Song Spotlight: Dylan Rodrigue's Pink Balloon (a night at The Fable)

Ryan Pollie's night at The Fable was packed out on a Tuesday night. It was largely driven by the fact that Madison Cunningham was the headliner, but one has to say that everyone had the most amusing time during Dylan Rodrigue's set. Having the most fun were Sie Sie Benhoff and (I believe) Miss Marquez. Miss Marquez in particular had a small wad of $1 bills and was tossing it towards Rodrigue like one would do at a strip club. 

Dylan Rodrigue at The Fable

The set started off in a most unassuming manner. Without a hello, he started off the set, which caught a few people off guard who were still chatting away. This included me. Out to support his set included two queens: Valley Queen and Beauty Queen. I think that was Beauty Queen in the audience. Don't kill me if I got that wrong. 

He got folks to sing along to his song "Pink Balloon." He introduced the song by saying that the theme was about friendship. He then requested that people learn the chorus, but did realize that it was a big request due to the length, "It's hard to learn a song with a lot of words."   

Dylan Rodrigue at The Fable

Give me your pink balloon, darlin. 

Ready to fly far far away. 

Oh that life that we lost. 

We spent more than the cost. 

So ready for a long long holiday. 

With a couple practice rounds, the crowd got it down. When game time arrived, the crowd sang along with great passion, "That made me feel a lot better." As it was a song about friendship, he gave shout outs to various friends in the audience. And as the chorus came on repeat, the crowd sang with all the more enthusiasm, "That was very good, guys."

Dylan Rodrigue at The Fable

I ran across Dylan Rodrigue back in 2018 at The Hi Hat (now The Goldfish). It was a solid night of music that included Hawk Percival and Jessi Williams and Coyote. He responded to a Q&A, which I'll put a portion below: 

"What is currently influencing you in creating your music? Currently, I am interested in trying to dissect the human experience in music. We are such a confusing and complicated species and a lot of what I have been writing about is simply questioning why we all do the things we do. We are capable of such amazing and horrifying things, both of which I am very much interested in. Lately, this results in some songs that reflect on certain extremes that may be disturbing to some people at first glance. I tend to be of the opinion that it’s better to piss someone off with what I do than to leave them bored. More often than not, I find that the things that disturb me are the things I’m most fascinated with."

Setlist (a couple songs were cut due to time constraints): The Twist, Pink Balloon, Joseph & Liz, No Confetti, Going It Alone, 30 on 2, My Boyfriend, Want, LTA. 

"Pink Balloon" is not released, but you can listen to his most recent album here: