Rodney DeCroo plays great set of gritty alt country for intimate audience

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 A great candidate for best show of the year that nobody saw was the long awaited return of Vancouver based songwriter/author Rodney DeCroo, who played the Slice, May 5.

Rodney DeCroo at the Slice. Photo by Richard Amery
I was one of a handful of people who caught an energetic, and tortured set of dirty country and alternative rock, which mostly focused on DeCroo’s great new CD “ Old Tenement Man.”


DeCroo and his hot band of lead guitar Bryce Jardine, drummer Ed Goodine, bassist Ken Nakamiki and drummer Sean McPherson were pretty much playing the album track by track.


DeCroo strummed a battered acoustic  guitar and sang his powerfully tortured and plaintive lyrics about the downtrodden and forgotten, making the audience feel every little bit of pain of his characters. The band sounded like the bastard child of the Drive By Truckers, Steve Earle and Neil Young, especially because of Jardine’s lead guitar sound.


One of my favourites, “ Lou Reed On the Radio” was a highlight, as I expected. Jardine broke a  guitar string , which gave  DeCroo the opportunity to play a quick solo acoustic set including “Radio” from the new Cd while Jardine left the building to change his string.


A highlight of the first set was an older song “You Ain’t No-One” which he played again as an encore for the second set which ended around 1 a.m. as the audience had doubled to about 12 people.

He ended the first set on a slower, haunting note with “Ariel.”
I arrived for the end of set two, which  was  louder and more boisterous. “ Stupid Boy in a Stupid Town” was a highlight, and has people finally showed up. he brought back “Lou Reed on the Radio” and “You Ain‘t No One.”

— by Richard Amery, L.A. beat Editor
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Last Updated ( Wednesday, 17 May 2017 10:35 )