And that, my friends, is pure crazytalk. The lovely Monsieur Beaudry is laying down a very, very compelling case. But this is THE HONOR OF THE DOYLE at stake here. So I put out a call on Twitter and Facebook and Google Plus for people to hit me with their favorite GBS vids on YouTube–and I now repeat that call here! Link me up with your favorite Great Big Sea vids, people! Bonus points if they’re from shows I actually attended!

Remembering that angelina_zooma had pointed me at a vid of hers I’d never looked at, I finally looked at that tonight. And I gotta tell you, you have never heard “Cod Liver Oil” until you have heard it performed by Murray Foster. Behold!

And for the record, yes, C minor IS the key of someone who’s been drinking until five-thirty. ;>

That said, Alan was awfully damned pretty, in a rugged and manly flannel-wearing sort of way. As previously mentioned, I know, but it bears repeating. Along with the one good photo we got of him!

Yankee Sailor

Yeah, I know that’s a first set photo. I don’t care. ;) It gets me nicely back into the mood for describing the second set of the evening!

• Love Me Tonight
• Long Life (Where Did You Go)
• Ferryland Sealer
• England
• When I Am King
• Gallows Pole
• Scolding Wife
• Improv on “No Woman No Cry” / “The First Cut is the Deepest”
• Hit the Ground and Run
• Sea of No Cares
• Helmethead
• Consequence Free
• Mari-Mac
• Encore #1: End of the World / Excursion Around the Bay / Fortune Set
• Encore #2: Something Beautiful / “Oh Seattle” improv / Old Black Rum

I think at this point “Love Me Tonight” is possibly my favorite song off of Fortune’s Favour–mostly because while I do like several of the other songs on that album, this is for me the most singable. And it still presents very well in concert, and very strongly as a set opener. Which probably contributed to Alan’s high spirits afterwards as he yelled, “Make some noise for the opening act! They were pretty awesome!” Hee hee hee.

Following up the first track of that album, they did the first track off the new album: “Long Life (Where Did You Go)”. This is not my favorite of Safe Upon the Shore–that honor goes to the title track–but I’m very fond of this one, and again, it presents very well in concert.

Next up: “Ferryland Sealer”. Or, as we like to call it at the Murkworks, “The Whack the Baby Seals On the Head Song”! (We’re aware this isn’t terribly politically correct in the Pacific Northwest, yes. But what can we say? The song’s so damned CATCHY.)

In a distinct change of pace, “England” came next, and that’s always a lovely thing to hear done live. This time was no exception, and Bob was splendid on the whistle solo.

Yet another change of pace (the B’ys had quite the bouncing back and forth of pace going on during this stretch of the show, I’m tellin’ ya) brought us “When I Am King”, Alan on the Les Paul, and proclaiming to us all “I feel like a ROCK STAR!” He demonstrated this hamming it up on the solo, too.

Séan tore through “Gallows Pole” like a storm tears through the Midwest, of which I now must note that I forgot to tell mamishka that the reason his version sounds all Led-Zeppelin-y is that, indeed, it’s Led Zeppelin’s arrangement. Since she actually mentioned it to me during the show, heh. I’m pretty sure I remarked on this in a previous show writeup, but I’ll go ahead and say it again here for anyone who might find this a point of interest.

As always, it was a treat to have “Scolding Wife” on the set list, and this time around, in Séan’s verse, he was caught by the accordion. ;)

The banjo came out again at this point, making arguably the most times I’ve ever seen Alan Doyle wielding a banjo in a single concert. (I feel it therefore my personal responsibility to note that this has made the banjo Infinitely Cooler in my estimation, and shall brook NO FURTHER CRITICISM of the banjo in my presence. If The Doyle plays it, it’s appropriately Awesome. There. I’ve said it!) Not that we actually went directly into a song involving that banjo, though–because the B’ys proceeded to elaborate upon the theme of “questionable marriages”, and did an extended improv upon what I believe was the song “No Woman No Cry”, by Bob Marley. Which is nicely in keeping with previous reggae-flavored improvs they’ve done before, and after which Séan innocently inquired, “You were saying, Alan?” That, of course, led into more improv, on “The First Cut is the Deepest”.

All of which was delightfully giggleworthy, and a fine example of why it’s really best to get the full Great Big Sea experience at a live show.

Eventually they did actually get around to another song–which was, unsurprisingly (given the banjo and all), “Hit the Ground and Run”. Which, after all, tied much better in with the whole theme of questionable marriages. Also: mad props to Bob for the harmonica solo!

After that Alan asserted that “I think it’s going very well” (he says that a lot, but happily, he’s generally always right), and cracked jokes about Great Big Sea playing the Tractor Tavern in 1926. (If they played the Tractor, it was well before when I joined in on the fandom, but I’d be interested in knowing how far back that might actually have been!) They did also do a lovely callout back to a venue they’ve played that I do have a connection to, i.e., Chateau Ste. Michelle.

We got the slow version of “Sea of No Cares”–again, always nice, and I think this has actually surpassed the studio version for me as my preferred version.

Then, more banter. Cracks about visiting Séan, as are customary, although this time Séan warned us it would be BYOB, Bring Your Own Beagle. (Which should, of course, make all of us who’ve been following the posts on greatbigsea.com and greatbigsean.com give it up for Tosh!) And some gentleman in the audience yelled out something I didn’t make out, but it made Alan promptly pipe up, “That lady has the deepest voice in the room!” Cracks were made as well about “the leprechauns” being out.

And, furthermore, Alan pointed out that we’d gotten too deep into the set list without a song from BOB. Which, of course, led us into “Helmethead”.

According to my hastily scribbled notes (and by this point in the show my handwriting was getting more and more randomly sized on the page), after that was when Alan actually kissed a girl’s hand, or so it looked like from where I was back on row M! Aww. (heart heart heart)

Then, finally, the home stretch: “Consequence Free” and “Mari-Mac”. And. Oh. My. God. This was hands down the fastest I’ve ever heard them roar out “Mari-Mac” that I can ever remember, and I say this as a veteran of ten years of Great Big Sea concerts (minus the Great Big Famine of 2005). I was whomperjawed. And grinning like crazy, since I mean damn, it’s great to know that even after ten years of concerts, my B’ys can still blow me away like that.

And now, encores!

Encore #1 gave us “End of the World”, with a surprise giggle of an “Ode to Joy” solo in the middle; “Excursion Around the Bay”, with suspicious goings-on involving Murray, Kris, and the buttons of Murray’s shirt; and, of course, the “last chance to dance”, the Fortune Set.

Encore #2 started off with “Something Beautiful”, which is very worth mentioning here because earlier that day I’d seen Sara ask Alan on Twitter if they could do that song that night. Which means he must have seen the tweet, and, well, awww.

And, last but not least, after an extended “Oh Seattle” improv in which our fair city is described as “not as rainy as they think” and the obligatory band intro (with Murray called out as being “on the sexy bass”, we finished off the evening with “Old Black Rum”.

On the way out a gentleman in the row ahead of us turned to me and said “Are you the famous Anna the Piper?” To which I blinked and went, “Uh, yeah, wait, I’m ‘famous’?” He said his wife Lisa had read my show posts before on the OKP, and I mention this now in case Lisa finds this post. Because apparently I have a rep I need to live up to, now!

I must finish off with a callout for all the folks who maellenkleth and I hung out with, however briefly, at Kells after the show. We really, REALLY wanted to hang out longer than we did, but the noise level in the place was just too much. And not at all the way I wanted to end the evening anyway, after an earful of Great Big Sea. We’ll try again next time, oh my yes. Love y’all and see you at the next show!

mamishka

Now, I’ll admit up front I was vaguely disgruntled by the fact that we were all the way back on row M, even after I’d gotten those tickets via the greatbigsea.com presale. But that said? I don’t really have much room to bitch. Any seat on the main floor of the Moore is pretty fine, actually. And even from twelve rows back, the view of the stage is lovely as long as you don’t have somebody significantly taller than you are standing in front of you.

Still, though, MAN, I was jealous to discover solcita had a seat on the front row. *^_^*;; (And I’m really going to have to get a volunteer to snag tickets for me on the next presale–this is what I get for my team holding daily standups at 10am, right when the presales usually start! As I do not work in St. John’s, I’m pretty sure ‘can we hold up for five minutes? I MUST BUY GREAT BIG SEA TICKETS NOW’ is not a sufficient excuse for holding up a meeting.)

As expected, there was a swag table just outside the main theater, manned by GBS swag regular Glenn, known by all us fans to be one of Séan McCann’s brothers. Meems and I went out for the obligatory Inspecting of the Swag before the show started, and while the prices were a bit steep for Meems’ preference, I went ahead and snagged me a black-and-white baseball tee that said “GREAT BIG SEA St. John’s Newfoundland” on it, with a line drawing of a cityscape. (You would think I have enough Great Big Sea shirts by now. You would, however, be mistaken. I can never have too many Pike Place Market berries, Russell Crowe movies, books of any sort, or Great Big Sea shirts!) Mr. McCann was doing brisk business, and I had to wait a bit; I did, however, get back inside in plenty of time.

Much to my satisfaction, there was no opening act whatsoever, and we cut right to the chase when it was time for the show to begin!

Those of you who have read these show posts of mine know I often like to elaborate a bit on what the B’ys are wearing. I’ve come to appreciate though that for questions such as these, a picture is worth a thousand words. (And believe me, I can come up with a lot of words.) Even a picture where The Foster is unfortunately kind of blurry!

Full Band With Blurry Murray

(Note The Doyle rocking that plaid flannel shirt, though. I really rather liked that. It made him look rugged and manly-like and stuff.)

That previous pic was courtesy of maellenkleth and her actual digital camera. Meems did a valiant job trying to get decent pics on my phone’s camera, but as I’ve lamented on previous show posts, my iPhone, delightful though it is, cannot cope with an indoor concert’s lighting. (I quite liked the God of Music and Light pic it managed to create for me, nonetheless!)

Really, though, let’s get to the important stuff. I.e., the SONGS. Here’s Set One!

• Ordinary Day
• The Night Pat Murphy Died
• Nothing But a Song
• When I’m Up
• Lukey
• Safe Upon the Shore
• A Boat Like Gideon Brown
• Good People
• River Driver
• Penelope
• Dear Hometown
• Yankee Sailor
• Singalong: I Fought the Law/If I Had a Million Dollars/Jack and Diane/Hit Me With Your Best Shot/With or Without You
• Run Run Away

Since two out of the three existing live GBS CDs start off with “Donkey Riding”, to this day it sounds wrong to me to have a show start off with anything else. But if a show has to start off with anything else, “Ordinary Day” is a damn strong opening number. I’m very used to having it be one of the big finishing numbers just before the encores, but it works well as a show opener, too. It certainly got me into the mood!

Séan as per his long and honorable tradition messed with the lyrics of “Paddy Murphy” in all the appropriate places. On the opening verse it was “Alan Doyle got loaded drunk and he ain’t been sober yet”, and “Bob Hallett was feeling gay, but that’s okay, we’re Canadian”. And in the last verse, “Seattle girls got loaded drunk”, for the obligatory WOO! from all of us Seattle girls in the seats.

Right after that song was when Alan exulted that it was hours away from St. Patrick’s Day, and that Great Big Sea were entering their 19th year–and that he feels that the first half of their career has gone very well so far. Not terribly surprisingly, we were all in agreement with him!

“Nothing But a Song” got the audience going nicely nuts with the hard PUNCH of the lights accenting the bridge. That trick worked beautifully the first time I saw it and it still works very, very well for me. (Even if at this point that song has odd connotations for me what with last summer’s contest!)

Alan started off “When I’m Up” with a new way to make us giggle: singing the line “I’m the instrument of joy”, then abruptly pausing and adding, “I know! It only occurred to me recently.” Bwahaha. And as is his wont during the bridge, he encouraged us to give it up for Bob Hallett!

More exultation, Alan-style, after that: “It’s St. Pat’s week, for God’s sake! Can you feel the love in the room? Let’s get this party started!” And from there, we went into an exultant song indeed: “Lukey”. A nicely done version as well, and it’s really, really nice to see both Murray and Kris getting their own little bits of solos in this song now. I still miss when Darrell used to get his bass solos here, and now that Kris and Murray get to have solos, it helps me feel like they’ve been truly and properly integrated into the band. (Why yes, Alan, I’m still feeling the love in the room, five days after the fact!)

After “Lukey”, Alan went on to tell us about how it was really a big week–not only St. Paddy’s week, but GBS’ anniversary as well, really a sort of “perfect storm” of awesome. This led well into the expected plug of the current record, and that led most excellently into “Safe Upon the Shore”.

O. M. G., Séan was in beautiful voice on this song, enough to distract me from the “oh okay FINE” reaction I had when most of the audience actually sat down. Which, I note, I promptly forgot all about as soon as they unleashed the chorus. We are talking steamroller of harmony here, people. We are talking five great vocal tastes that go great together. We are talking off the scale on my very own personal swoonometer. In short, yum.

Ahem. *fans self* Where was I? Oh yes!

After a stellar performance like that, it was entirely natural for Alan to remark on how “Séan always does well in Seattle”, and for Séan to reply that “it’s the coffee!”. Cue Alan burbling at top speed, “WhatcoffeeIdon’tknowwhatyou’retalkingabout!” (Paraphrasing, since he whipped through that so fast and I was giggling so hard I have no idea what he actually SAID, except that the word ‘coffee’ was in there somewhere.) The McCann added that he had fun at Pike Place Market (“HA!” she said, in a moment of her fandoms colliding; c.f. Part 1 of this concert report), watching the fish-throwing guys–and how, being from Newfoundland, he actually caught and ate three fish before they stopped throwing them at him. Hee hee hee.

Undaunted, Alan saw him Pike Place and raised him the YMCA! “How was that?” Séan asked him, and Alan stated with quite definitive assurance, “It was AWESOME.” (Well done on the exercising there, Mr. Doyle. Keep yourself healthy and limber. We like you that way. <3) Equally awesome was his informing the audience that we would, in fact, have two sets!

“Good People” was next, and for that, Alan broke out a banjo! I’m still not used to seeing him wielding that particular instrument, so that was kind of cool. This also provoked the obligatory line from Séan, “Are there any good people in Seattle tonight?” and the obligatory cheers in response. Afterwards, it also provoked the obligatory crack about how the sequel to that song would be called “Bad People”. And that it would be about Kris and Murray. Muaha.

Then, “River Driver”. STEAMROLLER. OF. HARMONY.

That flattened me so nicely that it actually took me a moment to recover enough to realize that the next song was one I hadn’t heard GBS do live in some time, and which took us clear back to the Sea of No Cares album: “Penelope”. Not one of my faves, but it does make a nice live performance. Ditto for “Dear Hometown”.

But oh my, then we got “Yankee Sailor”. Introduced by Bob, in fact, since Alan informed us that most of the band’s good ideas are in fact Bob’s. It’s very fangirly of me to say that I love to hear Bob talk–but hell, I do. Not only just because of his accent, either. He’s usually the silent and stoic one and it’s nifty to hear him speaking up on stage, too. As for the song itself, it wasn’t the delicious solo version we got out of Alan at the zoo last summer, but it was still pretty fabulous nonetheless. And maellenkleth got another good pic in the middle of it, too.

Yankee Sailor

After that Alan warned us we were going to have a break very shortly, and that he thought the show was going really well so far–so wouldn’t it be a shame if the next song sucked? Which of course meant that he had to call upon us for help, and that it was time for the obligatory SINGALONG!

We got a bit different lineup of songs in the singalong this time–”I Fought the Law”, “If I Had a Million Dollars”, “Jack and Diane”, “Hit Me With Your Best Shot”, and “With Or Without You”. Giggles to Alan as well for the crack in the middle of it all about how it was sounding like Glee. Ha!

And of course that led into “Run Run Away”–and the end of the first set!

The first of these was a gathering at Pike Place Market of myself, maellenkleth who I of course know from LJ/DW and face-to-face, and my three fellow OKP fangirls Sara, Kate, and Jaime, who I hadn’t met before. It was pretty nifty to get to hang out with fellow OKP fangirls before the show–and much approval was expressed of the plan to raid Pike Place. Especially when I mentioned wanting to stop by my boys at Frank’s, ’cause let’s face it, if there are any boys I love as much as THE B’ys, it’s those guys!

Nor did Chaz of the Market disappoint. He was very gracious to those I brought with me, and much approval was uttered over the berries and the mango he sold us. Also, I had to go “aww” as he told the others that I’m not just a “customer”, I am, quote, “one of their own”, unquote. Chaz really is a sweetheart. <3

Doesn’t this look like a tasty market?

Tasty Fruit is Tasty

After we left my marketboys’ stand, we wandered more or less at random up and down the length of the market. We popped briefly into Market Spice (mmm tea), the comics/collectables store down on the second level, and into a store called Tenzing Momo at Jaime’s request. All in all it was a nice little ramble–and it was followed in fairly awesome short order by Jaime being struck by the BEST IDEA IN THE HISTORY OF THEIR BEING IDEAS.

We’d already seen The Doyle talking on Twitter about how this year is Great Big Sea’s 18th anniversary as a band. So it wasn’t any great shakes at all for Jaime to turn to us and be all “OH HEY we should get the band a CAKE!”

This proposal was met with unilateral acclaim, and I pointed us forthwith over to the grocery store on Third. There we picked out a chocolate sheet cake with white frosting on it and red roses, and hung out for a little while waiting to see if one of the store staff could put the words “HAPPY 18TH BANDIVERSARY” on it. We had a bit of a debate as to how to properly spell “BANDIVERSARY”, but Kate and I both voted for the spelling I’m quoting here, on the grounds of it being closest to “anniversary”. Turned out though that the store staffer was convinced that she couldn’t fit the word onto the cake, and we had to do it ourselves. They gave us a different cake, one with pink trim, and we got hold of two different squeeze tubes of frosting–one in pink sort of gel-like stuff to do “HAPPY” and “BANDIVERSARY”, and one in red more frosting-y-like stuff to do “18TH”.

Mad props to Jaime for doing the actual lettering! It came out looking pretty nifty, if I do say so myself:

The Cake is Not a Lie

Phase 1 of Operation Cake Surprise thus complete, all that remained was Phase 2: i.e., get the cake to the band. We were cutting it close by that point, pretty sure that the guys would probably be heading into the Moore around 5ish for sound check–but we made it back to the tour bus in time to catch GBS’ drummer, Mr. Kris MacFarlane, at the door of the bus. Mustering shaky and nervous smiles, we pecked on the door and got him to poke his head out and offered him the cake!

I did NOT get a picture of that, on the grounds that I was doing pretty well hanging out behind the others at the handoff–and I was too close to really whip out my iPhone casually, anyway, without looking TOO DAMNED OBVIOUS. Kris very graciously accepted the cake, nonetheless. And thus was our mission accomplished.

(One does actually hope that the B’ys enjoyed the sugary cake-y goodness, as opposed to chucking it in the bin as soon as Kris got it in there, which for all I know is a distinct possibility. Nonetheless, in the Universe According to Anna, they shared it amongst themselves and found it Tasty, which is really all we wanted.)

Anyway, after that we boinged squeefully around the sidewalk for a little bit going OH MY GOD WE GAVE GREAT BIG SEA A CAKE, as you’d absolutely expect five fangirls to do, no matter what our ages (and we had a good range between us all). We weren’t even deterred much once I got a surprise text message from technoshaman warning me that the Night Kitchen had shut down for emergency repairs. Um, yikes?

So we split up briefly, with Elane and myself retreating to Caffe d’Arte across the street from the Moore so I could have some hot cocoa, and the others running off to regroup briefly with their own peeps before dinnertime. I started posting to various places and sending out various alerts going “PLAN B NEEDED FOR DINNER”, and got the excellent suggestion from mamishka to meet at the Blarney Stone Pub around the corner from Night Kitchen. We hung out a bit at the door of the restaurant anyway so I could direct people around the corner–and so that solarbird could find me, since she was going to join us for dinner even if she couldn’t come to the show. Another fan found us there, too; shout out to Kevin from the OKP, who tried to message me on Facebook but who couldn’t, I suspect, thanks to Facebook eating it! Anyway, it was pretty cool to have another new face show up.

Props to Lindsey of Night Kitchen as well, who poked her head out the door to say hi and to very apologetically explain that their dishwasher had broken, which pretty much scuttled their ability to open for business. She even offered everybody in my party coupons! We thanked her very kindly, assured her it wasn’t a problem, and eventually all rendezvoused at the pub around the corner for dinner.

We wound up having quite the herd–too many to fit us all at one table, in fact. The pub was packed and the one on-duty waitress was horribly overworked. (An Irish pub packed to the gills on the weekend before St. Paddy’s Day? The deuce you say!) But solarbird and maellenkleth and technoshaman and mamishka and I were joined by sutures1 and jennygriffee, along with the aforementioned Kevin and more OKPers, including Julie and her husband, and a couple other folks whose names I have sadly forgotten. (Apologies, folks! See previous commentary re: me getting a little crazy. Also, there was a raspberry kamikaze. I’m just sayin’!)

Lively conversation was had all around, though. The only downside was that due to the overworked pub staff, Jenny didn’t get her dinner on time–but we did, at least, all make it over to the Moore to get in for the show!

Sometimes, though, it winds up looking really, REALLY cool. Like this pic!

God of Music and Light

And some of you may have heard rumors of a Certain Cake. What I’ll say about that right now is that the cake was not indeed a Lie. Stay tuned for more details on that cunning plan and how it was enacted!

Well, okay, and mamishka and jennygriffee and technoshaman and maellenkleth and sutures1 and a few thousand other people as well. That’s okay. Because I am a person of STRONG CHARACTER, I will SHARE.

I know several of the usual Seattle suspects will be showing up for this show, too, so if you’re going to be there don’t hesitate to sing out! I and mine are discussing an Eat Dinner at The Night Kitchen Beforehand Plan, but I’m also thinking of coming down early to blow the afternoon in Pike Place and Barnes and Noble. So if anybody wants to meet up for lunch, there’s ample opportunity for that too.

And, of course, consider yourselves warned that I will be ramping up the insufferably bouncy swooniness and singing GBS songs at the top of my lungs for the next two weeks. “Yes yes yes,” I hear you say, “but how is this different from your USUAL demeanor?” Fair point, well argued. The main difference is, I’ll be doing it LOUDER.

Wikipedia informs me that Mr. Mills was best known for popularizing Canadian folk music, and it’s very clear, looking over the track listings for both of these albums, that my beloved B’ys either pulled hard from his songs or else were pulling from the same sources he did! Between these albums, I see a whole bunch of songs that were much, much later covered by GBS:

• From the B’ys’ very first, self-titled album: “I’se the B’y” and “Great Big Sea”
• From up and later also, Rant and Roar: “Lukey’s Boat”, and of course, “Rant and Roar”
• From Turn: “Jack Hinks”
• From Sea of No Cares: “Feller from Fortune”
• From the mighty, mighty The Hard and the Easy: “Tickle Cove Pond”, “Harbor Le Cou”, “The Old Polina”

Mr. Mills’ versions are of course much more old school, and a lot more folksy. But damn, it’s weird and fun listening to his earlier versions of these songs. I’m very tempted to get both of these albums, just for the giggle factor of the contrast to GBS’ versions!

And clearly, Amazon ignored the “sexy, bouncy, long-haired bouzouki player” part of “customer’s affection for Newfoundland folk music”, when their auto-recommender code sent me that mail. :D

I have also realized that as I was grabbing shinies to go with the General at Dusty Strings, I forgot to get one other critical thing: a capo. The capo I bought for Rags was intended for nylon string guitars; it works okay on the new guitar, but isn’t optimal and I keep expecting it to pop off. So I’ll need to pick up another one. Oh DARN, I’ll have to go into a music store again! Twist my arm. Ow. Ow. Ow.

Meanwhile I have retuned Rags to DADGAD tuning. Poor Rags really sounds kind of feeble compared to the Taylor, but going into that tuning adds some really nice complexity to his tone. I’ve printed off a chord chart to see what I can learn, and also went and re-printed the chords to “Boston and St. John’s”–which is played in said tuning. It’ll be fun to properly learn that song.

The show will be on a delicious, delicious SATURDAY, so Seattle peeps, if you think you want in on the goodness and you aren’t already a member of the site–i.e., if you need me to get your tickets–let me know ASAP so that I know how many tickets to get!

Many thanks to all of you who took a look and offered words of encouragement, they are much appreciated! I would like to endorse, in our stead, the “Hit the Ground and Run” video by the Singing Roberts–since they had an awesome acting out, complete with costumes and a mini-script, of that particular song. You can vote on the video of your choice here.

I shall now also accept kittens, cookies, and other forms of consolation, if any happen to be around. *^_^*;;