My fourth day of Bluesfest started at the Barney Danson Theatre inside the Canadian War Museum with New Country Rehab.
New Country Rehab
“I naturally assumed this was going to be an outdoor performance,” said frontman John Showman, pointing up at his straw fedora hat.
It might as well have been, with the theatre not having near enough floor space to have the audience up out of their seats dancing, though they dearly wanted to. Furious fiddle playing, guitar picking and upright bass plucking were delivered throughout a handful of originals as well as some nicely reimagined covers of Creedence Clearwater Revival’s “Effigy” and Bruce Springsteen’s “State Trooper.”
Since there wasn’t much room to move, clapping and stomping so hard you could feel the theatre floor shake ever so slightly had to do.
Violent Femmes
Next up were Violent Femmes, one of the more popular alternative rock acts of the 80’s who have been on-again-off-again in terms of reunions since their disbanding.
Playing their platinum-status debut album front to back for the first half of the set, they opened the show with their smash hit “Blister In the Sun.”
It was a bold move, as I (and probably a good portion of the crowd watching) didn’t know much of their other material too well at all.
Though they may be a fair bit older, guitarist-vocalist Gordon Gano and bassist Brian Ritchie kept the crowd dancing all the way through the debut record performance. The back half saw the inclusion of lesser-known material from their career, which turned out to be a bit hit and miss with the audience.
Only the first few rows seemed truly enraptured by it. Moments in the set had me asking myself how in the world this sound was popular a few decades back, but the likable Femmes stage presence made those instances watchable.
Joe Louis Walker
In what seems to be turning into a trend for myself at this year’s festival, another fantastic blues act was on the Blacksheep stage down behind the museum.
Joe Louis Walker is an electric blues guitarist with a storied history—having played with the likes of John Lee Hooker, John Mayall, Muddy Waters, and Jimi Hendrix to name a few.
With his latest record Hornet’s Nest in tow, Walker and his band delivered a well-executed set of originals in all sorts of blues styles from the upbeat to the slow and downtrodden. Even though a bit of rain began as the set was nearing a close, nobody let it bother them.
It marked another act at the festival supported once again by house horn trio the Texas Horns, who had many opportunities to put their soloing skills to the test. As one saxophone solo intensified, the sky began to rain harder in a cool moment of coincidence.
If there was ever a performance to silence the “where is the blues at Bluesfest” critics, this was it.
