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It’s commonly said that the sad songs are the best and I doubt you would have found any argument at the NAC’s fourth stage during Ottawa’s  February Bluebird North show. This being my first Bluebird concert I didn’t know really what to expect.

 

Played in by new host and local songstress Amanda Rheaume, folk and blues artists Lynne Hanson, Kelly Prescott, Matt De Zoete and Steve Marriner took to the stage and gave the crowd a wonderful acoustic set of their work.

 

The musicians performed one after another, each taking time to say a few words about the song and its inspiration. As in all good folk stories, the topics meandered from tragic to hilarious and often the two overlapped. The evening was put on by the Songwriter’s Association of Canada, so there was an emphasis on the “talky parts”. But, since I like that kind of stuff, it never took away from the show. Each of the musicians explained how they found motivation in their travels and relationships.

Of the idea behind her song More of the Same, Hanson told the story of her adopted grandfather and the loss of his wife to Alzheimer’s disease. The amazing raw imagery in the lyrics really grabbed me.

De Zoete looked to the past and his Dutch heritage, Prescott wrote about her relationships and Marriner even fit in an amusingly scathing song about a woman so bad he didn’t even have to date her. The take away message was clearly that if you want to keep a clean reputation, don’t piss off a musician.

I really dug the informal format. The full stage allowed the performers to converse and share jokes. While the theme of the music that night seemed to border more on the depressing, the laughs didn’t stop. It didn’t have the rehearsed feeling stage banter often has when you’re watching a group that you know has done this fifty times before.

 

If I could ask for more, all I would need would be more of the artists playing with each other’s songs. As when it happened, it was fantastic.

The night was special and unique and this is what will bring me back to future Bluebird North performances.

 

 

 

 

Tags: amanda rheaume, Bluebird North Series, Kelly Prescott, live musical performances, Lynne Hanson, Matthew de Zoete, NAC Fourth Stage, songwriter circle, songwriters from Ottawa, Steve Marriner

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 at 10:47 pm and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.