As a birthday present, my girlfriend bought us two tickets to see Bahamas on Jan. 10 at the Bronson Centre—coincidentally or not, the same night as our anniversary. This Saturday, we finally got to see the band up on stage, fronted by Afie Jurvanen, and it was definitely worth the wait.
We got off the bus from dinner at Bronson and Primrose about ten minutes before the opener, Jennifer Castle, was slated to start. I knew that tickets were scarce (my roommate couldn’t find a cheap ticket to save his life), but even so, we were thrown off by the massive line curling around the block off of Bronson from the entrance so close to the beginning of the show.
Getting inside, the coat check ran out of coat hangers as we were four couples from the front of the line, and the Bronson Centre is a veritable maze of weird corridors and . . . offices? Apartments? Classrooms? I’m not certain, but it’s a weird venue nonetheless.
When we got inside the actual theatre, which was quite nice—no standing room, but plenty of seats—we found two seats in the second last row, and luckily got to catch the end of Castle’s solo set. Castle is Toronto-based and has worked with groups like the Constantines and Fucked Up.
She played some quieter songs, which pleased the crowd but had everyone a little restless to get to Bahamas. Her song “Way of the Crow” went over well and for her last song, she gave a choice of three songs, which got a good response from the crowd—she determined from the varied shouts to play “Make a Man,” another great song. Then it was time to bring on Bahamas!
The band started with a song off their new album, Bahamas is Afie. Their material for the set was fantastic and varied: my girlfriend was worried initially she wouldn’t know much off their new album, but they played plenty from both Barchords and Pink Strat, two of Bahamas’ previous albums. Old classics like “Lost in the Light” went over well, and there was a fantastic solo version by Jurvanen of “Stronger than That” (my favourite song, incidentally) that was almost ruined by someone in the audience clapping along poorly, even after Jurvanen stopped the song to let everybody know he could barely stick to his own rhythm, let alone the crowds.
Throughout the set, he shared some cool little anecdotes about socks, Christmas, and marijuana in Ottawa, amongst other things. At one point, he told a boisterous fan shouting to him in the middle of a story that they were welcome to share their thoughts with him on Twitter, which got a big laugh from the crowd.
Just before the last few songs, he shared his thanks with the crowd before ending off with an encore of “All the Time,” one of his biggest hits.
“It’s a privilege for us to play music,” he said. “I get to hang out with these guys all day and crack jokes, and at the end of the day, I get to play guitar. It’s what I used to fantasize about when I was a teenager.”
