I haven’t been to the newly renovated Enmax Centre, but, thanks to Carolyn Dawn Johnson, was pleased to check it out for the first time when Johnny Reid brought his hot Fire It Up, Let Love Live Again Tour to the Enmax Centre, April 21.
The adorable Grande Prairie born, Nashville based Carolyn Dawn Johnson, dressed simply in a black suit, with her curly blond hair flowing down around her shoulders, opened up with a solid half hour set of solo acoustic music, which mostly focused on her big radio hits. She began on her own with a heartfelt rendition of Georgia, which she sang over the murmuring crowd, but she got them cheering by dropping Lethbridge into the last verse of her song.
“Complicated ” was up next during which she showed off her fabulous pipes.
Kaylan Garner joined her on stage to add extra dobro, acoustic guitar and background vocals.
The crowd continued to chatter through hits from her last CD “Love Rules,” and finally “reached” the audience with a newer song “Reach You,” which she said she wrote about a friend of hers “who can’t seem to get off of rock bottom.”
She told a story about broken hearts and sung one of her first big hits “Die of a Broken Heart.”
But the sold out Enmax Centre was ready to party with Scottish transplanted Torontonian Johnny Reid and he was happy to supply the soundtrack.
While he gets played a lot on Top 40 country radio, in reality, his music is pretty far removed from what most people would consider country music. He is more of an R and B or pop singer, especially when backed by a massive band including a four-piece horn section, a percussionist/guitarist/ back up singer, a keyboardist, a mandolinist/ violinist and two guitarist plus two fetching back up singers.
He had a huge stage set up with three massive video screens behind it displaying a variety of images of the world, fire and other images related to the songs being played at the time. In addition there were two screens along the side showing various shots of the band and Johnny Reid himself.
Reid strutted on stage dressed in tight, bright red pants and white shirt as his band blasted into “Let’s Have A Party,” and the audience cheered.
It was a totally family friendly party with an audience ranging from newborn babies to seniors and numerous children in the audience, some wearing big earphones like you’d wear while driving an old tractor, to protect their hearing from the wall of sound.
They were there to hear the hits and Johnny Reid was happy to deliver, beginning the show with “Let’s Have a Party,” and barely pausing for a breath for “You Give My Heart a Home.”
He prefaced “Hands of a Working Man” by talking about moving to Canada in 1988 with his family and following his dad on his job as diesel mechanic.
His back up singers took the lead to lead the crowd through a rousing rendition of on “Today I’m Going to Try To Change the World,” as the screens showed various images of the earth.
He spoke to the crowd about booking this tour and asking management why “secondary markets” like Victoria, Saskatoon, Fort MacMurray, Lethbridge and Kelowna weren’t on the original tour, noting his management didn’t think he”d sell any tickets in those places, then thanked the audience for proving his management wrong. He asked the children in the audience to cover their ears for a moment, then hit the crowd’s resonant frequency by saying “That was bullshit,” as he said he got the secondary markets added.
He talked about first meeting Carolyn Dawn Johnson and jumping in an old Ford F-150 with his brother and a couple other band members and driving straight from Toronto to Edmonton to open for her a few years ago then welcomed her back to the stage for one of the show’s highlights, their new duet “Baby You Know it,” which reflected Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton’s duet “Islands in the Stream” as they held hands and strode all over the stage together.
A huge highlight for most of the audience was asking the audience if anybody brought their dancing shoes and getting the camera to show one ladies’ dancing shoes, which lead him into his song “Dancing Shoes,” during which he leaped off the stage and wandered through the audience singing and dancing with seniors and children alike, not only on the floor, but through most of the other upper rows.
After that, he launched into his latest hit “Fire it Up,” which featured flames on the screens behind them as well as pillars of flames shooting up on both sides of the stage.
After that it was time for the ballads. Reid disappeared from the stage as his lead guitarist took centre stage for a soulful solo, giving Reid time to reappear on a smaller stage set in the middle of the crowd, upon which he crooned his big ballads “A Woman Like You,” and “Dance With Me,” which was when I had to leave as I loathe ballads in general.
Reid has a very powerful and melodic voice and showed it. He was totally at home on stage, bounding from one end of it to the other like a red pant clad puppy.
