This past Wednesday, March 20th, Mumford & Sons performed at State Farm Arena as part of the Delta Tour promoting their 2018 release Delta.
However, before they took the big stage the band did something reminiscent of the Music Industry’s glory days;
they played a small acoustic set in a record store for roughly 100 lucky fans. It’s rare these days to see well-known artists do record store appearances, let alone a band as big as Mumford. In order to get into the performance, fans had to line up outside Criminal Records (some had been there since 5am) and be one of the first to buy a Mumford album in exchange for a wristband to the show.
Lucky for me, media was allowed to post up in front of the stage at 2:30pm before the scheduled performance at 3pm. Although there were a few of the band’s team members scoping out the venue and getting everything set up, there wasn’t any noticeable security presence, which is also surprising for an event like this. Once the doors opened, everyone pushed into the store and packed in as close to the small stage as possible. Again lucky for me I had grabbed a spot on the edge of the stage next to the area where the band would be taking the stage from.
Once the members started 
walking out towards the stage everyone began to cheer and got a little crazy, but shortly afterwards there was a hush as Marcus Mumford greeted the crowd. His charming personality and quick wit quickly captured the attention of the crowd and established the tone of a casual hangout amongst friends. The band started with “Ditmas,” one of the singles from their previous album Wilder Mind. It’s easy to recognize an artist or band’s star quality when their performing to tens of thousands of fans in an arena, but even in this small and comfortable setting the talent of these musicians shone like a warm and inviting fire.
In between each song the stage banter was jovial, comical and sometimes a tad cheeky. On more than one occasion Marcus had to catch himself from using some colorful language in front some of the younger fans, but that goes to show just how easy-going the performance felt.
The entire setlist included “Ditmas,” “Guiding Light,” “Forever” and “The Cave.”After the performance, everyone lined up for group photos with the band. They had originally had a hard out at 4pm but had started late. Even so, they made sure that everyone there got to be in a picture before heading to their main performance at State Farm Arena.
All in all, this was an once-in-a-lifetime experience for the fans by one of the world’s most successful performing groups. Here’s to hoping more artist’s will open themselves to these small room gigs. Thanks Criminal Records!
Setlist:
Ditmas
Guiding Light
Forever
The Cave: Watch the performance 👇👇
