On Saturday afternoon my buddy Buzzard and I went to the Cask and Barrel in downtown Edmonton for the Garage Band Saturdays event which was originally billed as a Mike McDonald solo show but ended up being a Jr. Gone Wild show. This was my ninth time seeing them live and the smallest most intimate venue I have seen them play. The place can't hold much more then 70-80 people.
This was the first show JGW has played this year, and with little or no rehearsal, the band sounded great. Ya, there were a few rough spots but overall I thought they were awesome. Mike only played acoustic through out the whole show which I have never seen him do at JGW gig before so that was cool. His voice sounded great and guitarist Steve Loree just keeps sounding better to me, maybe because Mike was on acoustic, but Steve really seems to be getting better and better, and of course Dove on bass and Larry Shelast on drums held their own too.
The band did two sets on this afternoon, lots of great tunes and a few good stories told as well. I didn't realize that it is the 30th anniversary of JGW first album Less Art, More Pop! which is a brilliant album.
I really enjoyed the selection of songs played during the two sets. A couple of newer ones "Barricades (The Hockey Riot Song)", "Old & Ugly" and "Fools Errand". From the Pull The Goalie album there was "What's Going On", "Try Again" and "What A Great Day". From Simple Little Wish there was "Downtime" and "I'm So Glad".
Mike told a good story about the 1990 album Too Dumb To Quit. He mentioned that guitarist/lead singer Bill Henderson from the band Chilliwack produced that album, and how Bill would make them do the songs over and over and over. Well they had enough of that, when it came to the song "Bachelor Suite" in which they did on this afternoon. Mike and the band would only do the song once, no more takes, so the song you hear on the Too Dumb To Quit album is the only take of that song. The version they did at the Cask and Barrel sounded damn good too.
Other songs they performed Saturday afternoon from the Too Dumb To Quit album were "I Don't Know About All That", "In Contempt Of Me", and "Poet's Highway". JGW also did a couple of cover songs I had never heard them do before. Loudon Wainwright III "Dead Skunk" that was a really fun song and a Hank Williams song "Long Gone Lonesome Blues".
This was a great afternoon of music. Good times!!!
T-shirt.
No comments:
Post a Comment