Audioholic Media

We had a chance to see Ernie Halter play live at the House of Blues Acoustic Strip in Las Vegas a few weeks ago. This is a free event hosted by Michael Soli and takes place every Thursday night at Las Vegas’ House of Blues at Mandalay Bay. In other words, if you’re in Las Vegas, you really don’t have an excuse for getting caught with your pants around your ankles downtown on Fremont Street. You should spend your Thursdays exerting a little more class (but any other day of the week is up to you).

Ernie Halter pleased his audience with a seven-track (eight if you count the way he weaved “Wade in the Water” into “Better”) set list that night. Halter opened the show by covering “Just Friends,” (an original song by Musiq Soulchild) a track that shows up on Halter’s latest album, Starting Over.

If you’re not familiar with Ernie Halter, then let me tell you that he has a way of connecting to audiences of every caliber. Covers. The man loves his covers. After giving everyone a fair chance to get into a good mood with a familiar song, he went straight into “Blue Dress” and then managed to weave a cover of “Wade in the Water” into his original song “Better.”

If you have ever seen Ernie Halter live, you can always bank on a good show because of his charisma and story-telling persona. He’ll find ways to shamelessly (but tastefully) plug his Twitter account by telling quirky tales about how his fans are known to “show up” wherever he’s at. You have to hand it to the man, he’s almost at 400,000 followers. Be his 400,000th follower. Tell him Audioholic Media sent you.

Right before playing “Whisper,” one of the more popular songs on the Congress Hotel album, Halter gave a little background to how his fans are currently reacting to his music (but mainly that particular song). He spoke about the huge Filipino following that “Whisper” has, for some reason, acquired. He mentioned that when he searches YouTube that “Whisper” is one of his most popular songs that fans cover. (For some reason the majority of those fans tend to be Filipino ).

Here are some of the songs from the show that night if you’d like to preview them:

Preview: Just Friends
Preview: Better / Wade in the Water
Preview: Whisper
Preview: Count The Days
Preview: Cyclone

Ernie Halter performed with a few other acts that night, one of which being Las Vegas native, Ian Shane Tyler. Tyler was celebrating his twenty-first birthday and proposed water toasts instead of vodka shots (go figure). He performed a great set by touching on a few of his more popular songs. One of those songs happened to be “What’s Wrong With Me?”

Preview: Whats Wrong With Me?

All in all, the House of Blues Acoustic Strip turned out to be a win. If you are interested in seeing Ernie Halter live, you can visit his MySpace page for a full list of tour dates. He just added a slew of them so be sure to find one close to your hometown.