Last Sunday my buddy Buzzard and I went to the Dan Bern concert at the Almanac. This would be my second time seeing Dan Bern in concert. This show at the intimate venue was sold out, and if you are not there early it's some hard to get a decent seat. Doors were to open at7pm, so we got there right at 7 but the venue had to have opened earlier as the place was already packed, so getting a good seat was not going to happen.
Opening the show was a gentleman by the name of Dan Smith a local musician, I had never heard of him before. Dan is a singer songwriter that plays roots based music. I thought he was alright playing mostly original songs, but did play two Townes Van Zandt covers. I thought his set was about 15 minutes too long as I found myself starting to get bored. Didn't help that he was sitting on a stool through is whole set which made it hard to see him unless you were sitting right at the front in which we were not. I would say he has a bright future with his music.
Headlining the evening was American singer/songwriter Dan Bern. After having seen him 11 months ago I had to go again, I enjoyed the show so much last February. Again Dan played to a sold out venue. Dan had a lot of great stories to tell and songs to play, but it seemed this time he did more talking then last time. The stories are great and usually funny, but the show started with him tuning his guitar and getting the sound person trying to get it just right for him. While this was happening he was telling stories but it was about 10 minutes before he finally got a song started. Lots of sound issues through out the show.
Once the songs got going it was a lot of laughs and sing a longs, it surprised me how well the whole audience knew the songs singing along. But then Dan likes to get everyone involved in his live shows. he had the crowd singing along to a song about Barry Bonds (baseball player) homerun totals over the course of his career. Big sing along to the Johnny Cash song "One Piece At A Time" in which Dan told a great story about touring for four months and only playing this song on all his driving between dates until he finally knew the song inside out.
Another big sing along was to his song "Jerusalem", a great song and it was cool to hear everyone sing this one out loud. Dan also played a new Tiger Woods song, this would be the second song he has written about Tiger Woods, and just as funny as his first one. Other songs played were "Black Tornado","Talkin' Canadian Blues", "Chelsea Hotel" and "God Said No".
Dan also told the audience about playing the American and Canadian anthems a few days before in Saskatoon at the Saskatoon Blades hockey game. I'm not sure what is ties are to the hockey team but this is the second time seeing him wearing a Blades wear, last time a t-shirt this time a cap, and doing the anthems at the game. Pretty cool considering they are a junior team that mostly Canadians only know about. His story was quite funny about learning the Canadian anthem and then come show time realizing that shit I'm not so sure I know the American anther's words after having studied all week learning the Canadian one.
It was only weeks after the Edmonton show last year that Dan Bern had an incident with a snow blower trying to unjam it, where he lost a couple of finger tips on his left hand in the accident, serious shit when you make your living playing guitar. Luckily he is back playing and sounding great.
Dan closed out the show with the Canadian national anthem in which the whole audience sang along with him. Good times!!!
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