A capacity, quiescent crowd sat rapt in concentration, hanging on every word of three of Southern Alberta’s best songwriters during the final show of the Highway 3 Roots Revue tour, Dec. 19 at the Slice.
John Wort Hannam, Dave McCann and Leeroy Stagger wound up this edition of their annual December tour together with a fairly laid back couple sets of songs from each of their careers to date, plus several new songs.
The show actually started just after 8 p.m., so I missed much of the first set, but was impressed as always nonetheless.
The three told stories and took turns playing their songs and helped out on each other’s.
John Wort Hannam sang a song about Christmas in prison as Dave McCann added a tuneful harp solo. mcCann, then played his winter song about some people back in Peterborough who stripped down and went running through the snow into a set of police car headlights. Leeroy Stagger followed that up by singing one of my favourites from “Everything is Real,” about a biker named ‘Stormy,’ while Hannam tapped out a rhythm. Stagger returned the favour by adding a harp solo during Hannam’s “Church of the Long Grass.”
McCann then played his song about being on the road in East St. Louis. And Stagger ended the set with a Steve Earle influenced crowd favourite “Where I Live.”
John Wort Hann
am started the second set with “10,000,” while Stagger’s second set contributions focused on several new tracks from his new CD “Little Victories,” but also added a crowd favourites like ‘Snowing in Nashville ” and “ Hell of A Life.”
I didn’t recognize some of McCann’s contributions, though he added an outstanding version of “Standing In The River.”
They were called back for an encore, which John Wort Hannam was glad to kick off with a request from the crowd for “Against The Grain.”
