Blue Rodeo welcomes musical friends on special night

Faced with a choice of watching CNN reporters valiantly clutching railings while talking about gusting winds and torrential rains or braving the less hazardous elements of a wet and blustery Toronto night to go to the Glenn Gould Studio to see a private silver anniversary concert by Blue Rodeo and friends, it was an easy choice. Piers Morgan and his colleagues could wait until I got home at midnight to turn on the television.

Blue Rodeo is marking the 25th anniversary of the release of its Outskirts debut album with the release earlier this month of its expansive Blue Rodeo: 1987-1993 box set, which includes remastered versions of the band's first five studio albums, unreleased music, studio outtakes and a new version of Outskirts remixed by singer/guitarist Greg Keelor. A tour of Spain follows in November, and a cross-Canada jaunt will take up the first six weeks of 2013.

But Monday was an extra special night, as members of Blue Rodeo's extended musical family joined them on stage during an intimate two-hour show.

Molly Johnson hosted part of the evening and she talked about the early days of Blue Rodeo when they were regulars at her stomping grounds, The Cameron House. She then introduced Cuff The Duke, which played "Five Days in May" with Blue Rodeo member Bob Egan on steel guitar.

Jim Cuddy

The other members of the guests of honour then took the stage and essentially acted as the house band for much of the rest of the night as their friends trotted out to cover their songs. Oh Susanna got things rolling with "Bad Timing" and Jim Cuddy's son Devon followed with "Rain Down On Me." The band members then pulled the old switcheroo, with Keelor sitting behind the drum kit, Glenn Milchem moving from drums to guitar and Cuddy making himself at home behind the piano to back Justin Rutledge's version of "Falling Down Blue."

You might not expect Ron Sexsmith to be the guy to get a show rocking, but he did just that with "Love and Understanding." Things mellowed out again when Whitehorse's Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland reprised Blue Rodeo and Sarah McLachlan's "Dark Angel."

Great Big Sea presented the first big highlight when it joined Blue Rodeo for "Rose Coloured Glasses." The Sadies were given the stage to themselves for "Palace of Gold," a staple of their own sets over the years that never ceases to please me.

The uber-pleasant Andy Maize and his Skydiggers bandmate Josh Finlayson shone with the Blue Rodeo boys on "Hasn't Hit Me Yet" and Great Big Sea returned to get the relatively reserved audience to clap along to "What Am I Doing Here."

Blue Rodeo performed "Try" on its own and the crowd loved it. Devon Cuddy came back to play piano with his dad and his musical pals on an excellent "Til I Am Myself Again."

Dallas Good and Greg Keelor

Several of my friends cited the next song, an extended "Diamond Mine," as their favourite of the night. I'd have a hard time disagreeing. The Sadies added their signature twangy reverb and Travis Good (who was looking a bit like soon-to-be tourmate Neil Young) brought some serious feedback while Michael Boguski let loose on the organ during an extended jam.

All of the musicians crowded on the stage to take part in a major sing-along during the chorus of "Lost Together," which ended the show on a high note and added to the fuel for conversation at a casually engaging champagne reception in the venue lobby put on by the hard-working folks at Blue Rodeo's management company, Starfish Entertainment.

It was a memorable evening for the few hundred people in attendance, but CBC will share the wealth while broadcasting the concert over the next week or so on radio and online. Try to catch it if you can.

Quality over quantity during NXNE's Friday

My baseball team lost 5-4 and the game meant that I couldn't attend any North By Northeast shows until midnight on Friday, but quality instead of quantity was the order of the night and made the sting of the loss a little easier to take.

I've seen both Andre Williams and The Sadies in a variety of incarnations over the years, but the two of them together is a deadly combination. The 75-year-old singer was pimped out in a red satin suit and red fedora and added new elements to his look with earrings and a beard. He may have looked like an aging ladykiller, but he was behaving like a person a quarter of his age with his come-ons to the young women in the audience.

Andre Williams with The Sadies

Things got hot right off the bat with "Agile, Mobile, Hostile" and then his 50-year-old hit, "Shake a Tail Feather," with The Sadies' Dallas and Travis Good providing a wall of guitar in accompaniment. Upright bassist Sean Dean and drummer Mike Belitsky kept a solid rhythm and Williams' manager added to the ensemble by playing keyboards. Perhaps he felt he had to keep a close eye on his artist, who has a long history of substance abuse that was documented in the 2007 film "Agile Mobile Hostile: A Year with Andre Williams."

Things continued with selections including "I Wanna Be Your Favorite Pair of Pajamas" and a slow doo-wop version of Williams' 1957 hit "Bacon Fat" before he left the stage to "take a pee." The Sadies filled in ably by performing "Pussy Stank" on their own, while accompanied by some sultry burlesque dancing by Caitlin Veitch.

Williams returned wearing a white jacket and fedora and Travis picked up his violin for "She's a Bag of Potato Chips" from 1999's Red Dirt. That was Williams and The Sadies' first album together, and they finally followed it up this year with Night & Day. "Jailbait," another vintage favourite, was followed by "Bad Motherfucker" -- and you have to know that the man was, and still might be, what the title proclaims. Williams and Veitch left the stage, leaving The Sadies to take the song to its conclusion.

You can see a video of Williams and The Sadies performing "I Can Tell" in this video recorded at the show by Matzoh Ball.

Greg Cartwright (The Compulsive Gamblers, The Oblivians) had been quietly sitting backstage during the set, but there was nothing reserved when he took the stage with his garage punk combo Reigning Sound at 1:15 a.m. and opened with "Your Love Is A Fine Thing."

Reigning Sound

The club was packed, and had a long lineup outside, and Cartwright rewarded fans with a blazing hour-long set of soulful rock-and-roll that included "Everything I Do Is Wrong," "Debris," "If You Can't Give Me Everything," "Bad Man," "Time Bomb High School," "I Don't Care If You Ever Come Back Now," "Funny Thing," "If I Can't Come Back," The Compulsive Gamblers' "Stop and Think it Over" (which you can see in this video by Matzoh Ball), a great cover of "Stormy Weather" and more.

I'd seen The Deadly Snakes' Max Danger (who'd worked with Cartwright in the past) backstage, but he was soon on it and urging everyone to demand an encore. It came with a one-two punch beginning with "Drowning."

Cartwright was in fine voice throughout the performance and his band members became a united force to be reckoned with and exemplified what good old rock-and-roll is all about.

No Sinner

Vancouver's No Sinner had the difficult task of following Reigning Sound at 2:30 a.m. Singer Colleen Rennison seemed to be going for a sexy white trash look, and her powerful blues-rock voice combined with the competent musicianship accompanying her gave the performance a Janis Joplin  vibe. The group still needs more in the way of songs, but there's some potential there.

Punk revival highlights Juno concert

Exclaim! Media celebrated its 20th anniversary and the Canadian Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences raised money for its MusiCounts charity when they joined together for a night of music at Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern on Feb. 4 as part of the Juno Concert Series.

The first part of the evening was dedicated to Canadian pop songs, with young combo The Elwins acting as house band. I walked in to hear Broken Social Scene's Brendan Canning crooning Remy Shand's "Take A Message." I wasn't a fan, but it may have been people's only chance to hear the song live, since Shand seems to have disappeared following the platinum sales and Juno-winning success of his one and only album, The Way I Feel, in 2002.

The Elwins did an original, fun, bouncy and slightly ska-influenced pop tune called "Stuck in the Middle" that I quite enjoyed. I wasn't familiar with the band before, but would be interested in seeing a set of its original material.

Tokyo Police Club's David Monks performed a song I didn't know and then Canning returned with quirky pop artist Allie Hughes for The Poppy Family's "Where Evil Grows." It had a nice fuzz tone, but the vocals lacked the edge that Terry and Susan Jacks brought to the original in 1971.

Former Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, King Cobb Steelie and Phono-Comb member Don Pyle next offered a slide show of photos from his 2011 book, Trouble in the Camera Club: A Photographic Narrative of Toronto's Punk History 1976-1980. He described some of the shots he took as a teenager of Blondie, The Ramones, David Bowie, The Clash and such local favourites as Teenage Head, The Diodes, The Mods and The Ugly that brought back memories to a certain segment of the audience that packed the venue.

The Sadies were the backing band (and it seemed strange to see Sean Dean not playing an upright bass) for the following set of Toronto punk tunes, with Pyle sticking around to sing a couple of them. Mickey Skin took folks back 34 years to when her band The Curse, North America's first all-woman punk band, issued the single "Shoeshine Boy" about murdered 12-year-old Emmanuel Jaques. She followed that up with "Somethin' Ya Can't Tell Your Mother."

Other highlights included a rendition of The Viletones' "Possibilities" and Fucked Up frontman Damian Abraham (who's abandoned his straight edge ways and was drinking beer) taking off his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey to bark through Teenage Head's "Picture My Face."

Hip-hop karaoke was next up, which thinned the crowd considerably (and eventually prompted my exit). But I was entertained by Mandy's energetic rip through Maestro Fresh Wes' "Let Your Backbone Slide," and it was good to see pioneering female MC Michie Mee again.

The evening didn't live up to my expectations and wasn't as good as last year's decade-themed shows in the Juno Concert Series, but spending time with friends at the gig compensated for the lack of on-stage thrills.

Deano And The Purvs Fit Well Opening For The Sadies

I see Chicago's Waco Brothers every chance I get, and Jon Langford has become an annual visitor to Toronto for shows with The Sadies and the Burlington Welsh Male Chorus, but other Waco side projects don't make it to town too often.
So it was great that singer/guitarist Deano Waco (or Dean Schlabowske as he's known in his other life as a wine store owner) made the trip north of the border with three members of Austin, Texas high-octane bluegrass outfit The Meat Purveyors (guitarist Bill Anderson, mandolin player Pete Stiles and singer Jo Stanli Walston) to open for The Sadies' public CD release show for Darker Circles on Saturday night at Lee's Palace.

I admit that I'm a bigger fan of the Wacos and Deano's other band, Dollar Store, than the tracks that can be downloaded for free from his web site in this latest collaboration, which bills itself as Deano Waco And The Purvs. But the quartet really brought the songs to life during its 16-song set in front of a steadily growing audience. There were no drums or bass, but the mix of Deano's electric and Anderson's acoustic (they swapped near the end of the set) guitars and Stiles' mandolin virtuosity made you forget that fact.

The band opened with "Workin' For The Devil" and hit my favourite of its songs, "Vacant Lot," a bit later. The show progressed with "Taken," "Reality Blues," "Maid Of The Mist" and one of the most heavily bluegrass-based tunes of the night, the fine "Box Store." There was a great mandolin solo in "Bottle Of Wine" and "Stuck In The Mud" rocked harder than anything else in the set.

Deano And The Purvs ended on a surprise high note, a cover of The Adverts' 1977 punk classic "Gary Gilmore's Eyes," which Deano had recorded on the 2002 compilation, The Executioner's Last Songs, Vol. I.

The Sadies followed and I've seen and written about the Toronto band so often that I elected not to take notes and just enjoy the show and the company of the many friends who came out to show their support. 

The group played a fine mix of old favourites and Darker Circles material. Dallas and Travis Good's mother Margaret came out and sang a few songs, and Ron Sexsmith joined in for sterling covers of Johnny Cash's "Guess Things Happen That Way" and The Who's "The Seeker."

The Sadies brought things home in the encore by blending "Gloria" and "Baby, Please Don't Go," the A- and B-sides of a great 1964 single by the Van Morrison-fronted Them. It was a brilliant way to cap the night off at Lee's. 

But the party continued at my friends' Jeff and Tara's place, where the musicians and some insiders returned for conversation, several Keith's and Big Fat Burritos (thanks again for those, Mike). I've talked to Deano numerous times over the years, but it was nice to meet The Purvs, who were also swell folks.

When the always gracious hosts wanted to go to bed, a couple of other pals and I moved a block down the street for a couple of nightcaps. I arrived home at 7 a.m.

Good times.

The Sadies' Darker Circles excels on disc and stage

The Sadies' Darker Circles won't be released until May 18 (through Outside Music in Canada and Yep Roc elsewhere), but the Toronto quartet launched the album with an April 26 performance at the intimate Rivoli.

The Sadies are my favourite local band and I've seen them dozens of times, to the point where they've likely surpassed The Lowest Of The Low as the group I've witnessed the most in my life. I'll add to the total on May 22, when the band plays Toronto's Lee's Palace, where the guys and many of their musical friends recorded Live In Concert — Volume 1. And I don't think I've ever been disappointed.

This was the case again at Monday's too-short showcase, where The Sadies played 20 minutes of material from Darker Circles before ending with crowd favourite "Tiger Tiger," which came complete with Travis and Dallas Good simultaneously playing Travis' guitar. 

I'm sure I've heard a few of the songs from the new album mixed in with older cuts at Sadies shows I've attended over the past few months, but this was the first time they were put out there on their own. And they passed the audition with flying colours.

"They just keep getting better," a friend standing beside me at the show rightly observed. "It's really not fair."

Darker Circles follows a similar path as its predecessor, 2007's New Seasons, and again was produced by Jayhawks member Gary Louris. The Sadies effortlessly blend their alt.country and psychedelic rock influences and focus on complete compositions, as the album-closing 'Ten More Songs" is the only instrumental on the 11-track record.

Neither Dallas nor Travis are classic crooners, but their voices fit the material and their intricate yet powerful guitar licks play off each other so cohesively that you'd swear the two of them shared bloodlines even if you didn't know they were brothers. Upright bassist Sean Dean and drummer Mike Belitsky are as solid as ever on the back line to complete the package.

Darker Circles may take a few more listens before it impacts me the same as some of The Sadies' earlier albums, but it has a place in my top 10 of 2010 list so far.

Andre Williams and The Sadies
My Thursday night volleyball games kept me away from Toronto's Horseshoe Tavern until 11 p.m., so I unfortunately missed local blues/roots/rock-and-roll combo Catl (who I quite like and last saw at the Halloween party at Mitzi's Sister a few weeks ago) and Montreal rockabilly artist Bloodshot Bill (who I've never witnessed in person, but have liked what I've heard on radio and seen on television), who I'll try to catch opening for King Khan & BBQ at Lee's Palace on Dec. 4.
But my arrival coincided with the start of a short nine-song set by The Sadies, which included "Why Be So Curious (Part 3)," "Leave Me Alone," "Stay A Little Longer," "Tiger Tiger" and a couple of instrumentals. The quartet was sharp, as always, and got the good-sized crowd pumped up for its next role as Andre Williams' backing band.
"Mr. Rhythm" (who was apparently given that name by the late, great Redd Foxx) took the stage along with two local go-go dancers (who I won't name, just in case their employers happen to see this and didn't know they were moonlighting). Andre was decked out in a red zoot suit with matching hat, had earrings on both sides of his head, and looked every part the pimp.
I've seen Andre at least half-a-dozen times, but it's been a few years since he's been in Toronto. He didn't look as good as he has in the past when I saw him at the Continental Club in Austin during the South By Southwest Music Festival in March, so I was a bit wary going in to this performance. He turned 73 earlier this month and has lived a hard life that's included lots of booze and drugs and periods of homelessness, but he seemed to be rejuvenated somewhat for this show. Performing in front of The Sadies can do that to people.
Andre opened with  "Hallelujah" and then moved into "She's A Bag Of Potato Chips," which he recorded with The Sadies on the 1999 country-influenced  Red Dirt album. He showed a few dance moves during "Agile, Mobile & Hostile" and then sang about one of his many fantasies with "I Wanna Be Your Favorite Pair Of Pajamas." The Sadies provided lots of raunch and crunch in support, and Dallas Good even took an impressive turn at the organ during "Pajamas."
Things slowed down for another Red Dirt track, "I Can Tell," after which Andre said, "I'd like to take a short break and turn you over to some bad motherfuckers."
Andre stood behind Dallas and caught his second wind as The Sadies ripped through an uplifting version of "Higher Power."
The dancers returned once Andre reclaimed centre stage to scan the crowd for "some good pussy," which was an obvious introduction for "Pussy Stank."
Andre then reached back about 50 years into his catalogue for two early hits. First came a bluesy doo-wop version of "Bacon Fat," followed by the still lascivious "Jail Bait."
Andre made a dedication to all the "hillbillies in the house," and explained, "I used to pick cotton and screw myself because there was no girls" when he was growing up as a "blackbilly" in Alabama.
The set ended with what's probably Andre's best-known song, the ever-awesome "Shake A Tail Feather," which had the go-go girls shaking theirs.
Andre returned to the stage wearing a Christmas sweater for a short two-song encore that concluded with a reprise of "Hallelujah." 
The set was relatively short and I really missed "Let Me Put It In," which used to be a highlight of past shows and seemed to get a lot of ladies excited, but any time spent with Andre is a good time.
Andre isn't  quite what he used to be as a performer, but I'm glad that he may be able to prolong his career a bit and make some more money now that he's cleaned up — even though from a totally selfish perspective, I miss some of the old post-show, backstage debauchery that used to take place (that I would just observe, of course, since I would never dream of partaking in any illicit activities).
Here are some of my shots from the show: