Edmonton’s Colleen Brown Band and Jeff Stuart and the Hearts returned to the Slice, Dec. 2 for a “45 minute soundcheck.”
The show started late with both bands doing their actual sound checks around 10:30 p.m.. as Jeff Stuart and the Hearts played a couple bars of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.”
But once they finally got things set up, Jeff Stuart and the Hearts, all dressed in red shirts and black ties blended a mash of fiddle, steel guitar, guitar, bass, several keyboards and drums.
They played a mostly upbeat set of entertaining music which had much of the crowd on the dance floor, even to songs which Stuart pointed out weren’t danceable songs, then played a couple older ones which were danceable.
They started the show slowly with a song then picked up the tempo on “All Right I Guess,” from their previous record. They kept the energy up added some tasteful fiddle solos as well as vocal harmonies.
The Colleen Brown band was fantastic. She started playing piano while singing beautiful melodies which were a combination of Carly Simon disco era pop, a touch of Blondie and more modern performers like Hannah Georgas.
She began her show slowly then picked up the pace on the catchy number “Boyfriend.”
She joked she was going to play a set of “ sweet disco ballads.”
Luckily she didn’t do that, but what she did do was play a set of catchy pop music , mostly concerning a break-up, but also rocked it out a little when she donned a guitar for one of my favourites “Fight, Fight, Fight,” which she joked was about hockey.
She did show some disco leanings during an exceptional version of “Good Girls.”
Her set included most of her brand new CD “Dirt.”
There were several highlights other than “Fight, Fight, Fight” including “7 Hours and 15 Days” and “Good Girls.”
She sang beautifully catchy melodies, letting the listener wrap their fist around each big beautiful note.
She wound down her set around 1 a.m. with a beautiful song called “Don’t You Forget About Me” (not the Simple Minds ’80s hit) with just her solo and playing piano.
She ended her set with a song inspired by a close brush with death in Lethbridge involving the Tongue N’ Groove and tequila.
