City and Colour @ Massey Hall

May 27th, 2009

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City and Colour, aka Mr. Dallas Green, Himself Himself, has stormed the walls with his guitar and taken over Massey Hall this week, and we were there on Night One (and had the best seats in the balcony, heh heh heh) to bring you some memories and blurry photos (camera can only zoom so far, aaagh) from the event!

Dallas has three different support acts coming in for his three Massey Hall shows, and Monday night’s guests were Attack in Black, who sorta… kinda awkwardly… got the ball rolling for the night. Not that these dudes aren’t competent musicians, and their whole set, stuff from their album Marriage, sounded pretty tight, so no complaints there. They even had Julie Doiron, Tuesday night’s support, come on-stage to sing with them.

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On the downside, often bands who are used to playing small clubs with small stages don’t know what to do with themselves on a big stage like the one in Massey Hall, and Attack in Black seemed to have been hit with this affliction. The set ended on a weird note too: the band was about to play another song and suddenly it was all: “Wait! We’re out of time! Thank you! Good night!”. So maybe they need a bit of large-venue practice, but otherwise it was all good.

Everyone pretty much assumed that Dallas Green was going to hit the stage straight after, so we were all surprised when after a short intermission, this random dude (who turned out to be one of DG’s roadies) came onstage without a word, sat down with an acoustic guitar, and started plunking out Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody. He did all the crazy guitar solo parts and twiddly bits, but left the singing to the audience, which they did while whispering “Dude, who IS this guy?”.

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Dallas and his band (comprised of Dylan Green and Scott Remilla from Raising the Fawn, and Attack in Black’s own Dan Romano) took the stage after that with little more ado. They harmonized their way through tracks from both of Green’s albums, Sometimes and Bring Me Your Love, bringing an interesting rock or country sound to tracks that usually stand as solo acoustic numbers. Into that mix was thrown covers of Low’s “Murderer”, and Neil Young’s “Cowgirl in the Sand”, as well as one new song. That’s when things got interesting.

Up until that point, Green had been mostly quiet. Introducing the songs, saying hi to the audience, no huge rants or anything, and deliberately ignoring the girls in the back screaming about how they wanted his babies. But he introduced his new song as saying it had no name, and when he was done one vocal person in the front row starting giving name suggestions. “Sunshower?” Green responded. “I’m not gonna call it that, but thanks for the suggestion”.

After that Green became a lot more talkative. Before launching into “Constant Knot”, Dallas announced that it was time for him and the audience “to become a team” and help him sing the chorus. “Team Dallas!” someone called from the gallery. Without missing a beat, Green replied “No, Team Us”, and added “If you don’t do it, you’re a party pooper”.

After the 13-song set, Green returned to the stage alone and opened the all-too-brief encore with an impressive a capella cover of blues legend Son House’s “Grinnin’”, before playing “Body in a Box”. Halfway through encore-closer “I’m Coming Home”, the band returned to the stage to help Dallas rock his way out of the song. I have a pretty strong feeling that if Green hadn’t specifically said “this is really our last song” before that track, people would STILL be sitting on the edge of their seats.

City and Colour will be at Massey Hall again tonight with support from Kathleen Edwards. You won’t be able to catch them anywhere else for a while, since Dallas is going off to get some work done with Alexisonfire. So get it while it’s hot, kids!

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Posted on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009 at 2:59 pm by Jessica M and is filed under Blog, Concert Reviews.

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