Friday night I had the pleasure of seeing Kim Barlow at the Black Sheep Inn, over in Wakefield (Quebec), about a 45 minute drive from where we live in Ottawa.
Let me first day that Wakefield is a cute little town. I’d heard of it before, of course, and has met people who live in Wakefield, but I’d never gotten the chance to spend some time there myself. It’s very peaceful on the water and has a steam train, which we got to watch roll through. Much to our amusement, not only were the conductors and staff waving at us while it went past, but there was a string quartet playing in one of the cars. I remarked to Rich that I’d have to tell others about this, but that people probably wouldn’t believe me, as the idea seems rather surreal.
Anyhow. The opening band was called Pork Belly Futures . From reading the information on that website, you’d figure they might actually be good. For all the award-winning writing their front man has done in his career, this band was a disappointment. The music needed to be up-tempo a few notches. The lyrics were bordering somewhere between bland and just plain strange. And I’m not terribly surprised to find out that the band’s keyboardist and female singer were added later on — they seemed like additions while they were on stage, pushed off to one side as if they were extras. Cap that off with the fact that the front man never once stood up from his chair during their entire set, and you get the picture. They weren’t horrible, but I was more interested in my pint of beer than in the music, and I’m usually pretty open minded about that kind of thing.
I was glad when Kim Barlow finally took the stage somewhere around 10:30. It took some time for her to get set up, but it was well worth the wait. Her stage companion (whose name I’ve since forgotten, unfortunately) patched his guitar through an interesting setup involving several microphones, smaller speakers, and an old radio. This gave it a rather unique sound quality that I’m sure will show up on her next album, due out sometime this fall. Kim herself gave a wonderful performance. Her voice was amazing. She projects so well; even standing several feet from the microphone I could still hear every word. And, she clearly is very comfortable on stage, which just added to the performance on multiple levels. There were several times that she missed a verse, or played in the wrong key, or even forgot to plug in to the amp(!) but she still maintained her composure and was able to laugh at herself in a manner that made you feel like you were attending a jam session between her and the other musician, not a live show. She interacted with the audience a lot, commenting on various things she’d been thinking about, including details of the new album, life in the Yukon, and the fact that she always looks forward to hearing the crickets in eastern Canada. This is the kind of performance I love to see. It not being flawless made it so much better.
I’d not gotten the chance to hear Kim Barlow live before, and I’m very glad I did. Well worth it.
Too bad about that opening band.