He introduced them before Galway Girl. “Mike on drums, CJ on keys, Eric on bass, Clay on guitar, and my dear, dear friend Alicia on violin. Please make some noise.”
Enstrom, a violinist, composer and producer who has toured with Sheeran previously, was the only name the crowd would have recognised. The rest were assembled in days.
“They’ve had three days to learn these songs. Three days to learn these songs!” Sheeran told the audience.
Instagram commenters on a Billboard clip of the introduction have identified the four as Mike Reident, CJ Branch, Eric Whatley and Clay Sears, though none of those surnames has been confirmed by Sheeran’s camp or the tour.
Why he needed them
Before bringing the group on, Sheeran set out the bind he had been in. He told the Philadelphia crowd that he had wondered how he was going to get musicians to stand on stage with him in a week when no one wanted to stand on stage with him.
He added that the five had said yes while the world believed he was a certain kind of person, a point he returned to more than once.
Much of the Loop Tour is performed alone anyway, built around the loop station at his feet. Beoga’s absence changed a segment, not the whole show. The optics were another matter.
The speech that opened the night
Sheeran did not wait for the encore.