On a sunny Sunday, American singer-songwriter Mark Ambor (stage name of Mark Gregory Damboriagan) went to Tilburg to play a sold-out show in 013. The show, which took place on May 11th, formed a part of the artist’s Rockwood Tour in support of his debut album, released in the summer of last year. The singer had already played in Amsterdam twice the previous month and just had to come back to the Netherlands one final time to treat the fans with his biggest headline show ever.
The doors to the venue opened at 19:00, and the hall filled up quickly. About an hour later, support act Zinadelphia took to the stage together with her bassist Peter Enriquez. As she explained, her stage name is a combination of her first name, Zina and Philadelphia, where she’s from. She came on stage with her guitar and stood behind a mic stand decorated with white feathers and blue tassels to sing the first song on the setlist, ‘Cosmos‘. She continued with ‘The Magazine’, the title track of her EP. As a graphic design major, she even made a full magazine to go with this EP, which she excitedly showed the audience. For this track, the bass thrummed through the venue and the audience clapped along.
Zina told the audience about her inspiration behind the third track of tonight, which she wrote about a past relationship. She was “checked out of the relationship mentally way before ending it”, which led to the creation of the song ‘Zinfandel‘. Her vocals and neo-soul and folk influences shone through in this specific song. Another example of this is ‘The Seamstress’, an as-of-yet unreleased song that will be out on Friday, the 16th of May. “Does anyone here like thrifting?” Zina asked the audience, before telling them that “dating is a lot like thrifting in a way”. This concept inspired this specific song. It is more upbeat than some of her other music, but still jazzy.
Zina followed ‘The Seamstress’ up with a cover of Adele’s ‘Rolling in the Deep’, so that everyone could at least sing along to one song. It must be stated that Zina really made this song her own. It opened with an intro played by her bassist as Zina put away her guitar so she could focus on the vocals. The track fit her voice well and was a lovely addition to the setlist. Finally, she ended the night with her song ‘Love over Glory’, playing the first half on the guitar and the second, more uptempo half without it so she could move across the stage and interact with the fans. Before going off stage, she told everyone to meet her at the merch stand after the show.
After Zina left, the fans were waiting eagerly for the arrival of the main act of the night. The audience was filled with fans wearing bows in their hair with his name on it, and lots of people with signs asking for Mark Ambor to sing their favourite song or give them a guitar pick. Meanwhile, the staging concept was slowly but surely revealed. It looked like the audience was sitting around the campfire, the stage filled with crates and fairy lights strung around poles. An old record player with a cut-out of a tree on it was set at an angle in front of the drums, and a “Rockwood” sign was ‘taped’ to the backdrop. On the audience’s right-hand side, a Dutch flag was strung up along the fairylights that had been given to the singer’s manager during VIP. Over the speakers, Coldplay’s ‘Viva la Vida’ started playing while Ambor’s band made its way onto the stage near the end of the track. His band consists of keyboardist Alex Maddon, drummer Parker Sundby, and guitarist Alex Mak, who aligned themselves in this order from left to right. All of them were wearing the same paint-splattered navy overalls. As soon as Ambor himself came on stage with his guitar, he jumped right into his song ‘I Hope It All Works Out’ and continued with ‘Academy Street’. For this song, the fans turned the entire room blue with coloured paper in front of their phone’s flashlights, which made for a lovely sight.
“My name is Mark Ambor. Welcome to the Rockwood tour,” Ambor stated after playing the first two songs. He went on to explain a little bit about the title of his debut album, which he named after a park in Pleasantville where he grew up. To Ambor, going there with his friends formed an escape, and there, “the weight of the world fell off [his] shoulders”. He continued his set with the songs ‘Company’, ‘A Long Way’, and ‘Waves’, the crowd eagerly clapping and singing along, especially when Ambor asked them to sing the “oh” in ‘A Long Way’. After ‘Waves’, a fan threw a shirt on stage that they had made for the singer. Or well, maybe more so for his crew member Erik, as the shirt said, “Who’s Mark, we’re here for Erik”. Erik came on stage himself at that moment to show himself wearing the same shirt. This made for a fun little moment, right before Ambor toned the set down a little by playing a few acoustic songs. Sitting on a stool and playing the acoustic guitar, Ambor played ‘Someone That’s Better’ and ‘Second Best’. In between the songs, he spoke about how his writing process almost always starts alone in his bedroom, thinking about performing the songs he writes to his fans. Afterwards, he mentioned how he “almost regret[s] not putting [the next song] on the album acoustic”. For ‘Hate That I Still Love You’, Ambor moved towards the middle of the audience to connect with his fans further in the back of the venue. He mashed it up with parts of Coldplay’s ‘Yellow’; the band seems to be a real inspiration to the singer.
As soon as Ambor and his band made it back to the stage, he played ‘Curls in the Wind’ and ‘Hair Toss, Arms Crossed’. Before the latter, Ambor received the second Dutch flag of the night, which he draped around his microphone stand. It fell at first, but he fixed it quickly at the end of the track. Ambor mentioned how he has been writing new music and has just released his latest song. However, he got distracted halfway through talking by a sign in the audience that said ‘rock, paper, scissors for a guitar pick’, which he just had to participate in. After giving them the pick, he played ‘Who Knows’, followed up by an unreleased track “to make tonight’s show special”, ‘Tomorrow’. Even though the song has not been released yet, many fans have heard it at some point at other shows and were still able to sing along. Ambor then put away his guitar and moved to the piano to play ‘Bruises and Stains’ and the instrumental interlude ‘Rockwood’. Ambor is truly a wonder on any instrument, because afterwards he picked up the ukulele to play ‘Good to Be’. Both Ambor and his band then went off stage for the encore.
As soon as Ambor came back, he had switched out his grey sweater for a personalised football shirt of the Dutch club Willem II, located in Tilburg. On the back, it said “Mark Ambor 013 sold out”. A third Dutch flag had been draped over Ambor’s piano, on which he played ‘My Love!’. At the request of fans, he then played the unreleased track ‘Our Song’ on the guitar. Before playing his hit song ‘Belong Together’, Ambor spoke about how “The Netherlands was one of the first places that believed in [him]”. Earlier on in the show, he’d already stated how “The Netherlands feels like a second home”. ‘Belong Together’ has received a lot of radio play, and it’s very telling how he was able to play his biggest show ever here. After playing the song, one would have assumed Ambor was done. However, a fan held up a sign asking for ‘The Sky Is the Limit’, and so Ambor sat down at the front of the stage with his band to play one final song. He even jumped off the stage and sang a part of the song right at the barricade. He had to jump back up on his own, retrieved the Dutch flag from the piano to give to a fan, and left for the last time.
That did not mean the night was done, however. Mark Ambor is known for playing pop-up songs outside for free, and tonight he treated his fans to one of those pop-ups after the show was done. Outside the venue, he played ‘Good to Be’, ‘Who Knows’, and ‘Belong Together’. Even though Ambor was not in the crowd, but stood behind a fence, it made for a cosy and intimate moment that made the night extra special.
