My Cleveland review:
There were a total of 3 opening bands for the show tonight. The first two were local bands and I can't remember their names. Nothing much to note about these two bands other than the fact that the first band had a sax player. If you would have told me that I would have been seeing a band with a guy playing sax before I got to the venue opening for FW, I would have laughed in your face.
Halcyon Way was slightly interesting. They're really not my thing and I'm not sure how I would catagorize them. They seemed to play fairly well for what they were trying to do, but it's not the kind of thing that I would ever be into, so I'm not sure if I could give them a fair review. I will give them props for being energetic and they seemed to be very positive on stage which is always a positive in my book. I think that they would do better if they were on tour with a different kind of band than FW.
FW went on stage a little bit after 10pm. Their set list was the same as was listed previously in this thread. For the sake of not spoiling it for anyone that might be seeing them later in this tour, I won't be "re-posting" the list. However, one thing that I will say about it is that I didn't recognize the opening song that was played over the PA prior to them hitting the stage. I'm not sure if it was a problem with any other spots in the venue, but most of the music that was played over the PA sounded like a garbled mess where I was standing and that might have had an effect on my ability to pick the song out properly.
Performance wise, I would give the band a very solid B+. There were a few "missed notes" by the musicians here and there, but they were very solid for the most part. The most obvious of the "missed notes" was from the young man that replaced Frank for the tour. He didn't play bad at all. It just appears that he might have chosen to make a few of the lead passages his own instead of playing everything note for note. The band wasn't overly active on stage, but that's not what anyone who goes to a FW show is there to see anyways. Joey Vera's facial expressions and general stage presence is very entertaining, though. Bobby was excellent and did a wonderful job of covering Zonder's parts.
I would also give Ray a solid B+. He had wonderful stage presence. However, he did lose much of his voice later in the set right around the time that they played one of their earlier songs from his era. Considering the weather in northern Ohio tonight and some of the other things that have been discussed about his personal habits in the past, I think that the man held up quite well. Another of Ray's strengths is his ability to convey the emotion of a song to an audience. Ray was very much on top of his game in that aspect tonight.