Whew. In my last post I mentioned that I was looking at a pretty full weekend (in a good way) and last night certainly kicked it off with a bang. The mini Maritime tour involving Matt Mays & El Torpedo, accompanied by Gloryhound & the Skyhawks, came to an end last night at the Cunard Centre in Halifax. Just so we're all clear here, the Cunard Centre has a capacity of 4000 people for concerts (I just looked it up) so we are probably safe in saying it was one of the bigger shows Gloryhound has ever played.



The same folks I hung out with in Truro were coming back to town so I arranged to meet them for dinner before the show and drive down to the Cunard Centre together. This was actually a shameless ploy to introduce them to Turkish Delight, my favourite little eatery. They liked it as much as I hoped they would, so score!

We made our way to the Cunard Centre pretty early, which meant we got into the parking lot (also part of my plan). Then we hung around outside for quite a while waiting for the doors to open, and also noting that (which I did not mention last week) that Troy the tour manager appears to be working with El Torpedo again. Excellent.

I normally do not try to get anywhere near the front at the Cunard Centre, but I made an exception in this case. (Heh.) Even so I figured my pictures were not going to turn out--the flash and the shutter on my little camera just aren't up to distances in poor lighting. However, I gave it a whirl.

One reason I have never made an effort to get near the front at the Cunard Centre is the size of the venue. I always figure if things are going to get hairy, it's going to happen in a large venue. However I've always had good luck at Matt Mays shows, and that seemed to hold: my companions, who are high school teachers, promptly made friends with a small group of teenage boys standing near them and when my brother found me I was chatting with a group of young women standing behind me--one of whom turned out to be the sister of someone who was in residence at Acadia University with my brother. (Cue chorus of "It's A Small World After All.")

There were a couple of incidents: while Gloryhound were playing we had an occurrence of the typical young girls who think they should get to push to the front, even though there is no room. I have no idea why anyone would have wanted my spot, I was standing behind one of the high school boys and he had to be six-foot-three--I could see past one shoulder but there is no way the tiny girl pushing me could have seen anything but his shirt. Anyway, since I was being crowded toward another petite young woman I figured it was best to hold my ground, which I could because face it, I had about fifty pounds on her and I don't let horses push me around. The girl shoving me put on a snotty voice and said something about how she was pretty sure she was here first--which she can't have thought I would go for--and then the girl on her other side yelled something like, "Will you quit being such a stupid bitch!" (to me) "Not you! Her!"

Faced with a stubborn old lady on one side, and her own friend getting ready to pop her one on the other, the girl subsided. Funniest thing I have seen in a while.

The only other incidents were a shoving match behind me that was broken up by my brother and a friend of Gloryhound's, and one lone crowd surfer who found himself passed relentlessly forward and literally deposited in the arms of security. Which come to think of it was funnier than the incident with the girls.

And the show itself? Was great. I don't know how nervous Gloryhound was about playing such a large venue but they certainly didn't look intimidated. I'm beginning to think they may play particularly well when they're all geared up or something. Anyway, they sounded great, played with a lot of energy and confidence, and were really well received.

Set List

Standing Still

Flee the Scene

Free Of You

Mountain Man

See You Round

What's Left

Bright In the Dark

Long Arm

You Gotta Learn

Midnight Bird (featuring three guitars, which prompted my brother to remark on the "Freebird" moment.)

I was standing over on Jeremy's side of the stage, and he's animated anyway, but a bunch of the band's friends were standing over there as well and the friendly catcalls definitely seemed to keep his spirits up.

I tried to get pictures, but the results are not up to last week's standards. Last week, of course, was a smaller venue and I was practically onstage during the headliners. This time I was farther away and it was darker, but a few of them are not too bad.







After thanking Matt and El Torpedo yet again for having them, and the audience for being so receptive (and going over as well as they did had to feel good) Gloryhound left the stage and after a shorter break than one would expect, Matt Mays & El Torpedo came out. They looked as excited and geared up as the opening act had, roared through the first few songs and really took a little while to settle down enough for Matt to start talking. (Which reminds me of some of my posts about Mitzi when she hasn't been worked for a while and has to tear around on the longe line for a while before she's calm enough to concentrate. Truly, everything in life can be related to horse training. But I digress.)

I've mentioned that this band's audiences never seem to get unduly rowdy, and you know, that probably has a lot to do with the way they're spoken to from the stage. I've previously remarked that even when El Torpedo is sort of turning inward and playing to each other a little bit, they always seem to be aware of the audience as people, and that comes out in Matt's stage chatter, which is less "Make some noise, Halifax!" than "So are you having a good time? And the people at the back--are you still alive back there?" It's a small difference but it's a little like the way, in some places, "How are you?" is not a question, whereas in most parts of the Maritimes it still is.

It's not like he's trying to hold deep philosophical conversations, it's more like the little story about how he came to write "Spoonful of Sugar," of which I have heard several variations: at Symphony Nova Scotia he was sheepishly copping to being pretty hungover when he heard the news about Hurricane Juan, whereas last night in front of the all-ages crowd he talked more about being worried about his family back home. And not to read all that much into a thirty-second song introduction but there was that sort of human thing going on that you don't get if the only interaction from the stage is a command to "make some noise." And it's kind of fun to hear, instead, what Jay the guitar player thought of Matt's ponytail ("I put my hair in the ponytail while I was writing the set list earlier and I sort of forgot about it. I don't know what I think of it, but I know what Jay thinks. He was happy to tell me") and why Andy came onstage wearing a large hoop earring (at one point he was wearing two and "looked like Gloria Estefan," according to Matt.) Late in the set Matt wanted everyone to put their hands in the air during the introduction to one song--and requested it in more or less these words: "Can I ask you guys to do me a favour?"

All of a sudden it does not puzzle me that things so rarely get rough down in front of the stage.

Set List

When the Angels Make Contact

Blood On Blood (which they played last week and has a Springsteeny tone, at least the lyrics did)

Building A Boat

Travellin'

What Are We Gonna Do Come the Month of September

Move Your Mind

Spoonful Of Sugar

Where Am I Going (which hasn't been played in the last half-dozen shows I saw but appears to be back--yay!)

Broken Off the Back of the Winter (if that's really what it's called. I notice a few differences in the lyrics that make it sound a little less desperate than when it made its first few appearances in the set last year, which is a bit of a relief because while it's beautiful it used to be sort of hard to listen to)

850 Commando

Tall Trees

Instrumental that turned into

Lonely Highway Night

City Of Lakes (for the people from Dartmouth, although Matt was at pains to assure us that people from the rest of HRM should not feel excluded)

Cocaine Cowgirl

And after another fairly short break Matt came back out alone for the first song of the encore, which was "I'm On Fire" on guitar. (He also let us in on a story about how Jay had called him recently and when Matt picked up the phone Jay greeted him with the first line of the song. Which must have been hilarious.)

The rest of the band came back out, and then Matt thanked Gloryhound & the Skyhawks once again for opening (he'd already done so--you know how this earns bands manners points from me, well the reason I expect this kind of behaviour is, frankly, because I have seen El Torpedo do so on so many occasions.) Matt called Gloryhound back out with the comment "we just love them to death!" and they all played a big messy version of "On the Hood" that had everyone swapping off instruments and hugging each other and generally behaving like the last day of summer camp. And boy, do we need to do this again sometime.

The night ended with a roaring version of "Time Of Your Life" and then Christina Martin and, eventually, Adam came out and joined Matt on "Morning Sun," after which Matt said thank you to everyone he could think of and everyone said goodnight. I delivered my friends to their hotel and I'm sure they went to sleep as happy as I did.

(I do have pictures of the rest of the evening and some are not bad, you can have a look here.)

And yes, that was the beginning of my weekend. Can the rest possibly live up to it? Tune in Monday to find out.