Locals Coffee House

Studio / Stage Door

Saturday, January 16th 7:30 pm

Well, the festive season has been and gone and life is returning to normal. Part of that return to normalcy is the regular schedule of Coffee House entertainments at the Studio / Stage Door in Cranbrook and the Home Grown Music Society in Kimberley. This past Saturday evening it was THE LOCALS COFFEE HOUSE at the Studio / Stage Door.

Yours truly, Rod Wilson, kicked off the evening with material that was little different. Included in the set was “The Cane Cutters Lament”, a song of fairly poor literary content but for the performer rings some nostalgic bells of his misspent youth in the sunny climes of Queensland. A place where the surf is magical, the sun always shines and where even the bananas bend to the right. Something a little closer to home was David Francey’s “Broken Glass” (the ultimate Valentines Day song), James Keelaghan’s “Red River Rising” and for a blast from the past that nobody remembers, Patrick Sky’s “Many a Mile”.

Next up was a new configuration of musicians that are regulars on the scene. The band “24 hours”, so named because the formation of the band occurred only twenty four before the show, included Joel Purdy (guitar & vocals), Sarah Marriott (guitar & vocals), Alex Marriott on bass and ‘Paris’ on Djembe. Their set of tunes included a mixture of original material and covers of other musician’s songs. “Old Shoe” was Sarah’s original contribution and “Please” is a well known song by Joel Purdy. Sarah’s performance of “Angel” was cover of a Sarah McLaughlin song and “Weighty Ghost” was Joel’s cover of a song by the band Winter Sleep.

The man who has a million songs under his belt, Dave Prinn, boosted the Canadian Content of the evening with James Keelaghan’s “Cold Missouri Waters”, an epic song of the Mann Gulch fire disaster of August 1949. He also performed the Tragically Hip’s “Ahead by a Century”.

Larry Mackenzie is back in Canada for the first winter in three years. His forte is original material but this time he bent the rules by performing “Blue Eyes Crying in the rain”, a song originally made famous by Roy Acuff and later by Willie Nelson.

Unfortunately, Valerie Hillstrom and Mike Turner, because of illness, had to cancel their scheduled performance. Val does some wonderful interpretations of Patsy Cline material so look forward to the next time she is on the roster.

The popular local band RedGirl (Anie & Mike Hepher, Steve Jones & Sven Hyde) rose to the occasion with their renditions of “A Long Way from Home” (by Tom Waitts), “Dear Chicago”, and “Come on Dusty Traveler”, “Lonesome” and “Good Man”. “Lonesome” was new piece for the band and to really challenge Steve Jones the bass player they decided to do the tune in C sharp. If you like life easy then you slap capo on the first fret of the guitar and play C major. Bass players can’t do that so Steve had to resort to actually playing it in C sharp or if you prefer D flat. (C sharp and D flat is the same key). The evening ended with Anie’s wonderful voice ringing in the audience’s ears. For the encore they selected Gillian Welch’s “Look at Miss Ohio”.

Oh me oh my oh, look at Miss Ohio
She’s a-running around with her rag-top down
She says I wanna do right but not right now

If you want more of the same remember the HOME GROWN MUSIC SOCIETY COFFEE HOUSE in Kimberley at Centre 64. Their next show, including RedGirl and Dave Prinn, will be next Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 7:30 pm.