01.29.2010 Great Lake Swimmers / Jon Rae Fletcher

I first saw Great Lake Swimmers about 2 or 3 years ago when they were opening up for Final Fantasy. At the time, Onigara had just came out and I was pretty big on their single "Your Rocky Spine". To my chagrin, the crowd was being too busy having a conversation with themselves to care. What a difference a couple of years make. Despite playing in a much larger venue, the crowd was almost silent throughout most of the set.

Opening the set was Jon Rae Fletcher. He played a 45 minute set of mostly folk, roots and rock. The crowd loved him. While this is probably due to the fact that he is from BC, his performance was engaging. In fact, he even got a 1 song encore from the crowd.





After a quick change, Great Lake Swimmers hit the stage with "Everything is moving so fast" from their new album Lost Channels (which is very good by the way). Drawing from their previous works, the Swimmers played a pretty varied set. At about the halfway point of the show, singer Tony Dekker, played 3 songs acoustically. Not surprising to anyone, and not taking anything away from the rest of the band, it's Tony Dekker who is the real star of the show. Playing stripped down versions of some of these songs, really punctuated how good they really were.





Towards the end of the show they played a trio of their best known (radio hits) songs, "Pulling on a Line" and "Still"; which I suppose is the main reason why they sold out the theatre. As an extra special treat, during their 3 song encore, they played "See you on the Moon". Aside from being rarely played, it was a song that is most well known for being in the style of a children's song and yet not patronizing. This was obviously the icing on a superb night.


$30/0