Friday night, Vero and I headed out to Bluesfest to meet up with Mike. I had arranged to sell my ticket to Saturday’s festivities because I was going to HOPE Volleyball but I had never heard back from the woman so I had little hope. Lo and behold, she did end up calling Mike’s cellphone and I was $20 richer! Score! So now, instead of my pass costing me $210, it cost me $190. Eleven Days of Rocking for $190….$17 a day. Not too shabby at all!
Carrie ended up showing up at Bluesfest again on Friday night…she couldn’t stay away once she got the taste of the festival! We headed over to the Hard Rock Café stage where I wanted to check out Okkervil River. We spent 30 minutes listening to some good alt-country tunes going on. They were decent. There was quite the crowd for them.
Then the ‘Friday Main Event!’ came along in the form of the Sam Roberts Band on the Rogers stage. This is their fourth year in a row and I doubt they will ever miss a Bluesfest. I have managed to catch them a few times over the past year as they are promoting their excellent album ‘Love at the End of the World’. I even managed to get surprised tonight by hearing No Sleep, Dead End and Uprising Down Under…a couple of tunes I haven’t heard in awhile.
Unfortunately for the show, the volume was lacking. There is this constant fear of breaking the noise by-law this year and there are by-law officers with their decibel readers around the area (supposedly…I have yet to see one but I keep reading about it in the Citizen). This produced an adverse effect in that the show just didn’t feel…rocking at first. In fact, I found the band to be playing at a fairly slow tempo for the first couple of songs which was uncommon. Plus, the choice of opening songs didn’t keep up the momentum…Love at The End of the World was great…but then they proceeded with No Sleep and Lions of the Kalahari. Perhaps they were trying to get the less frenetic ones out of the way to make room for the rest?
Fortunately, about half way through the set they cranked up the energy a notch and this was the band that I have grown to love.
Some highlights:
– While the girlfriend does not care for Sam’s non-shaggy look, I remarked at how much he resembled Cat Stevens!
– Mind Flood…always, always, ALWAYS a great closer of the night. Matt was wondering when the set would end as Mind Flood started and I commented “Oh, in about 15 minutes.” and his eyes went wide wondering what onslaught of rock was coming his way!
– The majority of the Love at the End of the World songs have great energy! The crowd loves it.
All in all, I’ve seen better SRB shows, but I can’t say they disappoint. It was my friend Carrie’s first SRB concert and they won a fan. I’m going to assume that this will be the last time I see the band before they end their summer tour and most likely take some time off. But who knows what the rest of the summer has to offer?
After the concert, we said goodbye to everyone as Vero and I had to head off to pack our things for HOPE Volleyball. We did manage to scour the merchandise booth. I picked up a couple of great looking US Tour Posters from the band that I’ve had my eye on for awhile on the website (I just hate paying for that shipping!) and Vero picked up a great t-shirt. I also bit the bullet and picked up three Bluesfest concert posters. In the previous years, I had looked at them and didn’t feel like paying $50 – $100 on an autographed poster of the event. But I had no idea that there were unautographed copies for $25! So I said “What the heck?” and bought 2007, 2008, and 2009 and now I will only have to fork out $25 each year I go. I found that 2007 and 2009 were really cool looking posters whereas I wasn’t too keen on the 2008 ‘Funkalicious’ themed one. I am a lover of the streamlined art…not the crazy stuff.
I can feel the Gauntlet creeping up on us…my bones are getting tired from rocking and this is only Day 3 of 12 days of Bluesfest!
Setlist (from my weak memory…probably out of order):
01: Love At The End Of The World
02: With A Bullet
03: No Sleep
04: Lions Of The Kalahari
05: Fixed To Ruin
06: Dead End
07: Detroit ’67
08: Hard Road
09: Up Sister
10: Bridge To Nowhere
11: Uprising Down Under
12: Brother Down
13: Them Kids
Encore
14: Where Have All The Good People Gone?
15: Mind Flood