Energized Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders bring old and new songs home to Akron (2024)

AKRON, Ohio - Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Chrissie Hynde and The Pretenders, the band she’s led for 40+ years, returned to her hometown Tuesday for the first of two sold-out shows at the cozy Goodyear Theater in Akron’s East End. Verified resale tickets are still available for Wednesday night’s concert at ticketmaster.com.

Both the excited crowd filling the 1,448-seat theater and the band were rocking on the first night as Hynde and the current iteration of The Pretenders proved to be a bare-bones rock and roll machine.

After tinkering with the instrumentation of the band for several years, adding and subtracting a pedal steel player and some keyboards, Hynde has stripped the group back to its original form of two guitars, bass, drums and her own still-bad self. The band was mixed loud (but not painfully so) and well-balanced with Kris Sonne’s drums (no Martin Chambers this go-round) and bassist Dave Page pushing and/or holding down the grooves, allowing guitarist James Walbourne plenty of room to attack the solo sections of songs.

Hynde has always had excellent taste in guitar players. Original member James Honeyman-Scott, who co-wrote “Brass In Pocket,” his replacement Robbie McIntosh during the hit ’80s years and Adam Seymour were all superlative and tasteful guitar players. James Walbourne, who has more than a decade in the spot and co-wrote the band’s strong recent albums -- the rocking “Hate For Sale” and the more ballad-leaning “Relentless” with Hynde -- is among the pantheon and he adds an edge.

The lanky, rubber-limbed guitarist took some wild solos throughout the show, including opener “Losing My Sense of Taste” from “Relentless,” a cutting razor sharp on “The Buzz” dedicated to New York Dolls legend Johnny Thunders. He explored some eastern-sounding scales on the new ballad “I Think About You Daily” and got a bit grungy on “Domestic Silence.” And the longtime guitar showcase, “My City Was Gone,” switched between bluesy licks and delightful feedback-squeaky weirdness.

Hynde, who left Northeast Ohio in her early 20s, but briefly returned to live in Akron in the late 2000s and opened a vegan restaurant called The VegiTerranean that closed in 2011, admitted to being a bit nervous “because I’m in front of all my friends.”

But not too nervous to chide certain audience members in classic Hynde fashion. “No flash photography” signs have been a staple at Pretenders shows for years, and Hynde is apparently not thrilled with society’s addiction to smartphones either, telling a concertgoer to put down their phone in the middle of “Domestic Silence,” and then after the song adding with a snarky smile, “is your phone really more interesting than I am?” to cheers from the crowd.

Hynde would continue to periodically eyeball phone offenders and later explained, “I can’t concentrate when you’re on your phone,” suggesting that anyone needing to check their phones for babysitters or “fighting with your girlfriend” should go out in the lobby. Hynde also praised the Goodyear, “We love this theater. I t’s fantastic. It’s great to see the Goodyear sign again. My grandfather worked as I’m sure many of yours did,” she said.

The 27-song, two encore setlist leaned on the more guitar-heavy tracks from “Relentless,” and several from “Hate For Sale,” but the band dipped deep into the its 1980 debut with punky takes on “The Wait,” and “Precious” and a melodious “Kid” dedicated to long lost bandmates Honeyman-Scott and bassist Pete Farndon, “without whom we wouldn’t be here,” both of which brought the crowd to its feet. The setlist order deftly mixed the old and the new with rockers and well-placed ballads creating a nice dynamic ebb and flow.

The mostly Boomer crowd with some younger folks bringing the median age to below 60 was ready to rock and filled with longtime fans and some former Firestone High classmates who Hynde acknowledged, “it’s like a class reunion,” she said before “My City Was Gone,” a song about Akron she wrote after a visit to her changing hometown in the mid-70s, “They thought I wrote it because I didn’t love Akron, anymore,” she said by way of explanation.

At 72, Hynde’s contralto is as strong as ever and her trademark vibrato was in fine form as she held a few crazy long notes on the reggae dub-injected, “Private Life,” and The Kinks classic tune “Stop Your Sobbing.”

The latter song opened the double encore and by that time, decorum had exited out the side door and the fans filled the ailes and the front of the stage to Hynde’s delight, as they danced, shimmied and shaked their mature bones to a fan-serving show closing quartet of classics the MTV-era hits “Back On The Chain Gang,” and “Don’t Get Me Wrong,” the driving, low-end throb of “Mystery Achievement” and an emotive, power-ballad version of “I’ll Stand By You.”

Hynde, who had her mic stand set up just a bit right of center-stage because, ya know, she’s a member of the band, is also unquestionably the star. But of the many lineups of The Prentenders, across its four-plus decades, the current quartet is a decidedly lean and mean rock and roll machine and Hynde seemed energized by the band and the hometown audience.