Although I did see the Flaming Lips this summer, it was at a different show that I hit the peak of audience participation.

Every year a band called Over the Rhine holds their Nowhere Else Festival on a farm in rural Ohio. It's what you'd imagine from a folksy band putting on a show in their back yard.

If you've never heard Over the Rhine (OtR) before, they are a husband and wife team who swich off piano and acoustic guitar duties while she, Karin sings. Karin has the ability to dial in the timbre of her voice, going from silky to smokey.

This year I finally made the trek because they had announced they would be playing with a full electric band, The Newbees, and would be playing music from select albums. The Newbees are another husband and wife team, on electric guitars, he on electric and she on rhythm, plus bass and drums.

So the band is cooking, each song hotter than the last. They head into an old number with a lot of gravel and it takes me a minute to realize that Karin isn't the one singing, Misty is. Spot on. Then Karin stepped in to sing the silky chorus and it was just seamlessly perfect. After the song ended we all erupted in applause and cheers and just as that applause started to feel labored I shouted out "Take a bow!" mostly to Misty because that was such an incredible performance. Like, girl you just did the song justice in front of the person who wrote it. And Misty was beaming because she knew. I don't know much about her cv, but I can see how that could be a career topping moment for her.

OtR runs a tightly scripted show, and this happened to be the break where the band had scheduled their bows and intros. I've seen a lot of bands try to pull this off without the requisite crowd enthusiasm and it's painfully fake, where they milk the crowd over and over until 'compelled' to give introductions, and the vibe is "oh get it over with, would you?"

But not that night. When I shouted 'take a bow' under a tent small enough for everyone including the people onstage to hear me, it was like flipping a switch. Instead of energy dissipating it kept building. When Linford, the keyboardist, finally broke into the applause to do the intros it felt totally organic and effortless.

I feel like when I go to a show I'm obligated to participate in artist feedback, as I'm a firm believer that it's you and me in the audience who determine the level of the performance. If all you do is show up, then you can expect the same from the band. I don't want to toot my own horn here too much but I do want to share with you, especially the younger readers, that you have to raise up the courage to stand out in a crowd because every bit of good energy you put out there gets magnified 1000x.