The newly-opened City Winery St. Louis attached to City Foundry STL opened its doors and welcomed the community inside back in March of this year. Since opening the venue known for live entertainment ranging from musical performances to comedy shows and podcasts have been leaving quite the impression on customers. They also serve wine and an assortment of other drinks and food.
Guests sat in a dimly-lit dining room with tables lined up around the room and candles positioned on each table for an intimate groove session of the mature grown folks music Philly native Vivian Green and her band brought Sunday night, July 16, for an hour long show.
Kwame Holland, rapper, producer, DJ and host approached the mic with great energy setting the show off the right way. Kwame also produced Green’s last three albums “Vivid” “VGVI” and her current album “Love Absolute”.
“St. Louis, how y’all feeling out there?,” Kwame asked. “What I need yall to do is put a V in the air (spreading your middle finger and index finger apart). If you want some great R&B tonight put a V in the air; matter a fact you can put two V’s in the air and I need you to move em from side to side. Let me hear you say yeah. Say oh yeah.”
Green, 44, wore a black wide-legged spaghetti strap jumpsuit and her background vocalists also donned jumpsuits, similar but different in style from Green’s, and the band wore all black.
Green has been a veteran R&B and Soul artist for over 20 years, first gaining attention from her No.1 commercial hit “Emotional Rollercoaster” in 2002. She took the audience on a musical ride going back and forth between newer material and her debut album.
She opened the show with “Grown Folks Music (Work)” from her fifth album “Vivid.”
“What’s up St. Louis? How y’all doing tonight?,” Green asks.
“Wonderful!” Some attendees shouted.
“Thank you so much for coming to see me. I hope you guys have a really good time. We’ll be together for about an hour. I don’t think that’s a lot of time but we gone try to get as much in as we can.” Green said.
She segued into several tracks from “A Love Story” including “24 Hour Blue (Just One of Those Days)” “Fanatic” “Be Good to You” and “Ain’t Nothing But Love.”
“St. Louis, y’all with me tonight? We got any VG fans in the house tonight?” Green asks.
A couple yeahs were yelled.
“Just a couple, you just came to have dinner?,” Green joked. “We got any VG fans in the house tonight?” This time there were many more screams.
After the crowd participated with Green in singing the lyrics to “Ain’t Nothing But Love,” Green stressed the importance of participating with her.
“I know some people came to be very cute and very I’m too good for all the things, but this is a participating show so I hope you get time to participate,” she said.
Apparently, some people came solely to hear Green sing one song and one song only and that song is “Emotional Rollercoaster.” When a sassy fan yelled out sing, “Emotional Rollercoaster” Green hilariously let the fan know, “This ain’t that.”
“This is where I chastise the audience,” Green joked. “Now this set is 60 minutes. I’ve been out here for maybe 10. Now if you only came to hear one song I highly suggest y’all come within the last 20 minutes of the show because what I’m not gonna do is sing that song right now what are you talking about? C’mon.”
Green went on to say she’s used to doing longer sets and had to condense two concerts worth of material into a 60-minute show.
She released her most recent album “Love Absolute” in 2020 and sang “Where You Are”. She had the ladies and the gentlemen in the crowd sing the part “Where you ooo ooo where you ooo ooo you are.” The harmonization blended together effortlessly. Everyone sounded so good you would’ve thought the crowd was her background vocalist too.
Her mashup of her song “Superwoman” then the transition to Karyn White’s “Superwoman” fit so well together.
Her background singers Sharon Hill, 43, and Laura Lee, 23 (also Green’s younger cousins, they’re grandmothers are sisters) did three round sing offs in “Battle of the Generations”.
Lee sang Alicia Keys’ “If I Ain’t Got You” Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and Beyoncé’s “Love On Top.” While Hill sang En Vogue “Don’t Let Go,” Chaka Khan’s “Through the Fire” and Mary J. Blige’s “I Can Love You” featuring Lil Kim.
Green came back out on stage and sang “Emotional Rollercoaster.” The crowd sang the song at the top of their lungs word for word.
After that she followed up with “Gotta Go.”
“See sometimes we don’t understand what’s happened to us for one simple reason,” Green sings. “Cause we ain’t loving ourselves. Cause when you love you you won’t let nobody treat you crazy, talk to you crazy, put they hands on you. You won’t let it happen. No you don’t cause when you love yourself you know out of all the things in this world that you deserve that good love.”
She introduced the rest of her band: Josh Tyson, musical director and bass player, Kevin Bowden, drums, and Julian Drucker, guitar.
She mentioned how the keyboardist wasn’t present due to unforeseen circumstances and how that meant everyone in the band had to make up for the lack thereof. But honestly it wasn’t even noticeable that he wasn’t there because everyone sounded that good and well-blended.
To bring the energy up she did “I Don’t Know” which samples Art of Noise’s “Moments of Silence.”
Kwame did a classic R&B and hip hop set while Green, Hill, and Lee took a quick break. Then he turned on his hit “Ownlee Ewe” and the ladies joined him back on stage to sing along.
The show concluded with “Get Right Back to My Baby” and included its sample “Before I Let Go” Frankie Beverly and MAZE.
