I caught the end of a sold out hip hop gig by Tech N9ne at the Blarney Stone March 19. I missed most of it, but the Kansas City rappers  had the sold out crowd hopping in front of the stage.

They showed they could sing too on a pretty impressive version of ’80s hit “Rock Me Amadeus” which impressed me quite a bit.

The CD release party for local blues/rock trio Steve Keenan and Fat Baby Jake was a smash success, March 19 at Henotic.
A good sized crowd of at least 60 stayed seated and enjoyed a set of mostly original music from their new CD ‘Better than Gold.’
 The band, Steve Keenan, Geoff Stuckey and Shane Love were being filmed for their EPK, so they were in fine form , especially on the first set of originals. The classic rock sounding ‘Something New’  and ‘Whiskey Drinking Blues,’ were both highlights of the show. However Keenan showed he could sing slow blues pretty sweetly  as well. Though he shone the most on more uptempo numbers. He ended the first set with Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile (Slight Return).

— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat editor

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A late booked show by Cape Breton multi-instrumentalist J.P Cormier, which attracted approximately 70 people to the Wolf’s Den, Sunday, March 21 had  the guitar players in the audience drooling.
Cormier and guitarist Carl Elliott plus his brother Bill Elliott on stand-up bass, knocked everyone‘s socks off with a lot of firey guitar picking, a lot of  bluegrass, folk, country, some Chet Atkins finger-picking and even a touch of jazz.

And after knocking off one smoking solo after another, just when the audience  caught their breaths, Cormier would switch to another instrument and blow them away again with either a sizzling solo or a beautiful vocal melody or a Maritime reel on the fiddle.
One of many impressive moments in this show was watching Cormier and Carl Elliott harmonize complicated lead licks. In between fretboard wizardry, Cormier cracked jokes and chatted with the crowd.

— by Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor

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An almost  full house  relived their early ’90s pop-punk past, March 20 at Henotic as an almost full house was moshing to Fort Macleod/ Lethbridge’s Sophmore Jakes.
 They had a strong Blink-182 influence, a lot of energy and an affable stage presence, which the crowd loved.

Calgary pop punk band Chixdiggit have been around forever. I remember covering them for the Meliorist when they were just starting out in the early ’90s. Lead singer/ guitarist K.T Jansen had an innate charisma and stage presence then, which he hasn’t lost. The band played with tight intensity and Jansen must have added ‘Lethbridge’ into  the lyrics of half the songs on the band’s setlist as he jumped around, did punk rock splits and asked the audience to  “Give it up for … (insert random noun here like Lethbridge, Chixdiggit, the drummer’s name, Henotic).

 He knew how to play the crowd and kept joking they were going to play ‘another song we don’t know.’ It sounded like they knew them and the crowd seemed to agree as they were singing along with almost all of them including ‘Spanish Fever,’ My Restaurant’ and “Chupacabras’ as well as ‘I Drove the Cochahalla.’

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat editor

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