Review: Paul Brandt transforms Saddledome into midwinter hootenanny
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It should have been so obvious.
If ever there was a voice built to fill up the cavernous far reaches of the Saddledome, a 19,000 seat hockey arena, it’s Paul Brandt’s.
The Mount Royal University grad who has become a certified Canadian country music icon, brought his Journey tour, featuring himself alongside a trio of Canadian country acts — the Hunter Brothers, Jess Moskaluke, and High Valley — to the Dome Thursday night, transforming the big old barn into a midwinter hootenanny that energized a crowd of passionate country music fans.
That’s partly because Brandt the performer has a flare for both big iconic concert hero moments, in addition to being a thoughtful, nice guy who would walk a mile to give everyone their money’s worth at one of his shows.
That was evident midway through his 80 minute set Thursday, when he ventured out into the floor seats, pressed some flesh, and ended up doing a mini set from a riser at the end of the floor seats farthest from the stage, in order to give the folks sitting in the back of the arena a little up-close-and-personal time.
With the help of a projected video screen that flashed images of Brandt, his wife Liz and life inside a country song, he built a narrative around his set list that most of the 7,000 or so in attendance were pretty familiar with, as Brandt has been a local treasure ever since he won the Stampede Talent Show in the early 1990’s.
There was a raucous opening number, The Journey, as Brandt, dressed in an outfit that was an ode both to the original man in black (Cash), as well as Garth Brooks (a black cowboy hat that engulfed Brandt’s head) bounded onstage like an excited 10-year-old kid running for the tree on Christmas morning.
There were familiar tunes that are more like Alberta country anthems — My Heart has a History (the most-played Canadian country song on radio in history), and Small Towns and Big Dreams, which Brandt introduced by asking, “Is anyone here from a small town?”, generating a roar, followed by a list of some of the small towns he played upon his return from Nashville years back.
(“We played Weyburn,” he said. “We played Thompson, Manitoba. We played Flin Flon!” he said, before adding that as nice as the people in Flin Flon were, he wasn’t ever going back.)
YYC/BNA was a melancholy ballad that told the story of Brandt’s dual identity as a Calgary kid who ended up in Nashville, where he was climbing the country music charts in the U.S., before tossing the whole American Dream in a Tennessee dumpster and returning home.
Brandt’s musical superpower is his rich baritone, and one of the vocal high points of the show came during I’m an Open Road, when he performed a duet with Moskaluke, who sang back at him from the riser tucked into the floor seats.
Moskaluke is no shrinking voice either — she channelled a little Pat Benatar as she alternated verses with Brandt, filling the Dome, which isn’t exactly an acoustical masterpiece, with a few minutes of musical glory.
If Brandt is a nice guy when it comes to audiences, he is a pretty generous headliner too, who incorporated the entire lineup of opening acts into his show.
High Valley’s Curtis and Brad Rempel, the brother act that hail originally from tiny La Crete, Alberta, joined in on When You Call My Name, while the Hunter Brothers, who hail from tiny Shaunavon, Saskatchewan, joined in on Life’s Railroad to Heaven and Amazing Grace.
“We all grew up the same way,” Brandt said, “in church.”
They also all learned their country chops in Western Canada, which came across particularly during High Valley’s exuberant set, which the Rempel brothers did a particularly effective job of shooting the breeze with the audience between performing some of their better-known numbers such as Forever Young and their opening number, Dirt Road Side of the County Line.
Lead singer Brad Rempel, who looks a little like Clark Kent if he was a country singer and not Superman, seemed genuinely euphoric to be performing in the Saddledome – he reminisced about his first Calgary concert back in 2010, when the band played a badly attended pancake breakfast during Stampede, which made Thursday night’s show make him feel like he was the king of the world.
It was kind of corny, but Rempel managed to sell it and the audience went mad for him and his brother, who played some bluegrass and managed to carve out a set that spanned the sound of the last 50 years of country music.
Moskaluke performed a strong set of her own, with the highlight being Cheap Wine and Cigarettes (“That’s a taste that I’ll never forget!”)
By the end of the night, after a rousing medley of closing tunes by Brandt that included Leavin’, Didn’t Even See the Dust and an epic Alberta Bound, everyone joined Brandt onstage for a Johnny Cash classic I Walk the Line.
It was a perfect way to ring out January, the bleakest month on the calendar, on a high note.
Leave it to Paul Brandt, Calgary’s favourite country cousin, to find a way to send us all into February feeling a bit better about everything.
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