list. I realize I am watching the launching of a major talent. This isn’t the mass media musical commercialism of teens and twentysomethings dressed in bling, mini-skirts and not much else. These girls are me, 40 years ago, in jeans with a penchant for the most genuine of lyrics. His talent for wearing his heart on his sleeve for every love lost and found brings pure joy. I love every minute of his minute-to- minute Instagram posts, showing his utter excitement and wonder at having his career, albeit a twelve years old one, soar into superstardom the right way.
Dublin calling…
I knew that if I didn’t see him in Dublin in this tiny theater, the next time it would be with 20,000 screaming fans instead of 1800. And it helped that Aerlingus dangled a ridiculously cheap nonstop flight from LAX to Dublin before me. And so, this sixty something crossed both a continent and an ocean for the first time since 2020. The theater was magnificent, well other than for the uneven old steps that I managed to face plant off of right before the show started. My seat was in the mezzanine, but not on the aisle as required by my trapaphobia. The usher who came to lift me back upright decided that I should sit instead in the fabulous second tier box right close to the stage. Works for me. I spent the concert with two twenty somethings. One a huge fan, the other an initiate to Dean’s music. He left a huge fan. I had the best time. The concert was everything I knew it would be and more. Dean connects with his fans like no one I’ve seen in a very long time. They know every word to his songs and he stops and lets them sing along.
There’s no way to say goodbye to this artist..
Hearing his now iconic song, How Do I Say Goodbye, written for his dad who beat the cancer by the way, live and in person was musically perfect for this singer/songerwriter lovin’ soul. This 34 year-old Australian is the real deal. A few years ago, he thought his career was stalled and then this happens and to watch it unfold like I did decades ago for a host of other, now iconic then obscure, artists is a delight!
And yes, he played Waves, the song that launched my Dean Lewis musical love affair on SUITS. When the ticket gods align in my universe and tell me to go, I always obey. I am always glad I do! Here’s Dean in Dublin doing this fantastic song! His new album coming out November 4, 2022 entitled The Hardest Love, features this song and a host more!
Discover Dean. You’ll be glad you did!