Gig: Julie Doiron / $100 / Rick White

Julie Doiron / $100 / Rick White

The Horseshoe. Thursday, March 26, 2009

A totally lovely gig that could hardly have been improved upon — save possibly had it started and ended a half-hour earlier. Set-times were posted for nine, ten and eleven, and the 'Shoe is generally pretty good with gigs sticking to the schedule, but Rick White didn't take the stage til about 9:45, pushing everything else back. This did, at least, mean there was an appreciable crowd on hand when he started, and he was given much closer attention by the crowd than when I've seen him doing his solo thing before. Playing seated with electric guitar, he did a short set of his psychedelicized tunes, starting off a bit droopy, but gaining momentum as he went on. Perhaps just because it was the most recognizable to me, it started to click with a version of "Why Be So Curious", a song that he wrote for The Sadies. The next couple songs continued in a more lively manner, and the set ended on a high note with Julie coming out to provide vocals to a take of Neil Young's "Look Out For My Love".

$100 were pretty much set up and ready to go, so at least it was a fairly quick turnover. This being the third time I've seen them already in 2009, I'm mostly reduced to looking for marginal things to differentiate the show. The biggest of those last night was some pretty awful house sound — the bass and drums were chest-poundingly loud in the mix, leaving the first three songs or so an undifferentiated mush. Once the soundman eased off, the bass was still a bit loud, but it was much more tolerable. Pronouncing themselves happy to be home after returning from SxSW, the band was kind enough to mix up their setlist, making the performance not seem like a rerun from their CMW set. Once the mix was improved and the band settled in, the band turned out to be fairly cookin', especially on a sterling version of "Tirade of a Shitty Mom".¹

And then, the main event. The place was pretty full as Julie Doiron came on. And in one of those all-too-rare instances where the crowd actually showed up to listen to the person on stage, the audience was utterly rapt. Leading off with an a capella number, there was almost unimaginable silence in the room — the only other sound to be heard was the dishwasher at the bar. This sort of became a mutually reinforcing spell, as the crowd realized that Julie (happy throughout, though visably fighting a cold) was quite into the moment and kept working to prolong it, coming up on the spot with the idea for more songs to play solo before bringing the band out.

I was actually worried that the previously thumpingly loud bass sound was going to crush the delicate vibe as she was joined on stage by Rick White (bass) and Fred Squire (drums), but it was reined in enough not to be a distraction. The band launched into a ramshackle ramble through Julie's new I Can Wonder What You Did with Your Day, following it track-by-track for a half-dozen numbers. Although these were the same musicians that had recorded the disc together last summer, it was clear that Fred & Julie hadn't played with Rick much since, leading to some curious interactions, as Julie had a separately-forged musical chemistry with each of them, but not as much with them both together.² This led to some moments of on-stage band conferring, with discussions about how to start songs, what key they were in, and so on. "It's like practice!" Julie observed. "But not the boring kind, where everyone knows the songs. And you get to watch!"

While this could lead to a sloppy and unsatisfying show, it suited the material at hand pretty well. Doiron's music floats on an uncalculating, plainspoken sincerity, and this tentative, figure-it-out-as-we-go-along circle of friends served as the perfect backdrop.³ The setlist was similarly casual — besides a general goal of playing as much of the new album as possible, everything else seemed determined by whim or requests from the audience.⁴ Even Rick got into game, calling out for "Girl Problem", and, after a brief consult on how the guitar part worked, Julie launched into "Why I Didn't Like August 93" from his '96 Elevator to Hell album.⁵ After almost eighty minutes, the set ended, though Julie was coaxed out to do a solo encore. Though welcome, the spell was broken a bit by this point, between the rumble of bar-room conversation and the stream of people departing.

All told, this was an excellent show, perhaps the year's best so far. In a characteristically unassuming way, Julie Doiron has moved herself into the top-tier of Canadian musicians. Her last album brought acclaim in the form a Polaris nomination and some attendant notice from that; I hope that this one will make her known to even more people.

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¹ I'm not sure what manner of distortion the pedal steel was being played through on this one, but it sounded not unlike a Bigmuff, creating a bracing effect.

² And the fact that this band contained both a current and former romantic partner probably also creates an interesting dynamic to observe – for those interested in that kind of thing.

³ Although this may not be a unanimous opinion. At one point, when Julie came giggling back to the microphone after conferring with her bandmates over how one of the songs had been played on the album, a woman beside me asked her friend: "Is this the first gig she's ever done?"

⁴ At one point, someone in the crowd called out for "Shady Lane" and was immediately rewarded with a playful rush through that Pavement song.

⁵ I should pause to note that even when figuring things out on the fly, Julie's guitar work was top-notch throughout. She even seemed taken aback by her own skills at the end of "The Wrong City", exclaiming, with surprise, "We were jamming! I've never done that before!"