It was honky-tonkin good time at the Slice, April 13.
Shaela Miller and Danny Dyck opened with a sparse set of mostly new original material to appear on the new Shaela Miller/ Treeline CD and a Loretta Lynn song, which they opened their set with.
Danny Dyck began the set by playing mournful pedal steel guitar. Their music embraces traditional twanging country music.
They turned “Problems,” one of my new favourite Shaela Miller song, with Danny Dyck donning an electric guitar and trading verses. Dyck had a Hank Williams meets Merle Haggard twang to his voice and as always Shaela Miller has an adorable twang to her voice.
They welcomed drummer Pat Phillips, who was part of headliner Kayla Howran’s band, onto the stage for the last part of their set which added to the honky tonking feel. One of many highlights was a new song sung by Dyck called “What Time Does.”
Kayla Howran and her hot band including guitarist Mike Tuyp, who usually plays with Roger Marin, plus drummer Pat Phillips carried on in that vein.
Peterborough born, Toronto based Kayla Howran was a pint sized bundle of energy with a huge voice. She had her huge acoustic guitar hanging up around her chin like Dwight Yoakam, and let loose like a mixture of Tammy Wynette mixed with Miranda Lambert bad girl attitude. She began her set by thanking Shaela Miller for her set and saying “I fell in love with a woman tonight.”
She borrowed Danny Dyck to play pedal steel who fit in like he’d been playing with them forever.
They played a couple obscure covers as well as a couple Loretta Lynn songs including “Get Out of My Head and “Back in my Bed” from Howran’s debut CD “Pistols.”
She played most of the new CD in her set including highlights “Al-Anon Prayer,” “Drownin’ in Whiskey” and “Rock Bass,” to name just a few.
She ended her first set with an upbeat cover of Dolly Parton’s “Jolene.”
The second set was even better. She began with the title track from the CD “Pistol,” and brought Shaela Miller up for a duet on an old Kitty Wells song “It Wasn‘t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels.”
She also threw in one new country cover, which she told Shaela Miller she wouldn’t like. But she played an excellent version of Miranda Lambert’s “White Lies” anyway.