So when Alan tried to compliment us on building bridges and so on, it kind of went over like a lead balloon. I'm surprised Andrea McCann, who is Sean's wife and from Saint Paul, didn't put the good word to him about the culture via her husband. Alan also doesn't know who Garrison Keillor is and when Sean made a joke at the beginning of Paddy Murphy ("And Garrison Keillor was feeling gay"), Alan gave Sean a look like, "What?" and Sean said the classic "I will explain later". They then finished the song.
I am going to try to intersperse pictures in amongst the text, to break it up a little. As per usual, Gentle Readers, this review is going to be very long, please bear with me, I'm used to writing incredibly detailed show reports for producers and directors!
First, let me say that the night actually begun with dinner at the Rock Bottom Brewery, which was very loud and very crowded and if we hadn't made plans in advance to meet up, I don't think we would have gotten in. As it was, the GBS folks had to sit just outside the bar area, because there were no tables!
And here is a picture of the group at Rock Bottom. We met Mecchie and Yvonne and Mike and his wife (I want to say, Donna?) and another couple whose names I forget, but it went VERY well and by the end of the night I felt like I was well on the way to making friends.
From L to Right that's the woman who's name I forgot, Donna(?) the husband whose name I forgot, Mike, Fish, Yvonne and Mecchie. As per usual, I am behind the camera.
At the Pantages I met ChiTownKim for the first time (Hi, Kim!) and that was great, I've been looking forward to meeting all y'all for a while now, and everybody we met today was Good People. We had some great conversations and it was quite lovely to get to know the folks behind the screen names.
To start things off, here's a picture I took outside the Pantages and while I don't like the inside, I like the old-fashioned lighted marquee.
I was pleased they had Great Big Sea mentioned on the marquee -- the Michigan Theatre did NOT, they forgot to change their letters! I was disappointed, so the fact that the Pantages did, makes me happy. Mecchie was not taking the shot, I was, he just looks like he is :)
This was my first time in the Pantages and I have to say, I was disappointed by the decor. Alan said it was great (did he even look around at the Michigan???) and beautiful, and I just had to shake my head. Horses for courses, I guess. I personally found it bland and uninspiring, mostly white with blue velvet seats and just a little gilded plaster work. But then, my favorite decorating periods are Renaissance and Edwardian, so I guess the King is more of a modernist!
Unlike the Ann Arbor show they came on and started with Ordinary Day (I think, I am not sure, I was so surprised, somebody correct me if I got it wrong) and The Chemical Worker's Song was second in line. Now, I have to preface all my comments about the sound by saying that we were WELL under the balcony (yuck) and almost up against the back wall (double yuck, so far as acoustics go, generally), back in row S. We could see pretty well -- the Pantages is TINY, relatively speaking, only 1000 seats total -- but the sound was nowhere near as phenomenal as it was at the Michigan.
Here are some pics (taken by others, these are not mine) of Paddy Murphy, Ordinary Day, Good People, etc. I don't have many pictures -- if any at all -- from the 2nd set they did.
I I believe this is at the very beginning of the show when Alan was looking around him and talking to the audience, about the bridge and how great it felt to be back and all that, the standard spiel he always does.
Now, if those of you, Gentle Readers, are as surprised as I am to hear that Alan, of all people, visited a strip club, well, in the way of Fate sometimes, what they woke up to in the morning when they got to Minneapolis sort of decreed it would be that kind of day. Below is a picture of what they were greeted with:
And for guys who haven't been able to touch their wives for a solid 5 days, with 10 days to go, this view must have just been crazy making. You can see Alan's face to the right of the pic (Sean actually took this one) and I suspect he's in the middle of a 'God damn' type head shake.
Anyway, getting back to the rest of the concert, the sound was pretty good. A little muddy, but I could hear all the lyrics and the instrumental mix was well done (the melodion was hot -- again -- but they didn't ratchet it down here like they did immediately in Ann Arbor), so I guess I'm only bitching because I've been spoiled by the acoustics of the Michigan, which as I said in that review (which I'll post as soon as I finish here, got to get all the details down before I forget!) are absolutely spectacular. If I'd done this show first I'd likely be writing a glowing review, even if we were all the way the hell in the back of beyond, theatrically speaking.
We were definitely back in with the cheap seats, too, which was unfortunate. A bunch of drunk young hipsters were in front of us and to our left side, while to my right and in the row in front of me were a bunch of newbies. Now, the new folk weren't bad, they were a little overwhelmed (and one couple came late 'cause they weren't interested in the cover band . . . little did they know there was no opener!) but soldiered gamely on, I even saw one dancing by the time Fortune Set came around.
But one of my pet peeves at a concert is people who talk so loudly that you cannot hear the talent perform, and boy, was there a lot of that going on. *Particularly* when they do so at a quiet moment in the show . . . such as the verses of Safe Upon The Shore. DAMMIT. The stage manager in me wanted to throw them out of the theatre. The concert-goer part of me wanted to 'accidentally' spill something on them, so that they'd have to get up and leave. I was really irritated. And then one of them had the nerve to ask Fish why they were getting shushed by the folks in the row behind us. "It's a rock concert", they said, with bewilderment, "what's wrong with talking at a rock concert?" He tried to explain it, but failed. I was gone getting some water at the time and when I came back, I said, politely but loud enough for them to hear over the crowd noise, that Great Big Sea is different because they actually care about what they sing, and that the music is actually worth listening to.
They did shut up for the second half and I heard one of them actually singing along (badly) to Helmethead, which Bob navigated successfully tonight, by the way. Speaking of Bob, I am really enjoying the Bob that smiles on stage and is learning how to loosen up. Go Bob! He talked, again, about the genesis of Yankee Sailor and that was cool. One of the encores was Follow Me Back, with Bob going solo and Murray on the guitar, providing a voiceless harmony, which was really nice. As a matter of fact, Follow Me Back was the only time in almost 3 hours that the audience shut up and actually listened.
And speaking of Helmethead, we had another crazy audience adventure. It seemed that two GBS fans had come to the show with hockey helmets, just generic black ones, and had gotten seats right about where we were in the back of beyond but on the house R side of things. Well, as soon as Bob started into Helmethead, these two guys put on their hockey helments and came dancing down to the front of the stage. Then they boogied across the front passthrough between the stage and the 1st row of seats, boogied for a bit at the other side of the stage, then danced their way back across the front pass through and back up to their seats. It happened through almost the whole song. Bob never even cracked a smile while he sang but I suspect his eyes were dancing. Sean flat out quit singing (though he kept playing) the harmony for a moment to laugh while the rest of the guys managed to get through it, even though Alan just about died laughing immediately afterwards. He also asked for a round of applause for the dancers. Let's just say, it took a few moments before audience and band got it together enough to continue. It was wacky and awesome, the sort of unexpected thing that occasionally happens at Great Big Sea.
I have found something else to admire in Alan (and the rest of the boys, but this is primarily a front man's responsibility) -- the ability to control a rambunctious crowd. Tonight in Minneapolis, the audience had all mainlined caffeine, or something, they were crazy. And there were very few times -- in direct contrast with Ann Arbor -- when the audience was in tune with the band. The audience made GBS work for it tonight! Which I don't know if I like. Personally I like working *with* the talent, not against them. They have a hard enough job as it is, the audience can really help things along by being polite, attentive, and responsive instead of rebellious, independent, and bloody minded. I think it was just really high spirits tonight, and Alan said at the end of the show, essentially, that their record of good shows here remains unbroken, but for my money I would have liked a crowd with more inclination to go along with Alan, instead of trying to make him go along with them.
So the audience was a big issue for me tonight. Sorry, folks. And I don't think it was any of the OKP, either, if it was, I apologize, but from where I sat (waaaaaaay back in the boonies), the audience just wasn't as in tune with everything as they could have been.
Now, to the important stuff, haha. Sean was wearing the silver striped blazer 'cause he had people in the audience, his hair is still short and still looks great, Bob of course was in unrelieved black, Murray was wearing a long sleeved faded black henley which I suspect he might have been wearing for Ann Arbor too (I hope they've had time to do laundry!), Kris was looking dapper in a button down shirt (I think) and no hat -- it was far too warm, and Alan was wearing that psuedo-army shirt of his, the button down one with the patches on the upper sleeves. I have no idea what kind of shoes they were wearing! Or, in Sean's case, if he was even wearing shoes, but I think he was. It's starting to get a little too cold for bare feet, although the theatre was REALLY warm. I can't imagine how warm it must have been on stage. I was wearing one of those shirts made for women that aren't see through but are still barely there, and jeans, and I was sweating by intermission. Almost 2 hours after the concert ended, my leather eye patch was still soaked with sweat. Ugh.
Run time was almost exactly to the minute the same as in Ann Arbor, 2:52/3, or thereabouts, but they took a shorter intermission.
Sean was not in as good a voice, quite, as the lead off show in AA, but he still sounded good, and delivered an impressively embellished General Taylor. Bob, of course, was fabulous on everything and I have now, truly, fallen in love with Follow Me Back. It's a lovely little song. I'm pretty irritated that the audience wouldn't shut up during the low whistle part of England, and I suspect the band was also, there was a brief switch in the atmosphere of the evening when that happened, which came from onstage.
Murray produced some impressive bass vocal harmonies (oh, and the electric guitar work on Long Life makes me weak at the knees) and delivered his verse of Scolding Wife with humor and panache, and Kris once again played the melodion in Good People *while* still handing out a beat, which always impresses the hell out of me, because I can't even sing and play the guitar at the same time! I had a hard time hearing the verses of Safe Upon The Shore because of the loud conversations going on around me but the harmonies in the chorus were very pretty. The entire show just didn't have the depth of sound as in the Michigan, but like I said, I'm totally spoiled now :) Although I suspect GBS would sound great in the middle of a windy field while getting rained on, so . . . Oh, I almost forgot. Alan gave us a beautiful Yankee Sailor, with a lot of emotion behind it, that song is quickly growing on me now that I've heard it live a few times.
Yes, Kris brought the little hand-held camera and there was much attempted avoidance of it by Alan which of course just made Kris more determined, lol. Sean leaned into it literally and we got an extreme close up of eyes, nostrils, and other assorted from-the-chest-up body parts. Murray, on the other hand, just kept playing, following Kris closely with his eyes. I don't think a bomb going off would disturb Murray in a performance! Kris also got a few good shots of the whole audience (like I said, the Pantages is tiny) and eventually put the camera away.
We got Run, Run Away and a singalong for an encore, also a verse and a chorus of Rant and Roar. I am sure it was Rant and Roar despite what the City Page fluffyheaded reviewer thinks, she thought it was Old Brown's Daughter. It wasn't. They sound completely different. I'm starting to wonder if the guys ever resist the audience and don't come out for the encore. I've seen 4 shows now, and each time, they've been overly generous and done multiple encores.
Went out to the bus while Fish made post-show plans with everybody, and hung out for a while. Murray showed up first and I watched people swarm him, then Bob showed up briefly (and the swarm, so fickle, lol, deserted Murray for Bob. I would have gone up to Murray once there were no people, but he slipped away in the general melee), signed a couple things, had a couple pics, then he went home to the bus also. I gave my Happy Birthday card to Britt to hand off to the bus for Kris (it's his birthday tomorrow and they're playing in Winnipeg), which he did, and I think he might have talked to me (you can always recognize a fellow tech) some, 'cause by then the trailer was all but loaded, but Fish was getting tired and dragged me away.
Turns out that if we'd stayed, we would have been able to party with Murray and Britt and their sound and light techs, I want to call them Jerry and . . . somebody else. Which would have been FINE with me, I am starting to learn that I am a thousand percent more comfortable with the techs than with the talent, which given my background is hardly surprising.
Something small but nice that happened at the bus was that Bob did NOT run into me when he returned to the bus. He very easily could have. He *should* have, according to the ancient laws that govern interactions between techs and talent. One of the rules is that the talent never gets touched. Ever. It's a security thing. The only exception is if *they* want to interact, like, for a picture. But if they don't, you need to leave them the hell alone, and his trajectory, when he was going home, would have taken him right by me on my blind side in a very narrow space. He walked by me on my blind side because to my right was filled with people, and instead of making me move (which wasn't going to happen because I couldn't go anywhere anyway), he actually stepped out to his right to avoid hitting me. Instinctively, I think, he knew I wasn't going to be able to see him very well, and I couldn't get out of his way. What a nice guy. I was in the mood to be grateful for him too because throughout the concert, people were knocking into my left side like nobody's business, perhaps assuming that I was wearing the eye patch for swank and not in real need. I have developed many little bruises.
But Bob didn't bruise me. He very carefully stepped aside so as not to whack me on my blind side. Say what you will, that was a nice gesture.
The best part, though, even with everything else going on, was that Glenn recognized me from Ann Arbor and since there weren't a lot of people at the swag table (well, relatively), we were able to chat for a bit, which was nice. I do like him a lot and wish I could spend more time with him. I wound up purchasing a 2010 Tour tee-shirt (the red and navy one) and one of the little black and white collar buttons, since I collect buttons. I didn't get CD's or The Book because I figure I can get those any time!
Here are some of the rest of my pics:
Here we have Murray, Alan and Sean singing their hearts out during what I believe is the chorus of The Night That Paddy Murphy Died.
It was a good night with Great Big Sea, and I am looking forward to this summer, when I hope they'll come around again, either here or within spitting distance (which for me is an 8 hour drive, one way).
Whitewater
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