Last month we had the distinct pleasure of attending the performances of Chris Chilton and Jerad Finck at the Bellwether Brewing Co in Spokane, Washington. Bellwether is owned and operated by Finck’s high school friend Thomas Croskey. Finck arranged the show to highlight the brewery and to introduce Chilton from nearby Coeur d’Alene, with whom Finck has been writing and producing.
Croskey opened Bellwether in September 2015 as a place where he could demonstrate his love for historical home brews. The brewery usually has about 19 options for beer, of which 8 or 9 are ongoing brews and the remainder are seasonal. In fact, he created a beer called “Goomba Juice” just for this special occasion.
The Bellwether beer menu consists of Old World styles from Celtic and Nordic influences as well as contemporary Northwest styles. The menu also contains food items like pistachios, panini’s, soft pretzels, cheese platters and bread and butter. Interestingly enough, the bread is made daily by Alpine Bakery using the brewery’s spent grain.
Besides this amazing musical show, the Bellwether is also home to several festivals, including GruitFest in February and the BraggotFest in July. For more information, check out their website.
First up was Chilton for a short five-song warm-up set. He has deep passionate vocals that bring his well-crafted lyrics to life. Not only was he amazing on his own song “You Won’t Hurt me Anymore,” but he also killed it on his cover of the Snow Patrol song, “Run.” He closed his short set with the first single off his new project, “Adonai,” a song he co-wrote with Finck and which Finck produced. Check out his lyric video below:
After a short break, Finck took the stage and launched into “Never Coming Back.” Finck has great stage presence and has mastered the art of audience interaction with his tales of high school hi-jinks and the back stories of how the songs came to be written.
Among the songs he performed were originals “Code Breaker,” “Pieces of April” (which he wrote when he first met his wife, and which was nominated for an LA Music Critic Award), “Blood in the Water,” and “Carried Away,” along with a wonderful cover of The Cure’s “Love Song,” a band he was a big fan of while growing up.
He saved his best for the end of his set, including “Criminal,” a song he co-wrote with Steven Solomon and Darrell Hodges, and which won the 2016 grand prize in the USA Songwriting Competition, as well as his latest single, “New Kids,” which is all about standing up for the underdog. Both songs were winners in the LA Music Critic Awards and have done well on the Hot AC charts, with the latter being the basis for his upcoming fall tour through Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada, Utah, Idaho and Montana.
The audience demanded an encore, and Finck complied with an older song, “Whatever You Want.” It was the perfect culmination of a delightful evening of song and beverage.