I was at the Detroit show last night. Logged in specifically for this.
James was weird last night and not very strong, vocally speaking. He said right away that he was "feeling pretty wacky tonight, so you guys are in for a treat." To be fair, the banter was decently funny, but it seemed like people were saying about the Pittsburgh show, that he was just tailing off lines and not doing much of the high stuff. Granted, when he went for the high notes, they usually came out flat, forcing him to do his crazy wide vibrato thing.
Now, to make this perfectly clear. I'm not hating on James at all for not being as good a singer as he was 25 years ago. The food poisoning accident was horrible and sad, we all know that. And it seems like he was doing miraculously better recently. All 3 times I saw them on the Dramatic Turn tour, he was spot on the whole time. I know the I&W&B tour setlist is incredibly taxing, and you can't expect to hold it up for a year. As far as the tailing off phrases thing, maybe he's just bored. I know lots of us never get tired of hearing those songs, but I bet it gets really obnoxious when you have to play them every night for months at a time and it's a struggle to hit a lot of the notes on top of that.
That said, the instrumental portion of the show was still phenomenal. Mangini seems like he's gelling a lot more with the rest of the guys, doing little improvs here and there. And it still stuns me that all four guys can get through all the unison runs in Metropolis. And obviously seeing ACOS live was a huge cross off my bucket list, so that's nice too. I'd be lying if I said that James' performance didn't take away some of the magic though. I know it's not his fault, but it's still a bummer.