Gather ’round chil­dren, it’s sto­ry­time! Back when I was 19 years old, at the height of my salad days, I was going to a few shows a week. This was long before I made the big move to Toronto; I was still liv­ing with my par­ents in Oshawa. We had this great venue in town called the Vel­vet Elvis, which was really the only place around where you could see inter­est­ing bands from Oshawa and abroad. It’s where I met a lot of my friends and saw some great bands for the first time (Evening Hymns, The Rural Alberta Advan­tage, and Ohbi­jou to name a few). When I found out that Julie Doiron was com­ing to town I def­i­nitely knew that it was a big deal, though I wasn’t too famil­iar with her music at the time.

Arriv­ing at the Vel­vet Elvis that night I can still clearly remem­ber the scene. I showed up for the show way too early, so that it was pretty much just me, the staff, and the bands. The Elvis was a small room; I don’t think the place was sup­posed to hold more than 40 peo­ple (though it often held much much more). So there I was, awk­wardly clutch­ing my cam­era, prob­a­bly lean­ing against the bar try­ing my hard­est not to look like a com­plete nerd. Soon the room filled with friends and strangers, far past capac­ity. Julie played a very casual set, play­ing songs off her new album, tak­ing requests, and even throw­ing in some choice cov­ers. There was even a mem­o­rable moment where an ine­bri­ated man asked if he could sing a duet with Julie, which she han­dled like a pro, humour­ing the guy until he wan­dered upstairs to pass out on the couch. I really enjoyed Julie’s set, and even got to speak with her briefly after the show.

The scene at the Cobourg a few weeks back was like a mir­ror image of that night at the Vel­vet Elvis. Once again I found myself in a very small room over­flow­ing with peo­ple, while Julie played a nice selec­tion of new songs, requests, and cov­ers. Once again, I was way to early for the show, how­ever instead of mum­bling a few words to Julie after her set like I did the first time I saw her, when I arrived she invited me over to chat. Under­stand, after see­ing her in Oshawa, I quickly became a huge fan, buy­ing all her albums and see­ing her every chance I could; I even got the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view her on sev­eral occa­sions, so it’s got­ten to the point where we’ll always have a friendly chat. Con­cern­ing the show, thank­fully there wasn’t a drunk man demand­ing a duet, but Julie did sur­prise a mem­ber of the audi­ence by request­ing help on one song. The audi­ence mem­ber hap­pened to be Gen­tle­man Reg, and the song hap­pened to be one of Julie’s most well known tunes “Will You Still Love Me in Decem­ber.” I’m really glad I was film­ing when this hap­pened because it was def­i­nitely one of the high­lights of the night, and it prob­a­bly won’t ever hap­pen again, so enjoy!

Open­ing for her was Will Kid­man, who usu­ally plays in the Con­stan­tines but on this night was play­ing solo. I’ve seen Will play a lot over the years, which is strange since it doesn’t hap­pen that often. I guess I’m just always at the right place at the right time. He hasn’t had an album out since 2006’s Quiet Waters, but with the amount of new songs he was play­ing hope­fully we’ll be get­ting a new one soon. I think this song is called “Crime Dog.”

Tags: Gentleman Reg, Julie Doiron, The Cobourg, Will Kidman · Leave a comment