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!

solarbird

This time around we didn’t get quite as much long, protracted banter as we did the last time the B’ys played the zoo–but we did get quite a bit of delicious Murray-focused banter, as well as sly remarks about how the sun beating down on the stage clearly meant the lads were going to have to start taking off some clothes. Compare and contrast this to how Lillian and Moira, ages 4 and 3, loudly demanded for me to take them up front to the dancing area and got me going around in circles with them singing “Donkey Riding” at the top of our lungs. That’s a Great Big Sea show for you, folks. Vast, and containing multitudes!

Since we had such a disparate set of people all converging on the zoo, we decided to do our rendezvous in waves. Wave 1 was me, solarbird, spazzkat, kathrynt, and the children, since Paul and I had decided to take a four day weekend–so we’d have time to wander around the zoo before the show. Plus, we figured the kids would enjoy it! So those of us from the Murkworks headed down in the early afternoon. Traffic was sucking, so we wound up taking a Sekrit Ninja Route into the zoo.

And it was very lucky we did, because we wound up right behind a very familiar looking tour bus.

“Hey Anna!” Dara said. “Guess who’s in that bus!” My reply didn’t really translate well into English, but if I transcribe it phonetically, it comes out something like “eeeeEEEeEEeeeee!”

Paul was a good sport and let us out of the car to go see where the bus went, and on the way, a woman with four small children with her said to me, “You’ve got your Olympic gear on! Are you also Great Big Sea groupies?” (Because I was wearing the light blue hoodie I’d gotten in Vancouver in February, y’see, when we went up there for the GBS show during the Olympics!) I replied in the affirmative, and was amused to see that she had no compunction whatsoever about bustling right up to the bus with the children in tow.

Dara and I did not. (Our restraint, let me show you it!) Besides, we had to go in and get lunch, prior to meeting up with Kathryn and our own pair of Smalls. So we got in some food, a bit of looking at penguins, and a bit of looking at the Bug House as well.

Mellow Penguin Says Hi

Not terribly surprisingly, the hardcore fan crowd had already started staking out the inside line, the one they have for people who actually pay to get into the zoo. Definitely not surprisingly, I spotted superfan Lynda Elstad and exchanged a few pleasant words with her; I’m sure she’ll have some awesome video up on her YouTube channel soon enough. Lynda was particularly amused to see me wearing my Sea of No Cares baseball-style t-shirt, since mine is actually still wearable! (I take real good care of that shirt and only break it out for shows at this point, really!)

Speaking of video, Dara started taking opportunities to shoot amusing bits of digital footage for us to use in our own video! There’s a great boat right next to the penguin exhibit, as well as an anchor off in a little rocky nook, and we used both of these to what we’re pretty sure is great effect. I’m not posting pics of that though because that’ll be going into the video and we want to save that for when the video’s actually completed.

When we met up with Kathryn, she had two very bouncy little girls with her, and she was quite amused to tell me about how she’d been parceling out the news about today’s excursion to Lily, her little girl. On Monday, she’d said they were coming to the zoo. On Tuesday, that Moira would be joining her. On Wednesday, that there would be MUSIC at the zoo. And that very morning, she’d finally said that Great Big Sea would be there!

Mind you, these are two little girls who love to have me play them the Great Big DVD whenever they come over–or at least, the first song! So Lily piped up to me that “You know what? THE DONKEY RIDING BAND is going to be here!” as soon as she sat down beside me. Heartwarming, I tell you, to see a tiny fangirl taking shape. <3 I assured her that yes, I knew that.

Once we all had food in us we took the children out to show them more bits of the zoo to keep them occupied for a bit. That meant more penguins, a brief jaunt into the jaguar run, a stop at the bears, and eventually back to the penguins. On the way we all got ice cream, much to the children's general pleasure. And since the children both got ice creams shaped like Pink Panther heads, Dara co-opted them into the video footage. They may be making a cameo! (The ice creams, that is, not the children.)

Jaguar Says Zzzzz

Around 4pm or so we sent Kathryn and Paul and the children to hold our spot in the line while Dara and I went back into the zoo to shoot some footage of her pretending to sing her lines for the contest video at various birds in the Bird House, which was fun! (Also, bonus points for the Bird House selling you seed sticks to attract the birds to come down and nom right out of your hand.) She also got some bits of me walking and singing, which’ll hopefully mesh well into the video once I figure out how the hell to do that.

mamishka eventually called us to alert us that she’d arrived and snagged a spot in the outside line. Which was fabulous, except we’d already snagged a spot in the inside line! So I wound up being an ambassador between both staked out spots, since I was the Keeper of the Tickets. sksouth and jennygriffee met up with us out there; jessicac and Clint actually found Kathryn in the zoo, and I sent llachglin in to join the others when he arrived. technoshaman was last to show up, and once his tickets were handed off, we were all safely able to head into the meadow!

Once we got into the North Meadow we wound up splitting into three groups. Kathryn, Erik, Jessica, and Clint held a back island of blankets, since Jessica and Clint had their Extremely Tiny Baby Jamison with them–and we’re talking really tiny, folks, this kid is a scant three weeks old. I’m pretty damn sure he was the tiniest person at the show. And a very handsome albeit sleepy child he was, too. They wanted room for the girls to run around as well, since Moira and Lillian are very active little girls.

Mimi, Jenny, and Paul took a station farther forward, with a better view of the stage. Dara and I dropped stuff up there with them for a bit–and Lillian begged to be allowed to come up there with me, which her parents allowed once I got her to promise that if she needed me to take her back to her mommy and daddy, she’d let me know. Lily got a big kick though out of me carrying her around in the crowd so she could see everything, and more than once she squealed “GREAT BIG SEA!” Especially when I showed her the stage where the B’ys would be.

And Dara and me? We TOTALLY aimed for the dancing area set up forward and to the immediate right of the stage, which I’m given to understand had been won by express begging from the fine folks of the OKP. Go OKPers! Sarah came with us, and at least for a little while, so did Moira and Lily! I only diverted long enough to find the swag table and get me a new shirt. And I spent a bit of time playing phone tag with seattlesparks, who eventually did find me in the dancing area!

Jessica, Moira’s mommy, and Erik, Lily’s daddy, came forward with us briefly just to make sure they knew where the kids would be–and Erik actually hung out with us for most of the first set, just because he wanted to see how the girls would react to seeing the Actual Great Big Sea Men singing on the stage. It was great fun, I gotta say, to see the kids getting into it. They didn’t necessarily watch the stage much, but they did run around a lot singing. I got oriented right on the edge of the dancing area, where there was a spot of open grass between the dancers and the fence. Just enough room for small girls to run and dance and jump. Shelley, the main OKPer organizing the dancing crowd, found us and even danced around in a circle a bit with the girls, singing “Donkey Riding”. :) :)

We didn’t get an opening act. Which was fortunate, given I was trying to keep tabs on the kids AND on the B’ys at the same time! Nor did we get “Donkey Riding” as the first song as I was hoping–but it did indeed show up second, and the kids ate that right up.

Which, of course, brings me to the main event! This concert’s Set List of Awesome, as near as I can recreate from my notes as well as judicious cross-checking with the OKP folks:

First set:

• Nothing But a Song
• Donkey Riding
• Love Me Tonight
• The Night Pat Murphy Died
• When I’m Up
• Jack Hinks
• Safe Upon the Shore
• Charlie Horse
• Everything Shines
• Good People
• Yankee Sailor
• Lukey

Through about half of the first set, I spent as much time boinging around with the kids between the dancers and the fence as I did actually looking at the stage. Moira and Lily weren’t consistent in their attention, but that was fine–they’re toddlers! They did seem to appreciate the once or twice I got them right up to the rope so they could actually see stuff, and Moira asked me once to get her onto my shoulders. (Moira’s big for a four year old, though, and I didn’t have enough strength in my arms to hoist her up that high.) Still, though, Erik clued in I was falling behind on my fangirling, and staunchly offered to take the kids back to the others in back after a few songs. THANK YOU ERIK! You’re a trooper.

Now then, as for the actual songs, I’ll go ahead and say that “Nothing But a Song” is fast growing on me–since I remember this one very favorably from the Bremerton show last November. Also, though, this is indeed the song Dara and I are working on for the contest! So it was great fun to hear this one opening the show.

Weird to hear “Donkey Riding” next, but as long it was there I was happy! And again, great fun for the kids. I more heard this one than watched it, since I was busy chasing the kids around. Didn’t see Séan singing, but his bodhran was loud and clear.

After “Love Me Tonight”, Alan remarked upon the sunlight pouring down upon the stage. “Turn down the sun!” he cried. And I believe it was here that Séan announced that if the sun didn’t get turned down, they were going to have to start taking off some clothes.

For the intro to “Paddy Murphy” this time around, I’m blanking on who all got loaded drunk, but it was definitely “Alan Doyle was feeling gay!” Me: .oO (Really? DAMN!) Muaha.

You’d think that after well over a dozen GBS shows and approximately 98,348 repeat listens of the songs in question, I’d be able to tell the difference between the intro to “Jack Hinks” and the intro to “Lukey”. Nope! Not yet! It doesn’t help that Alan lays down pretty much the same rhythmic pattern to lead into both songs, so they sound almost identical to me even though “Jack Hinks” is in F and “Lukey” is in G. But what the hell, they’re both awesome.

I mention “Jack Hinks” though by way of noting Alan saying he had “animal fever”–and then segueing into how he’d had possibly the greatest hamburger he’d ever had, at a local chain of ours, Dick’s. He rhapsodized quite a bit about this, calling that burger a life-changing experience! (And I gotta back him up on this, people. ‘Cause Dick’s hamburgers are seriously, seriously tasty. But I digress!)

Next after that came a song I wasn’t actually expecting to hear in live performance, but which I was delighted to hear nonetheless: “Safe Upon the Shore”, which is currently duking it out with “Nothing But a Song” for my favorite track off the new album. Séan was a bit ragged on the sound, but hit all his notes quite nicely nonetheless, and oh my yes the harmonies on the choruses. Yum yum yum.

They gave Murray a really nice shoutout, too, since he worked with Séan to write that song. This led to a LOT of manly ragging on Foster–and Séan asserting, “I think he should take some clothes off.” Alan goaded him into revealing his “porn star name”, using the meme of “your first pet” and “the street where you grew up”. Murray therefore came out as “Buttons Green Lane”, although Kris was even better with “Cuddles Campbell”.

“Charlie Horse” and “Everything Shines” led eventually over to “Good People”, again off the new album. This isn’t one of my preferred tracks, but I did find this one notable on the stage since Alan broke out a banjo, an instrument I am NOT accustomed to seeing him wield, and Bob had some harmonica action going! Not surprisingly, Séan inquired of the audience if there were any good people out there tonight, and got a lively roar back in response. Afterwards, he declared he was turning the stage over to “the lovely Alan Doyle”.

Which led into a very, very nice solo performance of Alan’s on “Yankee Sailor”, which at this point I think is possibly my third favorite song off the new album. He gave us a lengthy explanation of what the song was about, as well, which put it into some lovely context; Dara told me afterward that she liked the song better once she understood it was about a Newfoundlander reacting to his love being swept off her feet by an American sailor during World War II.

For bonus neatness, while Alan was explaining that a whole generation of Newfoundland women had emigrated to the States because of meeting American soldiers and sailors, somebody in the audience not too far ahead of me yelled, “My mother!” Alan immediately reacted to this, and affirmed that “I don’t make this stuff up!”

And after that, his performance of the song was quite lovely indeed. Damn, that man can play him some guitar.

Solo Alan

Last but most assuredly not least, we got “Lukey”, and I ended the first set a happy fangirl indeed, as “Lukey” is definitely one of the songs I need to make it feel like a proper show. What really rocked about this performance of it, though, was that we got Alan yelling “THE BASS IS SEXY”–and leading right into solos out of Murray and Kris. Long-time fans will remember that in the days of Darrell, live performances of “Lukey” had on the second bridge a tradeoff of bass riffs out of Darrell and bodhran out of Séan, and for the longest time after Darrell left, we lost that.

It was seriously awesome to see Murray get to do that with Séan this time though. :D And when Kris jumped in on the end of that set of riffs, with strikes on the cowbell, I had to LOL. Because if anything could make “Lukey” even more awesome, it’d be MOAR COWBELL!

And now, the second set:

• Chemical Worker’s Song
• Captain Kidd
• England
• Dear Home Town
• When I Am King
• General Taylor
• Scolding Wife
• Medley: I Fought the Law/Summer of ’69/500 Miles/Bohemian Rhapsody
• Run Run Away
• Helmethead
• Consequence Free
• Mari Mac
• Ordinary Day
• Encore: Excursion Around the Bay/Fortune/Rant and Roar

I am still giddy with glee that “Chemical Worker’s Song” has come back into the concert lineup. As I’ve mentioned before in posts, this is a favorite of my jamming group–and now I can belt out a harmony line for this one without even blinking. (In fact, a lady standing next to me in the crowd turned to me after the song was done and said I had a great voice! Aw! *^_^*;;)

That said, the B’ys ate this one alive as they always do, and Séan yea and verily BROUGHT IT with the bodhran.

“Captain Kidd” was awesome for me not only for the song itself but for this being the point in the concert where I got SURPRISE MONICA! Long-time OKPers will remember her as Old Brown’s Daughter in the earlier days of the OKP, and of course one of the original Murkjammers. Very fun to find her in the crowd since I haven’t been able to jam with her in too damn long.

It was after this song that Alan and Séan started remarking upon how good we all looked: the dancers, the sitters, and all, and that we were definitely the “prettier people coast” and that they had no idea what their ancestors had been thinking! Which led quite nicely into “England”.

We got us a lovely whistle solo out of Bob for that one, and after, Alan making the obligatory commentary about how well Safe Upon the Shore is doing on both the Canadian and U.S. charts. “140-160 is the comfort zone!” he proclaimed of the U.S. chart position, and that anything above 140 is really kind of sucky. Sporfle! Séan though did observe that he’d kind of like to get into double digits!

“Dear Home Town” was next, and the last of the songs off the new album. This got us one more comment out of Alan, to wit, that the record has been described as “The Record of the Decade”. Which was promptly shot down by Séan, who answered, “That was your mother.”

“When I Am King” was suitably smokin’, and WOO HOO “General Taylor”! <3 Again, Séan was kind of ragged and rough-sounding, but he did get in some lovely vocal acrobatics on the final verse and chorus, and those of us down in the dancing area did our best to sing along. Even though that The McCann, crafty bastard that he is, pulled a key change on us too!

In "Scolding Wife, which is always an “AW YEAH BRING IT” experience for me, Séan’s verse was “caught me by the meerkat”. Hee hee hee.

Next up: the Great Big Singalong Medley! Alan called upon all the singers in the house (where for this purpose the part of “the house” was of course being played by “the meadow”) to bring it, and much fun was had by all.

This got us into the home stretch, and bringing out the Big Guns: “Consequence Free”, “Mari Mac”, and “Ordinary Day”. Which was entirely as it SHOULD BE! Dara and I deployed the Cascadian Flag and engaged in suitable Vertical Movement.

The encore was the expected trio of “Excursion Around the Bay” (with Alan mostly talking his way through the opening verse before they really got the vocals fired back up), “Fortune” (LAST CHANCE TO DANCE), and, of course, “Rant and Roar”.

Don’t think I didn’t think about lurking around the fence to see if any of the band would linger–because I DID. But Paul was our driver and he had to get us home lest the cats go berserk from being unfed. And at any rate, Sarah thoroughly distracted me by handing me a shiny, shiny thing:

Guitar Pick of Awesomeness

This, ladies and gentlemen, is a guitar pick from the hand of Alan Doyle himself. Sarah saw it fall and scarfed it for me, and presented it to me with great satisfaction at the conclusion of the show! In exchange, since she said she quite liked “Chemical Worker’s Song”, I took her over to the swag table and got her a copy of Up, GBS’ third album. I figure this was a very fair trade.

And that was a damn fine conclusion to the show, indeed!

Huge shoutouts to mamishka, sksouth, jennygriffee, jessicac, her spouse Clint whose LJ I still can’t remember, kathrynt, llachglin, technoshaman, and ladyallyn coordinating me with and spazzkat and solarbird to get the disparate parts of our group together!

Also huge shoutouts to sticckler, seattlesparks, and especially auntmonkey, who I haven’t seen and jammed with in TOO DAMNED LONG I SAY.

Even saw and greeted several OKPers besides sticckler: shelleyroberts, shoegirl, and loulabelle! And there was a lady whose name I didn’t get who was kind enough to compliment my singing as I was belting out harmony during “Chemical Worker’s Song”! Thank you, kind lady!

But! EXTRA DOUBLE AWESOME SHOUTOUTS back to sksouth for getting me a guitar pick from the hand of The Doyle Himself. She saw it fall and scarfed it, and presented it to me after the show! In return, I bought her a copy of Up, GBS’ third album! THANK YOU SARAH! <3 I shall play only Awesome Songs of Awesomeness with this pick!

Lastly it must be said that Alan is not only still pretty, but solarbird and I are in strong agreement that in fact, he gets prettier the longer a show continues. By the time he gets to “Ordinary Day”, he is stunningly gorgeous. Trufax! Scientifically proven!

There is of course a longer full show review post coming, but that’ll be tomorrow, after I have my brain back. Watch this space for the fully detailed squee!

solarbird

I do have to admit it was very awesome that they got dinged to be the headlining performance at the Victory Ceremonies last night–which featured a celebration of the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. (For those unfamiliar with Canadian provinces, Newfoundland and Labrador are officially one big province.) You couldn’t have chosen better ambassadors, really!

That said, Dara and I were not expecting other acts to show up as preliminaries, which was awesome as well. This led off with a nice drumming and chanting dance by a First Nations group whose name I didn’t catch, but it might have been the Nunatsiavut Drum Dancers who are featured on the Atlantic Canada House site for the Olympics? Don’t know.

Then we got surprise Irish Descendants! Y’all may recall I’ve posted about them before, so it was great to see them live even though they did only one song. Their lead singer is a rotund little guy with a voice much bigger than he is, it turns out.

Other performers that showed up were Ron Hynes, who I think I remember Bob Hallett mentioning in his Bob’s Soundtrack posts; fiddler Kelly Russell, who was featured in a video that kept running of his performing all over the world and getting people to do a Thread the Needle dance; Tara Oram, a young singer; and Hey Rosetta!, who were a pretty lively group as well.

Meanwhile, a couple of perky announcer types, up on a raised platform facing the main stage, were doing initial banter and throwing trivia questions out to the crowd. While all that was going on, Dara and I chatted with the girl sitting next to us on our row. Our seats turned out to be farther back than we’d hoped, but we did have a lovely conversation with Michelle, who like us was pretty much there to see Great Big Sea and who told us that her husband was in fact from Newfoundland. We stayed in our seats to chat with her before the preliminaries, and while they were handing out the medals. From there I was able to get a good view of pretty much everything that was going on. The whole place was done up in blue, green, and white, which amused Dara and me to no end since those are the colors on the Cascadia flag. ;)

Watching the medals handed out was pretty cool. They alternated between where we were, BC Place, and up on Whistler to hand out for various events, including Men’s Freestyle Skiing, Men’s 4×7.5km Relay, Ladies’ Parallel Giant Slalom, and Alpine Skiing Ladies’ Slalom. I was charmed to see Norway take the gold in the relay, and that the Norwegian team was visibly singing along with their national anthem. After each medal handoff, at least at BC Place, they shot metallic confetti in gold, bronze, and silver into the air. That looked very neat. The medals themselves were also very pretty, quite large but sort of crumpled-looking discs, which was an interesting artistic touch for them. And I must also note that I was quite charmed, during one of the Whistler handoffs, to see several people wearing cow hats on the big screens in their audience. COW HATS! <3

But then we got down to business and introduced the B'ys! We got a countdown on the screens for them, and the audience started going suitably berserk. And we got LASERS cutting through the air over our heads, which was very, very cool. Dara and I had already noticed a wide standing room only area before the stage, though--and as the B'ys ripped into "Ordinary Day", their first song, we abandoned our seats and bolted for there. We got out there only because we showed tickets to the harried-looking BC Place personnel, but we did make it safely out!

Not surprisingly, this was only a one-set show, and a somewhat rearranged one at that. It was pretty much full of Great Big Sea's best-loved standards, with nothing off the forthcoming album, and only "Love Me Tonight" and "England" from Fortune’s Favour, too. Here’s the full set list, transcribed out of my hastily scribbled notes:

• Ordinary Day
• Lukey
• Love Me Tonight
• The Night Pat Murphy Died
• When I’m Up
• Jack Hinks
• England
• When I Am King
• Sea of No Cares
• Helmethead
• Consequence Free
• Mari-Mac
• Run Run Away
• Encore: Excursion Around the Bay/Fortune

There was minimal banter as well, which wasn’t really surprising either due to the Serious Business of this particular performance. This didn’t stop Alan from letting out the obligatory crack about “the lovely and talented Séan McCann” while introducing Paddy Murphy, though–or from announcing his opinion that there should be Olympics every year, in Newfoundland and Labrador, and inviting the audience to think of the events they could have. (Clearly, Vertical Movement would have to be a regularly featured event.)

It must also be said that the B’ys all looked very, very fine. Alan’s lost the beard and has gone back for the nonce to his soul patch look; he had his black jacket, black long-sleeved shirt, and blue jeans look going on. Séan looked very fine with his hair slicked back, a sort of blue-violet shirt, and a really swank gray striped jacket on over that. Bob had a jaunty scarf on, and Kris had some red-and-black-checked bandanna action going on back at the drumkit. Only Murray looked his usual understated self, with that green shirt I’ve seen him wearing at pretty much every show. It only took a couple songs in for Alan and Séan both to lose their jackets, though!

Hands down, the best fun Dara and I had with this was being among an extremely lively crowd out on the floor. There were a group of Russian girls right ahead of us, and when Dara and I started singing, they turned back to us with these startled grins; Dara said they totally looked like they were thinking, “We do not know how you are, but we like you! You know how to party!” Especially when we whipped up the Cascadian flag between us.

A Newfoundland flag showed up just to the right of us a few songs in, and one very lively gentleman kept bellowing happily about how this was music to dance to. He encouraged us to come back to the back of the crowd where they’d get some old-time dancing going on the next big song; the only reason Dara and I didn’t do that was because we were too busy representing TEAM CASCADIA! <3

And a Polish woman showed up just behind us as well with her red and white Polish flag. She wasn't really getting how to hoist her flag, so Dara helped her do that! And we got her flag to show up on camera with one good clear shot--there was a camera on a high wire sliding back and forth over the crowd, so there were all SORTS of crowd shots that kept showing up on the big screens next to the stage. We got the Cascadian flag up several times, too, although we didn't keep it up all the time. Didn't want to completely block the view of folks behind us, and a few girls did ask if they could scooch up ahead of us. We let them, naturally.

But man, it was a truly international crowd, and seriously, seriously awesome. The energy was astounding, even for a Great Big Sea show. You could tell a lot of GBS diehards were on the floor since we did get the obligatory "GREAT! BIG! SEA!" chant going, and although several of the international folks in the crowd didn't know what that was at first, they caught on fast. By the time the B'ys left the stage after their one encore, I was absolutely limp with exhausted delight. Dara turned to me, grinning from ear to ear, and proclaimed that that was AWESOME. She was correct. I'm not sure it would be physically and biologically possible to top the awesomeness of that crowd, unless it involved us going to St. John's and seeing the B'ys perform on their home turf.

Dara scarfed a few snippets of the metallic confetti off the floor as mementos, and on that giddy, glorious note, we rambled out of BC Place and out along the crowded, chaotic Robson Street. More on that in the post I'll do on this trip in general! All you need to know from this one, really, is that Great Big Sea + Olympics = unremitting awesome. Team Cascadia takes the gold in Vertical Movement!

mamishka

technoshaman

jennygriffee

Picoreview of the show itself: the crowd was fairly heavily laced with GBS regulars, but there was also a big presence of older folks who were clearly not part of the fanbase. The B’ys were in high spirits, though, and highlights of the show include Séan discovering Cosmos, two brand new songs, a rendition of “Gallows Pole” that knocked me nearly dead, and “Old Brown’s Daughter” coming back to finish me off.

Let’s do this thing then!

So like I said, the show being in Bremerton meant needing to come over on the ferry. This took some juggling of logistics just because of needing to coordinate car pooling and which ferry to shoot for. jennygriffee came to my place and we zipped down to pick up mamishka, and we met up with technoshaman on the actual boat. We had some debate about what to do with the car, as initially I had thought it would be dumb to take a car across given the proximity of the theater to the ferry terminal. Turned out to be the correct decision; the weather got foul on the way across the water, and by the time I drove off the boat and into Bremerton, the rain was coming down in sheets.

(Though I do note that the tunnel that led up into the streets from the ferry terminal was decorated with this lovely mural of a treeline, which must have been only recently put in since it had no dinginess from traffic exhaust, or else it’s been recently seriously cleaned. Either way it looked really nice, so that was one benefit of being in the car. Wouldn’t have seen that on foot.)

Dinner was had at Anthony’s right on the water, which was delightfully apt with the seafood and the lighting designed to look like crabs and salmon. There were a few other folks heading to the show there as well; I distinctly heard the magic words ‘Great Big Sea’ from the next table. Tasty food and good conversation were had by all, although Meems and I took it light on the dinner since neither of us were very hungry–and I didn’t want to load up on a big meal with Vertical Movement imminent! Props must be given to that apple crumble dessert Meems got, though, as well as the clam chowder. Try either of those, people, if you happen to go into an Anthony’s, I’m telling you!

After that we scampered on over to the theater. Despite the fact that it was early Saturday evening, there was hardly anyone out on the streets; I don’t know if this is because it was Bremerton, pouring down sheets of rain, or both. Parking was trivially easy, and we scored a place on the street just a short walk from the venue.

The place in question is the Admiral Theatre, and like I said above, I have never set foot in a venue that was more appropriately decorated for a Great Big Sea concert. Lovely aquatic art murals decorated the walls, with mermaids prominent near the stage, but with lots of other sea creatures visible as well. mamishka in particular was impressed, since she’s a muralist and she heavily favors aquatic art. So I let her have my iPhone and she wandered around for a bit before the show, taking pictures. Here’s one!

And here’s one of some of the other sea life on the walls:

Speaking of fishies, I should note that I actually saw one of my coworkers in the theater! How awesome is it that I work at a place where multiple people have not only recognized the name of Great Big Sea when I mention it, but a couple of them even go to the shows? This particular coworker of mine was up in the balcony with a larger party than mine, but he spotted me from above and waved down. Yay!

Meems and Glenn and I also all had to make a strike on the swag table, because I was bound and determined to not get out of this event without swag. This time around though Mimi and I had a perfectly delightful conversation with the gentleman running the table–who I should probably damn well recognize by now, with all of the times I’ve attended a GBS show, but I sadly do not know his name. I very carefully ordered myself to not squee over his accent, but oh the lovely rhythms of his Newfoundland brogue. Pretty. <3 We yakked about T-shirt designs, and he asked Mimi and me about which of the designs we liked; Mimi is fond of the Fortune's Favour shirt she got with the octopus in front and the flying cards on the back, so we told this gentleman that we were in general strongly in favor of shirts with small designs in front and larger ones on the back side.

I wound up getting a simple one, though, the one with the string-figure "Great Big Sea" design, since it was in light blue and I didn't have that one yet. And I also made a point of telling the swag table gentleman that Mimi was the one who'd pointed me in Great Big Sea's direction in the first place, and he thanked us and said it was folks like us spreading the love that kept people coming back for more. <3 Lovely, lovely conversation all around.

Back in with our l00t, we parked our stuff at our table--A7, which, sadly, did not actually turn out to be front row as I was hoping, but which was still pretty damn close to the stage nonetheless. We were approximately Stage Murray, with a very fine vantage point. And it should surprise absolutely none of you that I spent no more time at this table than absolutely necessary. ;) It was very, very weird being at a GBS show that involved tables, and between that and a good chunk of the crowd being clearly older than is average for a GBS crowd, it was clear that this was a new venue for them because a significant portion of the audience didn't Get It. This was the only weird note of the entire evening; see more on this below.

I had the pleasure of one of the OKPers coming up to say hi with her husband, too. She pegged me by my hat and came up and said, "Are you Anna the Piper?" (And even turned to her husband and said, "She writes books!" Aw gawrsh. I think that's the first time anybody's done that around me! But I digress. *^_^*;;) Lattlelady63, if you're reading this, this is my shout-out to you!

We had no opening act, but we did have a theater staffer who came up on stage to do a little introduction. This gentleman read us a few choice quotes from the press material the venue had gotten from the B'ys' agent, such as "devoted fanbase", "audience knew all the words to every song", and "audience on their feet during the entire show". That guy, at least, clearly knew what was coming.

And when the chords to "Donkey Riding" started up, so did we!

First and foremost, the Set List of Squee, Set 1:

• Donkey Riding
• Captain Kidd
• Love Me Tonight
• The Night Pat Murphy Died
• When I’m Up
• “Something’s Happening Here”
• Jack Hinks
• England
• Gideon Brown
• Good People
• River Driver
• Here and Now
• Nothing But a Song
• Singalong: I Fought the Law/Faith/500 Miles/Bohemian Rhapsody
• Run Run Away

Only a few measures in on “Donkey Riding”, Mimi looked back at me and gestured inquiringly at the stage, a motion that needed absolutely no interpretation–because HELL YES I wanted to be up by the stage. A few people had already beaten us up there, but we scampered up there anyway and got pretty much at Stage Alan. A security guy instructed us to keep a certain distance away from the stage, but that was fine, because we were at our Fangirl Duty Stations, so it was all good. ;) In fact, I wound up right next to Lynda Elstad, busily taking video, and she blinked and realized I was beside her when she heard me singing at the top of my lungs. Whee!

So yeah. The B’ys were all looking fine, but Alan in particular was looking spectacular. A summer of strenuous physical activity making a movie looks really, really good on him. I’ll even tolerate the beard after getting a look at the state of those bouzouki-playin’ arms. <3

(And okay, yeah yeah yeah he has a guitar here, but this was the best Mimi did with my iPhone! Not the best device for taking pictures in concert-light conditions, I'm afraid. Still, this one came out nicely.)

Alan apparently thought this feeling was mutual, since right after song #2, “Captain Kidd”, he told us all, “You’re looking really good!”

“Love Me Tonight” was third, and it seems to have secured itself a solid place as a concert staple. I approve. Right after it, somebody in the audience yelled “SING IT” as Séan was introduced. The McCann was game, and he grinned and deadpanned, “Oh, I’m gonna sing it.” A running gag got started here as well about Alan eating a pomegranate backstage, and the inevitable joke about how he’s about to find out what eating pomegranates means. Har! Not quite what one has in mind when one thinks of Persephone, but hey, Hades might be swinging both ways these days. :>

It’s also well worth noting that Séan was also looking very fine! Conservative hair by his standards, and a positively subdued dark red v-neck sweater. Which is really rather fine by me; I like him far better with conservative hair! Sadly though, for you Shantyfen reading this (I’m looking at you, raise_a_jar), neither Mimi nor I scored a proper picture of him.

Heading into “When I’m Up”, Alan started in on the intro and threw himself off a bit snickering on “I am the fountain of affection!” He blinked a bit too as Mimi, right beside me, sailed right on into “I’m the instrument of joy!” This was actually the first of a few times Mimi got him to react to her!

Coming out of that song, we had a very high-spirited Séan start improvising on “Something’s Happening Here”, and people yelling for “Old Black Rum”. Séan reached down at this point, grabbed the set list at his feet, crumpled it up, and winged it backstage! Very lulzy. It would have been amusing if they’d completely gone random at that point, but no such luck. Darn. ;)

Alan next exhorted us to “get this party started!” and rolled right into the hard rhythmic intro line for “Jack Hinks”. After that, he and Séan remarked quite favorably upon the venue was “an interesting place” and how they were always made to feel so welcome in Washington. Which went over well with us all, of course. <3 It was also at this point in the show that a remark of Séan's I didn't quite catch prompted what turned into a huge running gag for the rest of the show--and all because Mimi yelled, "A COSMO'S A GIRLY DRINK!"

Alan caught that first and called it over to Séan, who got this very wry look on his face, lifted his chin all firm-like, and announced that he would have a Cosmo. And wondered if they'd bring him one up on the stage! Which was, I must say, a hell of an intro for "England", as Lynda to my left turned to me and remarked. Muahaha.

"England", though, was very lovely and I noticed for the very first time, being so close to Alan as I hadn't been for several shows, that he was capoed up five on the bouzouki. I don't know the key yet for the song but it sounds like an odd one for GBS; I'll need to see if I can nail that down. Also: Bob's whistle solo was absolutely gorgeous.

After "England" we had another great bit of banter, as the B'ys proclaimed this "the perfect gig" and that the venue was "built for us!" Clearly they were as fond of the art as Mimi and I were, enough that Séan even suggested that they could make the place their new home base (which ALSO went over very well with the crowd), and that they could become the Travelling Musicians of Bremerton.

Kris got in a bawdy remark here I didn't catch, but which prompted Alan to wryly tell the audience that "Kris doesn't drink, so he makes up for it with filth". Chortle.

And, and, Séan got his Cosmo! A theater staffer brought it up on stage for him, very formally presented on a little tray and everything. That was hysterical, especially since he and Alan both proceeded to take swigs off this thing through the next several songs, and both had these great OMG expressions when they realized how much alcohol was in one. Séan started warbling “I feel pretty! Oh so pretty!” and told us all that he now understood why all the women in Sex in the City were always drinking Cosmos. Alan’s remark on the matter was a pithy and succinct “Jesus Christ!”

None of which had a damn thing to do with the next song, which was “Gideon Brown”, but they laughingly headed into it anyway. ;) And after that we got the first of two new songs that were introduced as ones that were going to appear on the new forthcoming album. This one was called “Good People”, and was one of Séan’s; I’m not sure if I like this one quite yet as it’s more country-flavored than I like out of the B’ys. But it may grow on me in time. Some banter mileage came out of it too, with cracks about almost singing “good pizza is hard to find”–which made Mimi and me both yell “NOT IN WASHINGTON!” And Séan joked about how good people have Cosmos.

This was where Alan actually swiped the Cosmo from Séan, too, and they kept at this for a bit until Alan finally returned to the mike and tried to get going on the intro for the next song. Mimi called out encouragingly, “FOCUS!” Alan actually snickered at that and thanked her, and said he needed a little help sometimes! ;) Hee hee hee. And after all of that, the next song?

“River Driver”. *thud* Oh god, Alan sounded beautiful. About on par with how he belted this out in Vancouver, only this time I was much closer to him singing it and, well, yum.

Next was “Here and Now”, and you’d think that after standing up by the stage through most of the set, I’d have noticed before this point that they had video LEDs up around the stage. But this was in fact the first time I noticed them. Hands up if you already figured out that this was because The Doyle was RIGHT THERE and that I was lucky to see anything else at all on the stage, up to and including the other members of the band.

I mention the LEDs, though, because they were used to extremely good effect in the next song, another new one, “Nothing But a Song”. This one was a joint Alan/Séan effort, and I could see Alan’s hand in the lyrics. The bridge, though–man. All five of the B’ys hit this fierce, high, sustained harmony and as they hit that chord, the LEDs all went PANG and the light was suddenly brighter. Very, very well done there, lighting guy. I can’t wait to hear this on the album, and I thought at the time, “Well, this is going to be one of the singles.”

I’m pretty sure this shot of Mimi’s was during the bridge of “Nothing But a Song”. Action B’ys!

It was my turn to yell at Alan next, though, as he challenged the audience about whether we were up for some singing. I called out, “BRING IT!” And yea and verily, he brought it, starting up the traditional GBS Concert Audience Singalong Medley: “I Fought the Law”, “Faith”, “500 Miles”, and last but not least, “Bohemian Rhapsody”. We had great fun with this last, as Alan really got into it and started splitting the audience up into sections to get a multi-layered thing going. To my amusement, afterwards, Lynda turned to me and said she’d specifically taken video during the singalong because Mimi and I were beside her, and she knew she’d get good singing! Yay! I think she got more of Mimi singing than me, though, since I was fast running out of breath at that point and couldn’t sustain myself for more than a few lines at a time.

After that we got “Run Run Away”–and the end of the first set.

Mimi and I tried to resume our Fangirl Duty Stations when the lights came down for Set #2, only to have the security guy tell us he’d gotten a couple of complaints, so he needed us to hold back to the sides if we wanted to stand up. Well, THAT was no fun, since our viewing angle from off on the side would have been worse than at our table, so we retreated to our table. Not that either of us sat down much, though. I occasionally sat down for the slower numbers and one or two times when others right around behind me were not standing either, and I was a little self-conscious about blocking views. But as the set progressed and the audience unbent, more and more of us stood, and everybody was on their feet by the end. And all was Right With the World.

Here’s the list for Set #2!

• Instrumental
• The Chemical Worker’s Song
• Captain Wedderburn
• “Happy Birthday”
• When I Am King
• General Taylor
• Scolding Wife
• Everything Shines
• “Starin’ Up”
• Helmethead
• Gallows Pole
• Consequence Free
• Mari-Mac
• Ordinary Day
• Encore: Clearest Indication/Excursion Around the Bay/Fortune/Old Brown’s Daughter

The instrumental was fun, starting off with Alan and Séan, then bringing in Bob, and finally Kris and Murray. As with the previous recent shows, I recognized the bit that comes out of the recording of “Tishialuk Girl’s Set”, but not the rest of it. I really need to find out what those other bits are. Nice bodhran on the part of Séan here.

And nice bodhran as well segueing right into “The Chemical Worker’s Song” oh my yes. Very, very happy this has rejoined the set lists for recent shows, since this is a favorite at the Murkworks for jams. “Captain Wedderburn” was a nice contrast to this and was one of the few times I actually sat down during this set, while I was frantically scribbling notes in my Moleskine notebook. (And trying not to lose the cap of my pen, which I did actually eventually lose! Aigh.)

Someone else in the audience got the band’s attention at this point, and it was announced that it was Amy’s birthday! Alan led us all in singing “Happy Birthday” to her, which was nice. <3

"When I am King" was next, with a fairly minimal intro as intros for this song (and for this concert in particular, given what came later) go. After that, "General Taylor", and a fine, fine final verse on that too with the harmony and the rumbly Murray and the man, these boys do sound well together, don't they?

Next up: "Scolding Wife". I distinctly heard Mimi shout her approval of this one, hee! Notable fun during this song was Alan and Séan both wandering over to Murray during the bridge and practically stacking instruments on his head as they kept playing away. Also, Séan's verse featured the singer lamenting about how the Scolding Wife "caught me by the Cosmo".

After the song was over I got in another yell at Alan! He told us that song was from "... one of the older records”, and I helpfully bellowed, “SEA OF NO CARES!” He blinketyblinked, and promptly replied, “Sea of No Cares? One of the greatest records ever recorded!” I’m pretty sure that’s what he said when the album first came out, too. Hee.

“Everything Shines” came after that, and then, more calls for “Old Black Rum”. This prompted Alan to call back, “We’re from a sailing town in Atlantic Canada, where in God’s name would we get RUM?”

This got us quite a bit of banter and time-killing, though, as Séan made a big show of faking us RIGHT OUT by making us think he was about to sing us a song about a “very harsh topic, a detailed and horrific event. Kind of about rum. Except not really. It’s about HOCKEY!” Which of course took us right into “Helmethead”. I happened to notice that at the end of this one, Bob pitched his pick into the audience; I hope some lucky Bob fan over on the other side caught it!

We got “Gallows Pole” after this, and I’ve got to say, Séan ate this song ALIVE. It was AMAZING. He roared out the lyrics with a ferocity we rarely hear out of him, and really, the whole thing came together with the music and the lighting into one great big package of awesome. Alan said something afterwards about this being on the new album, I think? I’m really hoping so, since having it as an extra for Fortune’s Favour was nice and all, but it really deserves a real place on an album, with live performances like this. Folks outside the regular OKP contingent need to hear this song.

Much, much laughter after though as Séan lamented that Bob was going to spank him. But hopefully not in the Batman suit. I now pause for a moment to let the Bob fans reading this bring to mind the thought of Bob wearing a Batman suit. Can’t you just hear him growling “I’M BATMAN”? G’wan, you know you can. (Now imagine the Batman suit with an accordion!)

And, unsurprisingly, we finished out the formal set with the expected mighty closers: “Consequence Free”, “Mari-Mac”, and “Ordinary Day”. I happened to notice snippets of the “Mari-Mac” video up on the LEDs during that song, which was pretty neat and meta; I liked the effect of seeing the older video of the B’ys behind the live B’ys themselves. Naturally as well everybody was on their feet and roaring by the time “Ordinary Day” rolled around.

We only got the one encore, but oh what an encore it was, with arguably the longest and best banter I’ve had the pleasure to giggle over at any recent GBS show. Alan extolled Newfoundland as “Canada’s version of Hawaii” and even added that Newfoundland had almost joined America! “You were number two!” He and Séan then opined that they could have joined Washington: “We have the same weather!”

There was a whole lot more banter about the Cosmos, and Alan in fact whipped up an impromptu ditty about a girl named Cosmo, and got us all singing “Ohhhhh Cosmo!” With extra bonus lines about “good pizza isn’t hard to find”. And extra, extra bonus lines from me, at least, about “… in Washington!” ;) This fit in nicely with Alan also telling us that Great Big Sea was 17 years old as of this year: almost old enough to drink!

Much amusement was had once Alan announced that there was a contingent from Newfoundland in the house. So we gave it up for the Newfoundlanders, which prompted someone else to yell, “Australia!” So we gave it up for the Aussies, too! Alan grinned and proceeded to rattle off several more random countries, getting cheers from various points in the audience: Malta! The Swiss! Singapore! “It’s the United Nations!” said Séan. “Let’s make love!” said Alan. Dangerous proposition there, Doyle. ;>

A-hem, anyway, the Newfoundlander contingent got another shout-out though as we went into “Fortune”–Alan told them to show us all how it was done as he urged us all to get up and dance. Go, Newfoundlanders!

“What a night!” Alan enthused at us after all that fun. “I’m going to tell the world about Washington. And I’ll use words like ‘dandy’!”

Last, but oh my no most assuredly not least at all, we got “Old Brown’s Daughter.” And I’m here to tell you, it was only with heroic, yea, titanic effort that I clamped down on the squee threatening to erupt right out of my little fangirl mouth at the sound of those five gentlemen all lined up right there at the front of the stage, harmonizing their hearts out. I did not explode from the effort to contain the squee. But I came awfully damn close.

And that, my children, was a beautiful way to end a beautiful show. The glow of it carried us all the way back across the water to Seattle proper, and not even some perfectly godawful rain could dent it. Well done, B’ys. Well done indeed.

solarbird

ravyngyngvar

Fangirly squealing behind the fold, and this time, y’all, thanks to my beloved Dara, I am bringing pictures. There are links off to suitable tasty videos as well, and mad props to OKPers sticckler and katy for those!

As I said in this post over here, round about four or so on Saturday afternoon we headed off from Granville Island on the Aquabus to get over False Creek and reach the spot where we needed to catch the 19 to get to Stanley Park. This gave me a bit of a turn as we saw a 19 going past us just as we were approaching the stop–but fortunately another one arrived shortly after. And on that bus, it turned out, was fellow OKPer Tamsin!

Who, I must note, had actually posted to me when I’d gotten up that morning, asking if Dara and I had been the ones at Conflikt who were belting out Great Big Sea songs and being stunned when others knew them. Yes, said I, we were! And I described myself on the post and encouraged him and any other OKPers to keep an eye out for me. This advice worked swimmingly since Tamsin was sitting only a seat or two back from us, and we promptly struck up a conversation that lasted all the way to the park.

There were unsurprisingly a whole bunch of folks coming in, going the same way we were, and a couple other folks followed us since we looked like we knew where we were going. Which was not exactly the case, but fortunately we didn’t have very far to walk at all from where the bus dropped us off. We found the line very quickly, and I spotted gerimaple very close to the front. Suitable greetings were exchanged before my little party stepped further back along the line to claim our own spot. I did have to venture off briefly to look for bottled water, for which my search was not successful. I did however spot the very same wedding party who’d stopped our Aquabus for photos, which was funny. One assumes they were actually getting married in the park, though if so, one also hopes they were planning to utilize the background concert noise for music!

Once they let us in, Dara and I led the way to choose a spot about midway along the fence between the seats and the General Admission area, from which we had a decent line of sight to the stage. Steve actually had a spot in the seated section up close to the front, so we had to part ways then–though he did meet us at the fence for further yakking before the show actually started, and he was agog to learn that we possess one of the few cassette copies of filkertom‘s The Rocky Horror Muppet Show, which we promised to digitize for him as soon as we could. Had I been thinking, I’d have brought along blankets to sit on, but it was all good; the ground was still reasonably dry and it ain’t like I was going to stay sitting down through the important part of the show, anyway!

Got Yngvar a black GBS shirt, and various foodstuffs were acquired as well. I did not actually buy myself a shirt, but only because of lack of immediate cash on hand, and the swag table guy didn’t take VISA. I will damn well be getting a shirt at the November show! Dara played her bamboo piccolo to kill time, and a young boy came up to ask her about it and said it was very beautiful. Yay. :)

We did stay sitting down through most of the first set by the Skydiggers. They seemed to have at least some fans in the audience, and they had some albums and shirts on sale, and I saw at least one shirt being bought. They’re kind of folksy, and they’re a duo, one guy on guitar and one singing lead. The lead singer also plays harmonica, and sometimes both guys harmonize. But eh, overall they just didn’t work for Dara or me. We were really rather bored through most of the set and wound up singing our own lyrics into each others’ ears. Though all that said, I will grant that the guitarist did have a really nice little solo on their last song.

But then they finished up after a 45-minute set. And it was time for the obligatory standing on the feet, clapping of the hands, and beginning of the GREAT! BIG! SEA! susurration all over the audience. The B’ys started a bit late, I think–but they were out and on stage by around 8:20, with the familiar and loved and proper way to start a concert. Which is to say, “Donkey Riding”. <3

It is my tradition with these GBS concert reports to give you a brief description of what all the B'ys were wearing, but this time? I've got pictures, courtesy of Dara, who has a very good camera and knows damn well how to use it. (I tried to take pics on my iPhone–they sucked, in no small part because by the time the B’ys were on stage, it was good and dark and my iPhone’s camera couldn’t cope with the light levels.)

First up I’ll give you Kris, unobtrusive guy that he is behind the four front-liners, at his rightful place at the drums. I know he’s wearing brown only because there’s pictoral evidence here; I barely glimpsed him from my vantage point during the actual show!

Kris at the Drumkit

Next I give you Murray, dashingly arrayed in jeans and a long-sleeved olive-colored shirt. Take especial note of the shirt. This is important later!

Green Shirt Murray

Then over on the opposite end of the stage, I’ll bring you Bob Hallett, looking severe with short-cropped hair and dressed all in black–and wielding, in this shot, his Action Fiddle! (Dara did very well with this one.) And, since this photo is two B’ys for the price of one, note also Séan McCann with much more reasonable hair than he had earlier this year, light jeans and a light blue T-shirt. Also, if you look real close, you can see that Séan ditched his shoes!

Action Fiddle Bob and Barefoot Sean

And of course, last but most assuredly not least, the one, the only, the King I’d certainly vote for, Alan The Doyle. Looking disheveled, scruffy, and bearded!

Bearded Alan With Bouzouki

And now, with the obligatory ogling out of the way, I can bring you the Set List!

• Donkey Riding
• Captain Kidd
• Love Me Tonight
• The Night Pat Murphy Died
• When I’m Up
• Lukey
• The River Driver
• A Boat Like Gideon Brown
• Ferryland Sealer
• Everything Shines
• When I Am King
• Feel It Turn
• Beat the Drum
• I’m a Rover
• Sea of No Cares
• Here and Now
• John Barbour
• Consequence Free
• Mari-Mac
• Ordinary Day
• Encore: Captain Wedderburn, Old Black Rum, Rant and Roar

Like I said above, it was delightful and proper and right to have the concert start off with “Donkey Riding”. It just doesn’t feel like a proper start to a GBS show with anything else! And right out of the gate, Dara and I leapt in with singing along with everything. Yngvar had lamented to me before that he hoped he wouldn’t look strange being the only one in the audience who didn’t know the words; I assured him, no worries, I’d sing enough for both of us. Dara and I had his back. ;) As far back as we were, we could actually hear ourselves, and we periodically sang harmony! It was awesome. <3

I must also note that out of the gate, Dara had come to the concert armed with her Cascadia flag, and for that matter, a Canada flag as well since we didn’t have a proper Newfoundland one. I had been going to wave the Canada flag while she waved the Cascadia one, but the Cascadia flag was big enough that it really needed both of us to take it on! As Yngvar ably captured with his own picture, posted by Dara over here.

But I digress! Anyway, we started singing our hearts out, right through “Captain Kidd” and “Love Me Tonight”, the latter of which I was quite happy to have in the set list since it really is one of my favorites off of Fortune’s Favour, and it’s a good thing to have at the beginning of a concert as well with the “I wonder if you’ll love me tonight” lyric.

After that was Alan’s first real banter to the crowd: “Stanley Park is beautiful tonight! And the only thing comparable to its beauty is Séan McCann!” Who, Alan proceeded to then inform us, had “passed a very personal manhood test.” What exactly this was was not specified, but suffice to say that Séan was more than sufficiently brawny of voice for “Paddy Murphy”! Murray got in some suitably brawny bass playing, too–Alan kept pointing at him during the song to draw audience attention to him.

“When I’m Up” came armed and dangerous, with Alan’s usual milking it, and some damn fine fiddle playing from Bob on the solo. I listened for but did not hear Alan’s traditional shoutout “That’s a fiddle player from St. John’s, Newfoundland!”, but hey, I’m pretty sure the audience all knew who Bob is by now.

Leading next into “Lukey”, Alan informed us all that we had a responsibility, since this was the last show of the summer: to bless the ground of the park with as much warmth and humanity as possible. Pretty much the same intro he gave before “Jack Hinks” in the show the night before, it turned out, as I discovered when I went hunting for video. Still, as song intro banter, it was quite appropriate and certainly good for firing up the crowd for “Lukey”–not that we really needed much encouragement. This is “Lukey” we’re talking about, after all. If my iPhone had been up to the challenge, I’d have tried to get a good shot of the audience with every last pair of hands in the air, clapping. Still a wonderful sight to see, even after seeing it several times at GBS shows now. And lots and lots of voices, of course, bellowing A HA ME BOYS A RIDDLE AYE DAY!

Afterwards Alan praised us for our “good singing”, and was all “look at the crowd! I feel like a rock star!” Séan promptly replied that he looked like a rock star, with his “long hair and sexy beard”. Cue appropriate fangirly reactions from all over the crowd, before the B’ys then went into a bit of banter about Vancouver and all its varieties of coffee. Séan complained he still had heart palpitations from all the coffee he’d had that day, though he and Alan both swore up and down that they had good food at a place called Joe Forte’s. And further swore that no, they hadn’t been paid to endorse them. Ha!

But oh my, “The River Driver” was next; talk about your fangirly reactions. Alan was in magnificent voice on this song. And, lucky us, OKPer sticckler scored video! Go listen. Right now. Preferably with headphones on. I’m doing it right now as I write this!

Pretty, ain’t it? Now imagine that singing a lot louder, a lot fuller, and resounding through an entire park. FANGIRLY REACTIONS, I’m telling you. Also: note the awesome bass rumble Murray’s bringing to the song. YUM.

Next up: “A Boat Like Gideon Brown”, with the traditional banter about this song being about envying your neighbor’s boat. This time around, though, Alan inquired afterwards of Séan, who’d actually been to Fogo Island, whether he’d noticed a lot of people envying one another’s boats there. Séan did not, and inquired in turn of Bob whether he remembered anything about the Boat Incident. Bob drawled that it’d had a lot to do with canoes.

Alan also noted that this was Séan and Bob’s twentieth year playing together in a band, which got a lot of cheers from the crowd, and brotherly hugging on the parts of Séan and Bob. Aw.

After that, much to my delight because I couldn’t remember ever hearing this one live at all and we’ve recently tried to play it in Jam: “Ferryland Sealer”. Which, I am delighted to report, Séan ate for tasty, tasty dinner.

Once “Ferryland Sealer” (which I still want to read as “Faerieland Sealer”, but this is what I get for being a fantasy novelist), Séan looked musingly out to the crowd and announced that he smelled burning toast. Alan wryly replied, “That’s not toast, my friend!” Somebody in the crowd was indeed making with the pot; Dara and I had both smelled something being smoked, though it wasn’t close enough to us to really be distinguishable beyond that. So no telling where it actually was!

Anyway, this was also where Alan broke out the Les Paul for the first time, yay! And this led into (video courtesy of OKPer Katy) reggae improv on “Everybody party!” Much snickering on the stage resulted from this, and I think it was Séan who said, “You weren’t expecting THAT, were you?” And Alan was all “What’s better than white guys from Newfoundland singing reggae?” The Les Paul, of course, meant that we were heading into “When I am King”, and we got more reggae on the bridge as well, which was lulzworthy. After that, we got the usual banter about how Alan being King can happen. “There’s an election very soon!” he proclaimed. “I might run!”

This turned out really to be a lovely concert for breaking out songs from Turn–because in addition to “Ferryland Sealer”, we also got “Feel It Turn”. Séan milked the words beautifully, and I for one was very happy to get this song since I’d just recently gone through all the old videos on the Great Big DVD, including that song, and it was lovely to be reminded about this one. It was apparently lovely for Alan, too, because after the song he turned to Séan, said he’d enjoyed his singing, and added, “I love your band!” Hee.

Somebody shouted something to Séan at this point too that I couldn’t hear, but whatever it was, it provoked Séan into answering, “If you think this is the simple plan concert, you’ve had too much pot!”

The audience wasn’t done shouting at the B’ys, though. Somebody shouted for “Old Black Rum”, and Alan assured them that they didn’t need to yell for requests, because “tonight we’re doing all the hits!” Somebody else yelled “I LOVE YOU” and Alan leered and rumbled back, “And I love you.” Cue the fangirly cheering, to which The Doyle went on, “No no, don’t applaud! This is really disgusting love! This is Amsterdam love!” Jokes were made too about Alan seeing a doorman in Amsterdam who looked like Sam the Eagle, too.

And, aw hell, OKPer katy caught that entire bit of banter right here!

Finally we swung into “Beat the Drum”, and after that, “I’m a Rover”, a song which Séan informed us was for the ladies, “a song for all the bouncy bits. We’re not interested in the boys’ bouncy bits!” (Right here was when Dara bellowed “Neither are we!” Muahaha.) And! A dancer jumped up up on the stage, and did a dance while the B’ys were singing! I’m not sure, but it’s distinctly possible that that was the same girl I saw at the show at the Moore last October, in which case she’s apparently gotten in good with the band if she gets to do this more. Ha! She was great, too, and for maximum lulz, she smacked all the B’ys’ bums as she scampered offstage.

In the middle of the song, too, Séan mangled the lyrics and I distinctly heard him singing “Until the morning, we drank black rum!”

“Sea of No Cares” came next, which apparently had a bit of a false start that I missed or something, because afterwards Alan cracked a joke about “sometimes I give the boys false set lists!” He proceeded to extrapolate this out to claiming that the show was entirely lip-synched, and then lamented, “I am in such trouble with the band! Does anybody need a singer?” Hee!

“Here and Now” off the new album was next, and I noted a lower melody line than usual on it, presumably for ease of singing it live.

Next: the mighty, the inimitable, the incomparable “John Barbour”. I happily moaned out loud when I realized it was coming, and I was not disappointed. I just had to dial down my impulse to sing along so I could actually hear Séan, though I did sing softly anyway. And I did mention to Yngvar beside me that this was the only GBS song in which Séan sang all by himself.

After this was another burst of deeply silly banter, and Alan revisiting his oft-voiced query about “I often wonder, what do all the other bands do? The ones without Bob?” His conclusion? Every other band in the world sucks. (Again, courtesy of OKPer katy!) Muahaha. Lots of Séan giving Alan shit for that one, and how “THAT will make us friends on the Internets!” Alan rallied and opined that it would be awesome to see Bob in AC/DC. Har!

With all that silliness out of the way, we were in the home stretch then, and in rapid succession got “Consequence Free”, “Mari-Mac”, and of course, “Ordinary Day”. By then Dara and I were going nuts with the flag, not caring that we were far enough back from the stage for anybody to really see us (and by anybody I mean “the band”); me, I was firmly of the mind that if there was any song fit for flag waving, it was by god “Ordinary Day”. Had I had a Newfoundland flag with me, I’d have seriously considered running up and down the length of the GA area fence with it!

We only got one encore, I fear, but “Captain Wedderburn” started it off, again with a callback clear back to “Turn”. Afterwards Alan complimented Murray on his shirt, and bantered about its Scout-like color, and how he figured Murray was wearing it “ironically”. “You heard it here first! Every other band sucks, and Murray hates the Scouts!” As the audience chortled over that, Alan added, “I hate children!”

Kris got some surprising attention at this point. Somebody in the audience I was way too far back to really see or hear called something up to the stage and got Alan to lean over to her, and Alan in turn got Kris over to her to lean down and listen to her. Immediate jokes were made about a marriage proposal. Hee. ^_^

Then, finally, in belated reply to the eager audience member, we did get “Old Black Rum”. By then my voice was wearing out, but I pulled it back together on general principle for “Rant and Roar”.

Lovely, lovely ending to a lovely, lovely show.

Everybody in the crowd peacefully dispersed, and a great many of us trundled off to the busses waiting out on the curb. Steve caught up with Dara and Yngvar and me, and we missed the first round of people getting onto a 19. But we caught the next one, and it was then that we met OKPer sticckler and her friends. And she showed me her snippet of “The Mermaid” from the previous night’s show, which I was overjoyed to see, since we didn’t get that in our set list at all. (And to which I will link you now, because seriously, folks, check out the Mad Dance Skillz of The McCann!)

We eventually bid a cheerful farewell to Steve and sticckler alike, and once we got off the bus, Dara and I kept bursting into random bits of song as we walked along the sidewalk. We were in the middle of the chorus of “Ordinary Day” when a bunch of people wearing a bunch of inflatable beach toys went past us, and they all made approving noises at our singing. That was a hell of a fun note to end a hell of a fun evening; I love Vancouver so much.

Especially with Great Big Sea in it. <3