The Geomatic Attic kicked off summer with a blast and a little rain, which didn’t dissuade the couple hundred people enjoying a variety of live music in the Geomatic Attic parking lot.
While I missed Redrum Triumph and Leeroy Stagger and his band, I arrived just in time for a strong set of country and roots music from Steve Coffey and the Lokels. They’ve been known to tell the odd off colour joke, so they had to watch themselves with all the children running around.
They played songs from throughout their career including a lot of murder ballads, some songs from their new CD as well as older cuts.
The fantastic band in
cluding Lance Loree , Dave Bauer and Russ Baker played a lot of different instruments including guitar, bass, banjo and steel guitar while Kevin Bellsner held things together on drums.
They put on an entertaining show of classic country music full of lots of twang and intricate picking earmarked by their earthy wit.
Dave Bauer played exceptional banjo on several cuts which had the audience nodding with the rhythm in appreciation.
Steve Coffey told several stories while Lance Loree cracked jokes and made funny faces while playing tasteful pedal steel and adding a few harmonized guitar solos.
Calgary bluesman Steve Pineo was next with Jane Hawley. But Pineo played a brief set of acoustic blues on his own, first, playing highlights from his past few CDs including “the most recent “Hardwired For the Blues,” as well as the outstanding “When I Grow Up,” from a few years ago and followed it up with a jazzy love song to his wife “ ruin a good friendship.”
He played an exceptional “party buster song” about three words which cause friction — Politics, economics and religion, which will be on his next CD.
Jane Hawley joined him for the rest of the set, picking up the fiddle and singing “the barometer is falling in Winnipeg,” as it started to sprinkle. She sang in a lovely back country twang and told stories about meeting her bull-riding husband to be on a blind date upon arriving in Alberta from Ontario, swearing “she‘d never marry a cowboy.”
Everybody was waiting for laid back Texas troubadour Hayes Carll, who was joined by “ the Hurtin Albertan” or all of Corb Lund’s band— Kurt Ciesla on stand-up bass, drummer Brady Valgardson and lead guitarist Grant Siemens.
He and Siemens started the set solo, warming up the audience. The band joined them for a rousing rendition of “Stomp an
d Holler,” from Carll’s latest CD KMAG YOYO .They weren’t perturbed at all as the rain started to fall and the sound guys scurried to cover equipment, barely acknowledging the water as a beautiful rainbow peeked through the dense cloud cover.
Carll covered highlights from his career including several from the CD including one written with Lund and Todd Snider.
“One Bed, Two Girls and Three Bottles of Wine,” was a highlight as was the honky tonk of “KMAG YOYO.”
Carll, sounding like a Texan Lou Reed, cracked quiet jokes about it “being a military acronym, nobody uses.”
He also joked about his early gigs in an old bar and played “I’ve Got A Gig.”
