Kitchener-Waterloo based singer songwriter Danny Michel had a sold out crowd eating out of the palm of his hand to open the Geomatic Attic’s new season, Sept. 26.
While numerous people had Michel perform before, and were looking forward to hearing old favourites, some tracks off his new CD “Sunset Sea,” which was recorded in Belize, as well as some familiar stories behind the songs, a surprising number of the crowd were new to the experience.
Michel beamed ear to ear, cracked jokes and told stories while using a variety of delay and loop effects to record rhythms to play over.
This worked very well for some of the more Carribean flavoured numbers, for which he recorded licks which sounded like steel drums.
He also spoke about his song “Feather, Fur and Fin” being one of the winner of David Suzuki’s “playlist for the planet” competition and played it for the appreciative audience who were getting into all of Michel’s stories behind his songs, even though a lot of them had heard them before.
His beautiful vocal melodies were reminiscent of Paul Simon, and indeed he gave credit to Simon before singing crowd favourite “Tennessee Tobacco.”
One of many inspirational moments was during another crowd favourite “14 Masks of Danger,” his Mexican wrestler song, in which he laid down a reggae rhythm on one of his delay loops, then frantically overturned his carry on bag next to him, looking for his iPhone. Once Mike Spencer found it for him, Michel used it to play siren and gunshot sound effects through his guitar pick ups and played it through another delay.
He had several of these moments, adding the Spiderman theme into one of his solos and ending “Whale of a Tale” with a few bars of “Joy To the World” as it was about “that guy who has done everything, including play “Joy to the World” for the Pope.”
Michel took a few requests, and was surprised to get one for “White Lightning,” which he happily delivered.
He was called back for an encore, which ended up being a cover of the Clash’s “Lost in The Supermarket,” then wound up “the last night of my Western Candian tour” with “Love You for Miles.”
The Clash influence was prevalent as expected during a late starting show by the Manvils at the Slice,Sept. 26, especially during three new songs they introduced to a surprisingly good sized Sunday night crowd.
Calgary drum and guitar duo Miesha and the Spanks opened with a set of punk and garage rock, however later showed stylistic on a couple ’60s pop tinged rock tunes.
