Flea Played Trumpet and Premiered Every ‘Honora’ Track at Thalia Hall Last Night

The idea of Flea playing Thalia Hall instead of Soldier Field tells you most of what you need to know about this tour. Chicago’s 800-cap room got the opening night Wednesday, and the Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist walked out looking like a man who chose the venue himself. No ramp. No LED wall. Just a band and the songs from Honora, his first solo record, which landed in March after something like four decades of people asking when he’d make one.

He played all seven tracks. “Traffic Lights” came early, “Free As I Want To Be” closed the main set, and the room got the full arc of an album that doesn’t try to sound like his day job. Flea handled bass duties on some, trumpet on others, and the show moved between jazz-inflected instrumental passages and more direct vocal tunes without ever settling into a single mode. The trumpet playing mattered. It wasn’t a gimmick or a break from the low end. It was central to the set’s texture.

The covers filled out the night. Jimmy Webb’s “Wichita Lineman” made sense given the album’s more spacious moments. Frank Ocean’s “Thinkin Bout You” sat oddly on paper but worked in the room. “Maggot Brain” closed things out, which is a statement of intent from any musician old enough to know what that song asks of a guitar player and what it means to attempt it without one.

Thalia Hall got a show that didn’t gesture toward Chili Peppers nostalgia. No “Californication.” No “Give It Away.” The anniversary of Stadium Arcadium passed without acknowledgment. The audience had to meet the music where it was, which is not what you expect from a man who has spent most of his career playing to fields full of people. This was smaller. Deliberate. A 63-year-old bassist starting something that doesn’t need to be anything other than what it is.