It is great to have Taylor Ackerman back in town and even better to see him returning to his blues rock roots with his band Global Acid Rest, featuring his dad Pat Ackerman on bass and drummer Dustin Gergel.

 I caught their second set at the Owl Acoustic Lounge, Saturday, Dec. 1.

 They had a decent crowd as Ackerman was just hitting his stride with an excellent cover of Blackberry Smokes’“Ain’t Much Left of Me.”
He stayed true to his blues rock muse. So he supplied plenty of big riffs, wah wah pedal soaked guitar solos and  a voice which reminded me of Kenny Wayne Shepherd in a few places.

 He switched guitars to play a couple  slide  powered numbers and dug deep  for his covers including a superb, slide powered cover of the Perpetrators’ “I Must Be Crazy.”

 He went back in time for a Captain Beefheart cover “Twist Ah Luck.”
 They also played some Lynyrd Skynyrd but wound up their second set with an original  “Who I Am.” and another song about playing with  a lot of different bands as Taylor Ackerman does do.

The Slice featured a big ambient rock show, Saturday, Dec. 1 for a sparse audience. While I missed local alternative rock band MTBC and Toronto‘s “Ace of Wands,” I was just in time for Edmonton indie rock, dream pop band The Eclipse.

Lead singer/guitarist Brandi Bailey lead the band through a solid set of jangly, ambient indie rock music. There were plenty of pretty guitar playing and keyboards backed by a solid groove.

Bailey reminded me of fellow Edmontonian Colleen Brown and her band was reminiscent of Brown’s band Major Love mixed with Jesse and the Dandelions.

Their set went by rather quickly.

They ended by teasing the crowd with a few bars of the Beatles and an Alvvays cover to end their set.

Local bluesman Paul Kype looks back on his influences for his new CD  “Blues For Rosie,” but it was more an excuse for him to record with his good friend Jerry Adolphe, who is best known as the drummer for Canadian classic rock icons Chilliwack.

“Rosie is my old guitar’s name which hasn’t left the house for 15 years, which I bought in 1992,” Kype said.

“So I just wanted to write some songs with it. But it really was an excuse to  work with Jerry Adolphe. He plays in my band in Vancouver. He’s been a really good friend for a long time. So we started thinking about the music that influenced us like blues music but also classic rock music like Lynyrd Skynyrd,” he said, adding he got Rosie, his beloved Stratocaster in 1992.

“It’s one of the first Stevie Ray Vaughan signature model, number 1002. And I formed Texas Flood in 1993 soon after that,” he said, adding he met Adolphe around the same time through the Yale Hotel jam in Vancouver.
“I introduced myself to him and he said to contact him if I had a project in mind to work with him on so we started a Stevie Ray Vaughan tribute band, (Texas Flood). Though we stopped doing that in 1998,” he said.

“Whenever I go to the coast, I play with him.”
 They recorded the CD over the winters of 2017 and 2018.

 Kype played bass and guitar on the CD while Adolphe added drums. It also features overdubbed keyboards from TJ Waltho and Michael Ayotte.

There are a couple  of fun shows happening this week including a cornucopia of Christmas concerts.
Wednesday night, Dec. 12 features a whole lot of rockabilly for the second anniversary of the Windy City Opry featuring a couple of Calgary’s best rockabilly bands. Both Eve Hell and the Razors and Peter and the Wolves return to Lethbridge for the show at the Slice, which begins at 8 p.m. sharp. There is a $10 cover charge.

Get ready to laugh on Friday, Dec. 14  and have a few “Puppers” with Letterkenny Live.
K Trevor  “Squirrelly Dan” Wilson and the coach Mark Forward will be performing stand up sets before joining Letterkenny creator Jared “Wayne” Kesso and Nathan “Daryl” Dales to perform some beloved bits from the cult favourite Crave TV series and introduce some new bits. The laughs begins at 8 p.m.  Tickets are $35, $49.50 or $75.

And then there are the Christmas shows. The Lethbridge Shakespeare Performance society presents their beloved Christmas fundraiser of Shakespeare meets Dickens at Casa,Friday, Dec. 14 from 7-10 p.m. There will be a reader’s theatre performance of  A Christmas carol, Christmas carols and food from Shakespearian and Victorian times.
Tickets cost $20.

Local surf rock band Mosrite Holiday are doing double holiday duty on Friday, Dec. 14. First they will be opening a live feature of A Charlie Brown Christmas at the Owl Acoustic Lounge. Keyboardist TJ Waltho with be performing the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas with drummer Brad Brouwer and bassist Paul Holden as the show is shown in the background.

 Right after their set, Mosrite Holiday rush over to the Slice for CKXU’s Holiday extravaganza. The University of Lethbridge based community radio station have a lot to celebrate this year. In addition to celebrating the Christmas season, their long awaited 2,900 watt transmitter went live this week, allowing people to listen to 88.3 from Claresholm to Fort Macleod to Taber. The new transmitter is the product of the previous three years’ Fundrive fundraising weeks and matching government grants and a lot of hard work on the part of CKXU’s volunteers and staff.
 Several local bands play the CKXU extravaganza along with Mosrite Holiday including local stoner rock band Rainbow Patrol, synth pop musician Tyler Vandendool and alternative rock trio MomBod. Admission is $10 in advance, $15 at the door. The bands begin at 9 p.m.