Former Watchmen and Thornley bassist Ken Tizzard ended February with a roar at the Slice, Feb. 29.
“I’ve driven 30 minutes from my home to play for a dozen people, it’s nice to come 2,000 km to do the same,” Tizzard deadpanned before ripping into a hot set of pedal steel powered country and rock music with just a touch of the blues.
You don’t often see a pedal steel guitar used as the primary instrument in a band, usually they are relegated to the background to provide a touch of hurting slide, but Tizzard brought it centre stage for most of his show.
Backed by his tight trio, the mohawked Tizzard played a lot of the songs from his 2009 CD ‘Between the Lines,’ but amped them up with his rough and raw pedal steel guitar playing.
The bassist and drummer were locked into the groove and let Tizzard go wild.
Slower songs from the CD received a strong shot of steel powered adrenaline including ‘Weight of the World,’ and ‘Someone to Stand Beside Me,’ and a sizzling version of ‘Get Over It.’
While the music was strongly in the country vein, there were plenty of pop and rock musical hooks to the songs, which were reminiscent of Canadian alt country rockers Jr. Gone Wild. Tizzard sounded similar to Jr. Gone Wild’s Mike McDonald. They brought together a lot of country influences like Fred Eaglesmith and Willie Nelson, whose song ‘On the Road Again,’ they covered.
They wound down their show with a capable cover of “Summer of ’69,” powered of course by pedal steel.
The Poor Young Things, who opened for the Trews, March 6, also opened for Tizzard, though I arrived at the tail end of their set.
