When nobody was looking, Collective Soul’s Ed Roland casually slipped into the Big Lebowski portion of his long career and it’s a beautiful thing to witness.
When the band came back for another round of all it does best in Salt Lake City at The Union Events Center on Monday (January 20, 2025), their lead singer did so while wearing a white suit that looked comfortable enough to double as pajamas. (There were no slippers to complete the ensemble, but they were checked for.) Having grown an impressively white beard to go with now long, primarily gray hair, he felt more familiar than he ever has, and I discovered why: Ed honest-to-god both looked and sounded not unlike my own uncle, the one whose voice sounds like he replaced meals with gravel decades ago.
All of that’s to say that he’s more comfortable than ever. He’s still doing every part as engagingly as the rest of the band can. While he may be less of an energetic showman than when he was 20+ years ago, he’s earned every right to switch gears in his approach this far into things. The band can offer a massive hit like “Shine,” a song with the power to unite a crowd, then drop a couple of songs that’ll be released later in 2025 (part of an already-recorded double album). If he wants to pause all else to talk about how those tunes were birthed inside Elvis Presley’s house, that’s his prerogative. So is doing covers of favorites from bands like AC/DC and Aerosmith, just because. Making the performance feel as warm and fun as the early ’90s hits like “The World I Know” and “Where the River Flows” still sound is another glorious part of Ed embodying the relaxed grandeur of becoming The Dude.
Maybe that’s somehow part of what keeps the band fresh. Collective Soul is this living thing with a still beating heart at its center, so change can and does often happen. If they want to throw a guitar solo in where there was never one before, it happens. Paring down a tune to guitar and vocals and getting real quiet? Sure, why not? But they’re having too much fun to be labeled a paint-by-numbers nostalgia act.
Then again, that could all be my, like, opinion, man.
Photos by Kevin Rolfe of @utahconcertreview
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