Four bands play a fundraiser.
Last Friday a concert fundraiser was held by the Mount Allison Water Brigade chapter of Global Brigades Mount Allison, with the proceeds going to Global Brigades. The performance in the frigid Music Hall featured four groups over the course of the evening. The show was well-attended for a performance in Sackville, but the lack of insulation in the Music Hall led to a dwindling audience as the show progressed. Despite the cold and disrepair was a truly beautiful place to have a concert.
The night began with Luke Trainor, formerly of Bolivia, who was joined by some friends to form Curly Q and the Periwinkles. They performed a mixture of covers and originals in a short five-song set. The covers included Neil Young’s “Heart of Gold” along with acoustic renditions of Rihanna and the Police.
Michael Duguay followed with his second performance of the year. His set featured songs off his last album, a product of last year’s Recording Production Month Challenge, and his upcoming album. They were all in his typical style, heavily layered with figures of speech and common phrases that risked cliché at points.
Boxers changed the tune of the night, getting people out of the quiet folk mood and inspiring them to get up and moving. They did this by asking the onlookers to leave the aisles of seats and come closer to the stage and start shaking the floorboards of the abandoned concert hall. Chris Meaney once again showed off just how good he is with his pedals, creating complex and varied builds in each of his songs, giving Boxers the sound of a band much bigger than it is. Their set ended with a quirky Pat LePoidevin cover that was sang on top of a groundwork consisting of beatboxing made possible once again by Meaney’s looping pedal, prominent in most of Boxers’s songs.
The final band of the night was the Halifax-based Trippin’ Hippies. Their music was true to its roots classic rock. Everything about the band screamed that they were a product of the 1970s when Led Zeppelin had the Western world in a musical and cultural stranglehold. They did try to break this mould somewhat with one song featuring a flute instead of vocals, but it was ultimately overshadowed by the rest of the band and was mostly lost in the mix. Unfortunately at this point of the night, the cold had gotten the better of the crowd and attendance was not as good for them as it was for the previous acts.
