Todd caused me some ambivalent feeling Sunday night in Frazer, PA. On the one hand I was having fun seeing Todd so casual and loose. On the other hand, as one reviewer pointed out, Todd is supposed to be a professional. He started, stopped and restarted two different songs. This started to gnaw at me the first half-hour as we saw one musical miss after another. All the mistakes seem ironic considering his renowned reputation as a demanding perfectionist in the studio. Letting it "all hang out" to a crowd paying $28 a shot, though, calls into question his concern for his fans.
On the positive side, having seen Todd nearly a year ago to the day at the Keswick Theatre (Bossa Nova Tour), the witty, personal, human side shone much more clearly to this mellow Sunday-night crowd of 400. There were lots of laughs...and I believe this made all the many, many technical and tuning problems easier to dismiss. At the Keswick he barely had a spontaneous, bantering moment with the crowd and not once did he pick up a guitar.
I respectfully suggest to a fellow reviewer that Southeastern PA fans shouldn't be bunched under one umbrella and that perhaps the audience member was yelling not "play something we know" but rather "play something YOU know". With a little practice, Todd could have made it a perfect evening.