PAUL BRANDT PUTS ON A SHOW AT REXALL PLACE
Country music artist Paul Brandt performs at Rexall Place on Wednesday. He was joined by Dean Brody on their Road Trip Tour. Complete concert review,
It may have been Wednesday night, but Dean Brody and Paul Brandt delivered like it was the weekend.
That’s standard practice for most touring bands, really, but in country music it’s a necessity. Good times, cold beers, and trucks — always trucks.
After warming up the crowd with most of Bob Marley’s Legend album and starting off with a fast train beat number (Bounty), Dean Brody proceeded to truck talking with his second song, Undone. People Know You By Your First Name drops a mention of social standing via truck brand, while Little Yellow Blanket switched vehicles to a Cadillac. Skinny dipping was mentioned in half of the first four songs, various modes of transport in all four.
But enough about lyrics; every writer obsessively revisits their favourite themes, and Dean Brody is no different. Musically he wanders a little farther afield, shades of rock to country to country rock, even a touch of dance music, slipping in fiddle strains, banjo, beefed-up guitar for the rockers. There was the for-the-troops tear-jerker with power ballad solo (Brothers); goofy, stripped-down banjo, fiddle and accordion stomp (Crop Circles); neo-Celtic party stomper (It’s Friday).
Upside Down saw Brody handling a ukulele, Mountain Man had him swinging a chainsaw around the stage à la Wendy O. Williams.
That was probably his best moment; he got more cheers for Bring Down the House and encore Canadian Girls, but there was something about the high, piercing whine of the chainsaw that cracked the set’s professional gloss and made things far more interesting. Well, that and the bass player’s lumbering Grimace dance, which he broke out on alternating songs — but that’s another article in itself.
Paul Brandt wasted no time getting to his latest single, the anthemic I’m An Open Road, bringing out opener Jess Moskaluke for the choruses; a surprisingly large number of people knew the words, considering it’s been out for no more than a month and a half. He topped Brody’s list of vehicles by naming four (truck, train, car, plane) on the mid-tempo rocker Leavin’, taunted the inhabitants of a Northern city with Forever Summer, took a gentle country-swing stroll on the modestly patriotic Canadian Man.
Small Towns and Big Dreams was another easy-groover, as close to a manifesto as the Calgarian has ever got. That or Get a Bed, the single that caused such an uproar for Brandt last winter. Right beneath all of the good-natured barbs aimed at the current crop of bro-country singers is a moralist at work, one that can follow up a slick, radio-ready hit like Get a Bed with the frankly evangelical That’s What I Love About Jesus.
That’s also where he sounds the most impassioned. Whether singing about faith, doubt (Calm Before the Storm) or domesticity (I Do), stripped back to guitar or minimal backing, Brandt is most riveting when he’s closest to the middle-of-the-road. The craft shines through at all times, though, hooks for miles on I’m Gonna Fly and Didn’t Even See the Dust, plus an obvious, crowd-pleasing cover of Convoy, complete with giant, inflatable rubber ducky, shades of Flaming Lips or Pink Floyd.
Opener Jess Moskaluke, this year’s Canadian Country Music Association’s Female Artist of the Year, had less than half-anhour in which to boil down her act. What came out was mostly ’80s rock with a hint of twang — which means she’ll do just fine on today’s country radio.