City & Colour

Dallas Green’s City and Colour gently rock Saskatoon: Review, Photo Essay

Sask Jazz Festival hosts City and Colour and a double dose of Yukon Blonde

The night could be summed up like this:

When Dallas Green of acoustic folk band City and Colour belted out the lyrics from his song “Comin’ Home”, containing the lines “I’ve been through the Rockies, I’ve seen Saskatoon / I’ve driven down the highway 1, just hoping that I’d see you soon”, a collective roar sprang up from the Bessborough Gardens that was not unlike the sound of a thousand hearts breaking all at once.

Green sure knows how to charm an audience.

Bespectacled and sporting some delightful chapeau, Green channeled an easy Elvis Costello vibe as he ripped through songs from the past three City and Colour albums. It’s a far cry from his punk rock past – how many of us in the audience still fondly remember screamo group Alexisonfire? But Green has grown up, moved on, matured, etc. And his current sound takes us on that soul-searching, post-pubescent ride.

Not that he doesn’t still rock. City and Colour provide an excellent forum for dance and sing alongs. And the Saskatchewan Jazz Fest audience seemed to love every minute of it.

Although perhaps it was most telling when Green sipped gently on a flute of what looked to be a very delicate white wine. Maybe a nice chardonnay?

Tres adult.

City and Colour

Yukon Blonde: First in line for house band at Amigos?

Yukon Blonde

Opening the night was BC’s Yukon Blonde, who have visited Saskatoon something like 15 times in the past three years or so.

In other words, it’s hard to believe there are local music fans out there who still haven’t seen these guys.

The group took to the Bessborough in the early evening and belted out all the hits, including choice cuts from their latest album Tiger Talk.

More familiar with their club shows, Yukon Blonde played well but the spark and thrill of seeing them in a sweat-soaked crowd at Amigos was definitely lacking.

Thankfully, we got to see them at Amigos a couple hours later.

Once again jammed at the front of the stage, with a capacity crowd getting up in my very moist gitch, Yukon Blonde started off round two with the roar of a lion mid-coitus.

The four-piece clawed and gnashed at their instruments while their frizzy manes shook and trembled. And the crowd responded beautifully, swaying and smashing along. I suppose this is all just following the laws of rock ‘n’ roll physics.

Booze + capacity crowd + small venue + band = superhappyawesomefuntimes.

I would say multiply that formula by the amount of moist underwear in the room, but math has never been my strong suit.

Yukon Blonde

Car crash obstructs Broadway Bridge traffic

Car Accident

If there was a downside to the night it definitely came in the form of a car crash around 9pm. A jeep was flipped on its side at the bottom of the Broadway Bridge, near the intersection of 20th Street and 4th Ave.

There aren’t a lot of details right now, but there was a lot of blood at the scene.

Take care out there.