LSCO rocked the block for two days, wind and rain be damned, June 7 and 8 at the Civic Field downtown, outside the Lethbridge Senior’s Centre Organization. I only caught a handful of the acts. While Fast Times, who opened the country night for approximately 150 people on June 7 literally got blown off the stage by the wind and the rain, things had cleared up before Hurtin’ took the stage.
They played an excellent set of mainly originals and catchy modern country covers form folks like Clint Black and Hal Ketchum as well as one they dedicated to the memory or “Mr. No Show” Hank Snow.
The Pezderic family, Keenan Pezderic on drums, Shael Pezderic on guitar and vocals and their dad, Marlin on bass and vocals provided the core for the band as usual with Ryan Dyck adding steel guitar and Taylor Ackerman adding extra guitar and keyboards.
There was lots of twang and sighing steel guitar throughout the set which was full of catchy country hooks and melodies. They wound down their set with a hot, more southern rock flavoured version of Hal Ketchum’s “Past the Point of Rescue,” and played one of Hank Snow’s songs to end their set.
The Coal Creek Boys were in a rocking mood, starting their set with a couple of the more uptempo songs from their new CD Rose Town, Whiskey and Wine including a show and CD highlight “Carrie Nation” which they followed up with Mamma Please from their last CD “Hard At It in Old Town,” they continued on with a spooky number “Old Number 7” from the last CD as well.
It was all about metal and classic rock, June 8 as a long list of performers hit the stage under the sun.
I arrived in the middle of a solid set by a band I had never heard of called Steel Cut. They had a female vocalist who did justice to classic rock of the likes of Boston and Journey and even an excellent version of Bryan Adams’ “Run To You.”
Metal band Rex were next. They were impressive because they chose some really tough songs to play, opening with an excellent version of Rush’s “Limelight.” The lead singer had an impressive voice as usual, hit piercing high notes.
They crashed into a creditable version of Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song,” and came close to replicating Robert Plant’s patented shriek.
They played a whole lot more rock, then tackled Big Wreck’s “That Song.” before “slowing things down” with Pantera’s “Walk.”
I hung around for much of Billie’ Vegas‘s set featuring Shawna Romolliwa on vocals.”
She strutted all over the stage and belted out Green Day’s “Longview” and followed it up with some No Doubt to start their energetic set of classic rock. Someone called out a request for Motorhead, but Romolliwa laughed and said “How about some Journey instead.”
— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor