Review: Jeff Martin at Centrepointe Theatre – Nepean

Jeff Martin, originally uploaded by lifemusicmedia.

Mike and I went to see Jeff Martin (of Tea Party fame) at the Centrepointe Theater in Nepean. We wondered what kind of atmosphere there would be had at a community theatre but our fears were laid to rest when you the reader realize that our meaning of ‘atmosphere’ equals ‘is there a bar?’ and the answer was yes. There was a bar. Which served some god awful choices of beer.

I ended up ordering a Steamwhistle (which isn’t a bad beer…USUALLY), but we had to drink it fast as the show was about to start. Ugh…that beer was horrible. We rushed into the theatre, took our seats four rows from the stage which was FABULOUS and settled in.

Unfortunately, we settled in for the opening set of two guys from Ireland (who may or may not have been Indian. Mike thinks so, I think not. The jury is still out on this one.) They started off with a decent-paced acoustic number which didn’t really stir anything in me. Before their second song started the singer said “Alright, let’s bring it down a notch for a moment.”

At this point, not five minutes into the show I realized that this would be quite entertaining…as in I would have plenty to mock them about. For example, all there is on stage is one guy with this acoustic guitar and then the other guy singing into the microphone. Hey, that’s great and all, but when you mention that you have to tone it down for the next number and in reality, you haven’t brought it up any with your first number, you have to wonder about the cliché statements ‘rock stars’ make. Either way, Mike and I kind of gave each other the look and settled in for the rest of their set, which was kind of horrible. If I were to see them in a pub in Ireland, I think I would have been alright with them. But at this moment, in this theatre, waiting for Jeff Martin to play, it looked like we were watching two pretty boys up on stage. Sigh.

Another great part of their performance is when they left the stage there really wasn’t any requests for encores and people were leaving to get a beer but they came back out. “The guys backstage said we had to come out and play one more tune!”. A mandatory encore? Nuh uh…only the Smashing Pumpkins get to pull that trick out of the bag.

After another beer (a Creemore this time around…thank the heavens), we hung around the lobby and headed back in around 8:45 to see Jeff Martin in action. This was a lowkey gig…him on the acoustic guitar and Wayne P. Sheehy on percussion. This was great as I had never seen Jeff Martin in an acoustic setting before.

This man is the master of his instrument…he is the new Jimmy Page. I have always enjoyed his music and his otherworldly lyrics and its Eastern flair. I had a taste of what he was going to deliver at tonight’s show as I had ordered a bootleg a few weeks back of a recent show.

Wayne Sheehy was a sight to see on percussion. At first I didn’t know what to make of him…he would have these spastic movements and dance around a little but he was a machine; hitting the cymbals with nothing but his hands and when he did use a drum stick he would pound them so hard that you would see bits of wood flying off and then he would have to duct tape them back together in between songs.

Jeff Martin is very entertaining as an musician as well as a storyteller. He would frequently talk about what is going on in life (like the creation of a new electric rock trio called the Armada), or how a song was created, and even presented a new song (Line in the Sand). He frequently medleyed (is that even a verb? I highly doubt it) songs into his songs…we had teases by the Arcade Fire (Rebellion), Zeppelin (Gallow’s Pole) and even Massive Attack (Inertia Creeps).

I was excited to hear a couple of my favourite tracks – Psychopomp and Requiem played back to back. He also covered a few Daniel Lanois tunes (I Love You and The Messenger). He also playing Coming Home which is this killer track from Edges of Twilight and he was saying how they never used to play this because the drummer couldn’t ever play it live. I had a good laugh at that.

You can’t go wrong with the slide guitar either on Sun Going Down/Black Snake Blues. He is the master.

As always he ended off with Sister Awake and took hold of the bongo drums for a bit. It was quite the different version as most of it consisted of his take on Inertia Creeps.

All in all, it was a typical Ottawa crowd, very quiet during the songs (which is understandable in a theatre while we’re sitting down) and at one point he wanted us to sing and everyone started, realized not everyone was singing so they all shut up and he commented “Oh Ottawa, so shy, so shy.”

His vocals were the strongest I’ve ever heard them. I actually picked up his “Live at the Enmore Theatre” DVD the day after and noticed that his vocals aren’t strong at all in that performance. His vocal strength reminded me of the old days of Tea Party (from Transmission years) where he would belt it out.

An amazing intimate show that I would definitely pay good money to see again. But do I prefer Jeff Martin in full out electric rock more than acoustic? I would say it’s 50/50 and he puts on an excellent acoustic show.

I can’t remember the exact setlist but it definitely resembles the track listing from the bootleg I recently purchased so I’ll post it here:

The Bazaar
Psychopomp
Requiem
I Love You (Daniel Lanois)
The Messenger (Daniel Lanois)
A Line in The Sand
Coming Home
Release
Winter Solstice (but I swear he also played the Badger?)
The Kingdom
Sun Going Down/Black Snake Blues
Sister Awake