Peter Gabriel & Sting Bring Distinctive Raspy Voices to Washington DC’s Verizon Center (PHOTOS)

A sold out and thoroughly excited audience greeted Peter Gabriel and Sting at the Verizon Center on Thursday when they kicked off the east coast portion of their “Rock Paper Scissors” tour in Washington, D.C. Gabriel and Sting, who previously toured together for the Amnesty International shows in the 1980s, put their similarly raspy voices together on many songs throughout the set, often trading off verses or covering the other’s song entirely. And while they played the radio-friendly choices-“If I Ever Lose My Faith in You” (Sting) or “In Your Eyes” (Gabriel) for example-it also included some not so obvious ones, like “Darkness” (Gabriel) or “Hounds of Winter” (Sting). Neither of the two is apolitical, so it was interesting that they worked in commentary about England into the set, especially poignant as it was the day of the Brexit vote. Sting covered the first verse of the Genesis song, “Dancing with the Moonlit Knight” and delivered its line “Selling England by the pound” with intensity before going into “Message in a Bottle,” and Gabriel did a new song, “Love Can Heal,” which he dedicated to the murdered British MP, Jo Cox. He and Cox had worked together in the past on humanitarian issues prior to her joining the English government, so it was a lovely homage.