On Sept. 26, the Mason Rack Band played a fabulous  show for a good sized crowd at the Slice. It is always an event and an entertaining time when this Australian guitar picker comes to play. This was the third time in about a year he has torn up the Slice and this time he had an enthusiastic crowd cheering him on.Local blues trio Fat Baby Jake were in fine form to open the show. Steve Keenan was on fire,  showing as many guitar faces as guitar licks. Darwin Romanchuk was solid behind the skins and David Popovitch held the groove down on bass.
But the Mason Rack band mesmerized the full-house right from the start as frontman Mason Rack started it off by playing some intense mid-Eastern flavoured slide guitar while tapping out a cool delay-laden percussion progression on his guitar’s body, which was enhanced by the creative use of chimes attached to his mic stand. Then he tore the blues apart on the guitar and moulded the music into his baby in between joking with the crowd. As always, his first set ending dual drum solo was a hit during “Who Do You Love” which took him into the crowd, drumming on tables, chairs and a beer keg as well as on the drums alongside Joel “Thunderfoot” Purkess. New bassist Marcus Engel, from Winnipeg, played in the pocket and kept up with Rack’s intense energy. His second set was more rock flavoured  and included my favourite Rack original “Seen Her B4.”