The Friday Morning "Nobody-Asked-Me-To-But-Here-I-Go-Anyway Concert Review" - Johnny Reid

(or, Why I Will Never be A Professional Concert Reviewer...)

(Sorry, no picture this time. You can see loads at www.johnnyreid.com)

So, I've blogged before about how big a fan I am of this Canadian country artist. I even worked a paragraph about him into my weekly humour column, earlier this month. He's like an amalgamation of classic Rod Stewart, with a touch of John Mellencamp, but original as all get up and go.

Actually, we had some classic old Little Feat on the cd player for the drive home, and he's got touches of that too.

Well, Mrs. That Dan Guy & I finally caught him live last night, and he exceeded every expectation we brought to the table (the bouncer confiscated a lot of them at the door anyway...).

We had a chance to catch him at a great little venue, The Deerfoot Inn & Casino, so it was an up-close, personal affair. Mr. Reid had a great warm-up act, and by the time he hit the stage, there was no lookin' back. Lots of new stuff, loads of stuff from last year's album (one of my personal favorites), delivered relentlessly.

For a country artist, he's got a lot of soul, R & B flavouring. As a performer, he even got a couple of old farts jumpin' and clappin'. Well, one at least. I basically nodded my head to the beat frequently...

And for someone that's about as Scottish as you can get, he delivers a serious rockin' country show. His band got a chance to showcase as well. The drummer got to play a lengthy solo, which was reminiscent of the very first big rock group I ever saw in concert - April Wine, who by the way is playing the same room tonight...

Mr. Reid is also not a bad looker, for the ladies out there. Trim, fit, and well-groomed, when he tossed a tie out into the audience, he got a rather substantial brassiere back in return. He's like a modern day Tom Jones, which is also a little reminiscent, as he performed a killer version of the old Jones country hit "Darlin'".

Mostly it was his original stuff, delivered in spades live - especially an extended version of "Missing An Angel", that almost entered gospel territory. Astounding...

Kind-of almost took the sting out of the Flames getting spanked by Detroit in Game One...

Chow for now!!

PS - For the life of me, I will never understand why the spaces in my drafts disappear here when I post these lengthy blatherings. My apologies for the dense copy today...