I’ve seen East Vancouver based poet/rapper/singer/songwriter C.R Avery before, but I don’t think with a full band behind him.
Their Oct. 30 show at the Slice turned out to be a unique and impressive blend of Iggy Pop, Woody Guthrie and Allen Ginsberg, or some other beat poet with a little bit of rap/ hip hop, blues, folk and rock thrown in for variety.
The set showed Avery to be a just about perfect crossover artist, whose music spanned pretty much every imaginable genre.
They definitely deserved more than the approximately 30 people in attendance.
You never knew what the next song would sound like in Avery’s set as they all were vastly different.
They ranged from rap songs, harmonica powered blues numbers and full bore rockers which had Avery and his guitarist leaping into the audience and jumping on tables and chairs and then rolling around on the floor.
They had the audience singing along “oh,oh,oh,” with one song about a “hotel room, 50 miles out of town.”
They even sang a tender, heartfelt ballad with magnificent vocal harmonies.
I left in the middle of a massive harmonica solo on an old Woody Guthrie song, which Avery performed in the middle of the audience.
And his crack band including a guitarist, bassist, keyboardist and drummer , effortlessly switched genres according to Avery’s whims.
Impressive.
