#hillside inside

Jennifer Castle opening was very good -- really impressive voice... I think I would have maybe preferred a bit more instrumentation than just the guitar but it was still really good. Also apparently she'd just gotten back from a week in Mexico the previous day and was thus kind of sleepy... all the more impressive!

Showed up fairly early and planted myself in the front row so I had lots of time for people-watching... at one point Robbie Gordon the drummer showed up on crutches (he didn't have those in Toronto last week!), which was later revealed to be because he'd fallen off a bunk bed (Owen: "He was so excited at the novelty of living this childhood dream that he leapt out of bed and sprained his ankle")

Owen's plan for the concert: "I'm going to play some loopy doopy solo stuff, then some band stuff, then there'll be a Q&A, then... well we'll see how it goes from there"

the Q&A: initially there was silence and Owen said "I don't know whether to be disappointed or relieved" then eventually someone asked when he started playing violin and he kind of acted disappointed (he asked "do you have a smartphone?" cause I'm pretty sure he's been asked that quite a lot) but did go on to say he'd played since he was 3 and recounted the tale of how he stopped during teenage because growing facial hair caused him to develop a violin hickey which his high school "friends" made fun of (at a time when he "wasn't getting any other kind of hickeys")

after that he asked if anyone had a "more interesting question" to which someone else asked what kind of looping software he used... once again he kind of sighed disappointedly and said something along the lines of "... yeah I read a lot and I like to cook... okay fine I use ____ looping software" (I forget what it was, I don't know much about looping) 

"i'm going to do something a little different now, I haven't done this since the last time I was in a church .... I'll leave that up to your imaginations" (it was actually playing the Great Elsewhere solo instead of with the band, which sounded amazing and asdgkohaasdlk god I love that song)

also church related, at the end when Owen was naming all the people he wanted to thank, he asked if he was missing anyone, to which Matt Smith raised his arms in the air with an awe-filled expression. "oh yes, right, the... architecture! Thanks to the architecture..."

and one more church related thing, after Tryst With Mephistopheles he said "okay now I'm going to play some more church-appropriate songs... in mood if not in lyrics" (and then went on to play The Passions)

before I Am Not Afraid: he commented that he wasn't going to have any children, saying that he recently did a buzzfeed quiz about it. The first question was "Do you like sleep?" so already he wasn't doing well, and then the second one was "Do you like fecal matter?" to which he was like "I haven't really had enough exposure to fecal matter to know for sure, but I already failed the first question so..."

Anyway, concert was gorgeous as always. He closed with CN Tower which was pretty awesome as I haven't heard that one live before (took me a while to realise what he was playing)

Also bought myself one of the new In Conflict songbooks which I'm pretty excited to play (even though I'm extremely out of practice and don't have access to a piano anymore most of the time... whatever, I'll make it work)

We finally made it to the concert after taking a lovely cab ride with a possibly drunk driver (see part 1, if you want to read about the dramatic pre-concert events). See, Guelph is a pretty small town so you'd think that most cab drivers would know their way around town but not this one.  Judging from his confusion, it's safe to say not very many people ask to be dropped off at a church on a Saturday night...

I'm pretty sure they couldn't have chosen any venue less suited to host a rock concert.  But Hillside Inside made it work and the concert felt pretty intimate.   Plus we were allowed to drink beer and chipotle chicken wraps without religious figures cursing us for the rest of our lives (at least we hope not!).  

The concert started off with an intro from Vish Khanna (kind of an epic guy on CBC radio 3).  And then Born Ruffians came on.  But sadly only 3 members of the band were there.  Andy had broken his arm rollerblading or possibly skateboarding (we can't remember which one) the day before.  Apparently Becks and Andy have a lot of clumsiness in common! Even without a band member, Born Ruffians' set was still great.  They played a lot of songs from their 2008 album  Red, Yellow & Blue.  It took a while for the crowd to get going but once they played I Need a Life, the crowd started to come out of their shells.

Next up was Hollerado who played a mix of old and new songs.  A crowd favourite was Juliette.  But the best part was all of Menno Versteeg's great stories in between songs.