Classic rockers never die, they only get better with age. At least that is the case of Nazareth, who played an almost sold out Average Joes, July 19.

 While some classic rock bands just focus on playing their hits, Nazareth (who have plenty of hits including ‘This Flight Tonight,” “Razamanaz,” “Love Hurts,” and “Hair of the Dog,”) made the audience wait for them.

 They also have a new CD, “Big Dogz,” and another one which came out a few years ago called “The Newz.”

 They began their set after a taped bagpipe intro, with several heavy songs including obscurities like “Silver Dollar Forger.”

 Then lead singer Dan McCafferty, who grinned his way through the whole set, introduced “Sunshine,”  by observing “apparently this song is played at Canadian weddings.” The first big hit came later with “Turn on Your Receiver.” He followed that by conducting the audience through the chorus  of “Broken Down Angel.”

Throughout, I was very impressed with how well he can still hit those high notes.

He then spoke about the new CD, saying “Just to let you know what we‘re doing up here, we’re going to play a few songs from it.” He growled out  “Big Dog’s Going to Howl, ” then played an upbeat mid-tempo rocker called “Radio,” and followed it by a  gospel tinged ballad “When Jesus Comes To Save the World Again.”

Then they got back to the rock with “Whiskey Drinking Woman.” Throughout there were plenty of big riffs and volume, guitar solos and everyhthing else. They called it a night with a bagpipe talk box powered version of “Hair Of The Dog,” which had the enthusiastic crowd shouting out the chorus, then calling for an encore
They returned for a quick set of “oldies but goodies,” which included “Razamanaz,” “Love Hurts,” and finally, their big hit “ This Flight Tonight.”
Local rock band Gravity Crash went acoustic to open the show and went over really well as their big guitar riffs translated well to the acoustic guitar and bass. The drummer used an array of percussion instruments to keep the beat going and lead singer Rob Morrison sounded great though they are much better plugged in.