With a little help from his friends and Mike Spencer’s magic tea, the show went on for an ailing Wil Mimnaugh aka Wil, at the Geomatic Attic, Nov. 15.
The popular Vancouver Island based, Calgary born singer/ songwriter toughed it out for his opening slot opening for CR Avery despite barely having a voice, he made it through a solid 45 minute set of tracks from his latest CD as well as several crowd requests.
He made up for the lack of power in his pipes by pounding on his battered acoustic guitar.
He prefaced his set by saying “This is either going to be endearing or awful, you decide.”
But his self deprecating humour made it awfully endearing, especially when Mike Spencer’s magic throat healing tea kicked in.
“You are all wearing antler hats, ” Wil joked with the crowd.
But although his voice sounded a little worse for the wear, he managed to make the beautiful melodies of his music work for the audience.
I was looking forward to hearing him play with a drummer, but he had to cancel that part of the show due to his voice.
But, as always, he made it work on his own playing as couple requests including “Hey Now,” and “Mama.”
C.R.. Avery’s set was pretty inspirational, though had a few more F- bombs than I’m used to hearing in the Geomatic Attic.
The poet proved himself to be a man of many talents, alternating between a variety of poems, beat-boxing, harp solos, tender keyboard numbers and even an upbeat banjo number.
Avery, who joked he thought of changing his name to MC Muddy Waters, showed he has roots of the deepest blues. He began his set of “hobo-erotic” poetry with a catchy number called “The Wind is A Speed Reader,” which he punctuated by making a number of sound effects with his mouth including a delay effect, a doppler effect, and of course, a wind effect.
What was impressive when he combined his vocal effects with harp solos and an organ sound from his keytar all within the same song.
He performed a pretty impressive, epic poem about Pierre Elliott Trudeau standing up to the Americans.
He also joked about another song of his being used in a Pepsi commercial.
He painted vivid word pictures of drug addicts, politicians and the roots of music, all the while cracking smiles at the crowd.
At the end of the show he turned serious for a second, saying “I know you all paid a hefty cover charge for this show. I’ve got a DVD and a CD. So just take one. I’ll leave my hat there, just put whatever you want in it. I’d rather everyone take one rather than two people take one because they only have $20. So listen to it once and if you like it, great, if you don’t, give it to your enemy.”
