Review | Mat Kearney Has a Good Thing Going On at Santa Barbara’s Lobero

An evening of music to sway and sing along to, Mat Kearney’s show at the Lobero Theatre last week was a fun night of mostly familiar tunes. After a solid warm-up of Irish bar music from Darren Kiely, a folk-pop artist from Cork, Ireland, the multi-platinum songwriter/producer Kearney took the stage with impressive ease. 

Kearney has such a relaxed, easygoing stage presence, the show felt a bit like a performance in front of friends. 

“Anywhere with You,” from his 2021 album January Flower, was up first from the Nashville-based singer, who originally hails from Eugene, Oregon, and still has a bit of that trucker-hip Oregonian vibe. The sold-out crowd (including a surprising number of elementary-school-age kids and their parents) was quickly enchanted by Kearney’s easy-to-listen-to blend of country, pop, rock, folk, and hip-hop. (I know he’s sometimes labeled as a Christian rock act, but there was nothing in the Lobero show that was remotely religious, so I’m not quite sure about that.)

Not surprisingly, part of Kearney’s mainstream breakthrough almost 20 years ago was having several of his songs featured on Grey’s Anatomy — a long-running series that has moved many artists into radio mainstays. He’s in good company in that regard with people like Snow Patrol, The Fray, and Ingrid Michaelson.  

Kearney’s voice reminds me a little of Coldplay’s Chris Martin, but with an amiable personality that’s more dad on the playground than rock-star attitude. He’s just plain solid: the music, the band, the banter, and the perfectly dialed-in sound. He played a nice mix of newer songs — “Palisades,” “Headlights Home,” and “Good Thing Going On” from his most recent self-titled album, which came out this spring; and “Money / Bust a Move / Can I Kick It? / Anti-Hero,” Kings & Queens,” and “Wanted Man” from his 2018 album CRAZYTALK — mixed in with older stuff like “Closer to Love,” “Here We Go” and a cover of “Three Little Birds.” 

Of selling out a show in Santa Barbara on a Monday night, his first-ever full-band show in town (he’s played a few acoustic gigs and opened for others), Kearney said, “I dreamed of this day,” and talked about what a nice time he had just hanging out in town. “I’ve got a lot of Uni digging through my veins,” he said while name-dropping both Arigato and Dart Coffee as some of his favorite places in town. His everyman kind of easygoing banter aside (he attended Cal State Chico on a soccer scholarship), he’s got a seriously sweet voice and segues between pop and bluesy country tunes seamlessly. “Rochester,” a 2011 song about his father’s life, showed off some of his Nashville influences, while the 2015 song “One Black Sheep,” is a poppier tune about his own childhood.

Ending the set with the crowd clapping along to 2006’s ”Hey Mama,” Kearney also went back to that same breakout year for the encore —  “Nothing Left to Lose” — an earwormy song that’s still in my head almost a week later, and left us with a whole lot gained by rallying to come out to a show on a Monday.