A couple of the long weekend shows I wanted to see were unfortunately canceled — David Lindley at the Tongue N Groove, Friday due to border troubles and SNFU at Finnegan’s July 31 due to lead singer Chi Pig catching pneumonia.
But a lot of people were out regardless.
The Slice had a good sized crowd, July 29, to see Vancouver based roots/ rock act Spoon River. They introduced the audience to a lot of new music, which built on the more ’70s style roots rock of their older material , but had a more straight ahead country feel to it all as well.
They sounded like the Band mixed with the Drive by Truckers especially on catchy newer songs like “Jupiter.”
“Qu
een of July,” dedicated to a good friend and “super-host” of theirs in Toronto was another catchy number.
So there was plenty of steel guitar and Telecaster twang matched with Tavis Triance’s distinctive vocals. There was plenty of applause throughout their all too brief set, but which included a solid mix of newer and older songs.
The Shaela Miller Threesome including Tyler Bird on drums, Paul Holden on bass and Taylor Ackerman on guitar and steel guitar played the rest of the night with a tight set of crowd favourites including mine “Manchester,” as well as “Vicious Bitches,” and Patsy Cline’s “Turn the Cards Slowly.”
