Train
July 28, 2026
Blossom Music Center
Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio
By Robert McCune


I’m standing in the pit, between the crowd and the stage, for a headlining set at Blossom Music Center, an outdoor amphitheater in Northeast Ohio coming up on 60 years of hosting live music.
Between two of four confetti cannons positioned on both sides of the stage and just astride a massive curtain announcing the next act: Train, the locomotive with Pat Monahan as conductor that first gained steam in 1993.
It dawns on me, as I register the half dozen stagehands gripping the curtain from behind, that I don’t really know what’s going to happen next.
Presumably, the curtain will be yanked from the rafters. Will it fall straight down or onto the heads of the fans hugging the barricade? Am I in the clear? Also, am I about to get a face full of confetti?


Though it might be said that this Train never arrives late, nor is it early, but arrives precisely when it means to, the band’s journey has not been predictable. At each station and stop along the way, Train has surprised.
The curtain fell precisely, the lights came up, and the crowd was transported on the thunderous guitar rhythms of “She’s on Fire.”
And for the next 90+ minutes, we remained on the edges of our seats, not quite sure where to next.
Point of fact, those four confetti cannons? Blasted no less than a half dozen times, at various crescendos, raining down flyweight paper crooked crowns, an icon of the band since it’s debut, self-titled 1998 album.
Though Train’s 11 studio albums and 34 singles offer more than enough to fill not one but several sets, the show is also delightfully sprinkled with surprisingly stray threads.


Opener Matt Nathanson joins for a cover of Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane.”
Ed Robertson, of the supporting Barenaked Ladies, cameos in the middle of “Virginia” for a personalized, seemingly impromptu take on “Country Roads.”


Frontman Pat Monahan’s son, Rock Monahan, melted our faces on guitar and vocals for covers of Journey’s “Stone In Love” and “Vacation” by Dirty Heads. In a guitar riff-off with the incomparable, legendary Butch Walker, lead guitar for Train since 2025, the 14-year-old prodigy more than held his own.
The hits were well-represented, if also somewhat specialized. Pat’s solo, starkly spotlighted “Marry Me” was intimate and soulful. “Angel In Blue Jeans” featured a mashup with Hozier’s “Too Sweet.” And “Drive By,” took a detour through the Beatles’ “Hey Jude.”
The new stuff, too, resonated, including “Pennsylvania Turnpike,” a sort of origin story that Pat returned to time and again throughout the set.
Though Train formed in San Francisco, Monahan himself grew up in Erie, Pa., not far from this hilly, wooded concert mecca, where on the lawn (the cheap seats), he watched the live shows that made him the performer he is today. Thus, this show was a sort of homecoming for him, and it was clear that his whole heart was in it.
Opening and support acts Nathanson and BNL also brought it.
Nathanson’s most-recognizable radio hits, “Come On Get Higher” and “Giants,” were accompanied by covers of U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl” and a little of the Broadway musical Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.”
Barenaked Ladies brought an abbreviated version of last summer’s “Last Summer on Earth Tour,” though if you’ve ever seen more than one BNL concert, you know that no two are ever the same. The band thrives on improvising, and their on-stage energy is effortlessly enormous and thrilling.
Their finishing medley hilariously features snippets of Chappel Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” and “Hot to Go,” Kenny Rogers’ “The Gambler,” Dan Hill’s “Sometimes When We Touch,” The Sound of Music’s “So Long, Farewell.” But also a full-on rocking tribute to “Highway to Hell,” led by drummer Tyler Stewart.
This Train tour keeps a’rollin’ through August in the U.S. Hop aboard if you can.
Follow Robert McCune on Instagram (@Every_Thing_After_Photo) and listen to the “Every.Thing.After Podcast” on Spotify.

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