I didn’t catch a lot of Lethbridge Jazz Festival shows this week, but I made a point of catching Jack Semple’s performance at the Slice, Saturday June 14.

He's they type of player who makes you want to burn your guitar. Instead, he burns up the frets using only his fingers with nary a pick in sight.

I caught him in a middle of a long break and didn’t hear as much of his set as I would have liked.

 I missed his first set and only caught the first part of his second set. As expected there were platefuls of incendiary guitar licks served up and a  dish of delicious bass and drum grooves.

He had complete control of dynamics, playing softer to allow his drummer and bassist to take solos.

 Semple sang in his melodic mid ’70s pop style tenor voice (along the lines of the Doobie Brothers and the Eagles and other ’70s soft rock) and more impressively sang along with his guitar solos. It was so convincing it was tough to tell the two apart at times.

 A beautiful version of his song “ Peace, Love and Happiness,”  from his most recent CD pretty much summed up the entire show.

As there was nothing but peace, love, happiness and a heap of guitar in the room for the attentive crowd. A couple of the sold out crowd got up and danced especially to his extended jam on Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Cold Shot.”

 He added a lot of funk and R and B stylings to get those toes-a-tapping.
They show was sold out, but there were a lot of empty seats.