I’ve been really enjoying Tom Wilson’s latest album, The Shack Recordings, and I’ve been a fan of Tom’s stuff back through all the Blackie and the Rodeo Kings stuff, through a couple of solo albums, and back into the Junkhouse days, so when I heard the tour for the new album was coming to Halifax, I knew I was going to go check it out.
If I were giving out stars just for the performance, this would be a 5 of 5 situation. Tom was great, Bob added some fun, and Russell (from Junkhouse) brought some more to the show. The songs were good, Tom’s stage persona was perfect, the stories were excellent (especially the bit about the guys in Oasis thinking they were better than Dylan).
However, there were two things really working against my ability to enjoy the show.
One was the venue. The Seahorse is actually a decent place to drink and have some basic bar-style fun, but… well, let me put it this way–the sound guy was also tending bar, and he was a better bartender than a sound guy. (And he wasn’t that good of a bartender–his Guinness pour was for shit). I moved around the room and the quality of the sound varied wildly. Ironically it was muddiest and shittiest right near the sound board. Made me think of Rob Szabo‘s old line about keeping the sound guy happy since he had his hand on the SUCK knob. You know things are bad when the band is cracking jokes–from the stage–about the fact that they can’t get the monitor levels changed, but they could probably get a drink.
The other was the audience. This is a standing complaint of mine in Halifax–people just won’t shut the hell up. I don’t think it’s malicious, it’s just that Maritimers are so friendly that they need to talk to their friends and be a part of things, and sometimes that means drinking a lot of beers and yelling over the band at each other. I don’t expect concert hall silence in a bar show, but I also don’t expect the band to have to have the PA cranked up several times so that they can’t hear the audience talking…
So, good album, with a good stage show, but ruined by a poor sound tech and my inability to enjoy shows when the audience is too damn loud.
