Show #30 - March 10, 2010: Jason Collett, Zeus and Bahamas present The Bonfire Ball @ Lee's Palace

"I like to think of Zeus as The Band when they're backing up Jason, and Crazy Horse when they're backing me up."

Day One of Canadian Music Week and there's a lineup that extends from the doors of Lee's Palace east to nearly Brunswick Ave. They're waiting for 'Dylan' 'Young' and 'The Band.' Wednesday was not only the start of CMW but the launch of the Bonfire Ball tour; the only showcase to not list set times for the performers. For those of you familiar with Jason Collett's Basement Revue series (if not, check out Show #18 and Show #20) the format of the Bonfire Ball is comforting... Collett, Zeus and Toronto's Bahamas (Afie Jurvanan) backed each other up through a revolving set of all three artist's material.

The bulk of the two sets were filled by Collett, who's catalogue is a little deeper and who's album Rat a Tat Tat was released Tuesday on Arts & Crafts. Rat a Tat Tat was produced by Carlin Nicholson and Michael O'Brien of Zeus and features backing vocals and instrumentals from Zeus' other half, Quin and Rob Drake, and Bahamas himself, Jurvanan plays on several tracks. There's an idea; take the band that played the album on the tour for the album, and while you're at it, play the great music they're making.

Leaning against the stage, camera in hand, I rarely turned around to see the full club, but you knew they were there. With each starting note, a cheer, with each ending, another. Instruments continually exchanged, Collett, Jurvanan, and the boys in Zeus played through the night, the only indication as to who's music we were hearing, the shift in vocal duty. In an interview with NOW Magazine, Neil Quin of Zeus said his main worry about the long sets was "going that long without smoking." Funny, that was the first thing he mentioned before Zeus finished the first set and the crowd was forced into a 15 minute intermission. The only break they would take through 3 hours.

In that same interview with NOW, Quin said, “There’s pressure to change your style every few years based on whatever is happening at the time, and certain brands of rock and roll were never fully explored as a result.” The show felt like proof of concept on that idea of fully exploring something familiar. Collett's drawling Canadian rock, Zeus's harmonized Beatles references, Bahamas' pop-blues; they're nothing new, nothing ground-breaking. You don't go home at the end of the night telling your friends about how many people were on stage, the strange instruments you had never seen, or the weird shit they did. You talk about the stories they told. You hear the hooks, the melodies. You feel like they took something familiar and comfortable and made you hear it again in a different way. Referential? Yes, but not derivative.

Comfort. It's the word I've used every time I describe a Jason Collett show to someone. Now I can include Bahamas and Zeus in that musical adjective. They all looked so comfortable up there. When they perform, we watch, comforted by the familiarity, their ease and the jokes in the lyrics that we feel in on, the stories that we get the strange sense we've experienced ourselves. Perhaps that's part of the success of the bands that Bahamas compared himself and the others to. Neil Young, Bob Dylan and The Band give us songs that speak to the push and pull we each experience. They give eloquence to the conflicts and concepts we hold dear. They express something that feels familiar. An older interview with Collett was on CBC Radio 3's Extended Play recently. They were talking about Canadian stories, and on the front end of that show, host Lisa Chistiansen might have cut to the heart of why we felt this way and why the Bonfire Ball will be so successful;

"We all know what it's about... our stories are all different but somehow recognizable."

Links

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Bonfire Ball Tour Dates: http://www.arts-crafts.ca/jasoncollett/tour.php
Jason Collett on CBC Radio 3: http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Jason-Collett
Zeus on CBC Radio 3: http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/Zeus
Bahamas on CBC Radio 3: http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/bands/bahamas
Extended Play w. Lisa Christiansen: http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/podcasts/CBC-Radio-3-Extended-Play-Interviews-and-Ideas

Set Lists (minus full encore... help fill in the artist where I didn't know)

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Set One
Livin' The Dream

Fire (Jason Collett)

Hangover Days (Jason Collett)

Your Touch

Caught Me Thinkin' (Bahamas)

Okay, Alright, I'm Alive (Bahamas)

Be My Witness (Bahamas)

I Know (Zeus)

Kindergarten (Zeus)

Fever of the Time (Zeus)

Almost Summer (Jason Collett)

High Summer (Jason Collett)

Greater Times on the Wayside (Zeus)

The River by the Garden (Zeus)

Feral Republic (Jason Collett)

Bitch City (Jason Collett)

Winnipeg Winds (Jason Collett)

Marching Through Your Head (Zeus)

Cornerstones (Zeus)

Set Two

How Does It Feel? (Zeus)

The Renegade (Zeus)

I Got You Babe (Bahamas)

Never Again

Cold Blue Halo (Jason Collett)

Lake Superior (Jason Collett)

Rave On Sad Songs (Jason Collett)

Already Yours (Bahamas)

What's Worse (Bahamas)

At The Risk of Repeating (Zeus)

Love Is A Chain (Jason Collett)

Out of Time (Jason Collett)

Charlyn, Angel of Kensington (Jason Collett)

Love Is A Dirty Word (Jason Collett)

Brownie Hawkeye (Jason Collett)

Hockey Teeth (Bahamas)

Heavy On Me (Zeus)

You Gotta Tell'er (Zeus)

Blue Sky (Jason Collett)

Rainy Day Rain (Jason Collett)

We All Lose One Another (Jason Collett)

Long May You Love (Jason Collett)

I'll Bring The Sun (Jason Collett): Video from NxEW via Jessica @ roundletters

Encore:

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Can't Get You Out Of My Head (Kylie Minogue cover... video here)