Bluesfest Day 2: Canadian Radio Performs Live

With better weather and a packed crowd, a trio of Canadian performers brought their greatest hits to Ottawa. Ryland James, The Barenaked Ladies and Jann Arden trotted out their well-known tunes, plus a few covers, in sharp performances.

Ryland James brought out his acoustic for some straightforward takes on his popular tunes. He said that his new single, “Three Purple Hearts”, was about falling in love with his boyfriend, and then having to do a long-distance relationship during the pandemic. The song demonstrated a slightly gravelly quality of his voice reminiscent of John Mayer. While “Save Me”, an acoustic take on his dance song collaboration, showed off his high vocal range.

Toward the middle of his set he said he was playing the last one more slow song before speeding things up. The later, more danceable tunes were a nice change of pace, and gave the performance some added depth.

James comes across as a sensitive musician, expressing his syllables with great tenderness. Though not as thoroughly produced as some of his singles, his music is well-suited for the singer-and-guitar experience too. Besides radio, expect his love songs and gentle words to be playing indefinitely at weddings years into the future.

Up next was The Barenaked Ladies, stars of Canadian, and occasionally American 90’s radio. They opened with one of their new singles, followed shortly by a freestyle rap by Ed Robertson about Ottawa, which in turn felt very true to their 90’s roots. On the whole it was an unusually conversational show, full of stage banter, speeches and jokes.

New single “Flip” was a bit of fun wordplay backed by warm chord progressions. It’s not the kind of intensely bold work that suggests a band trying to break into the mainstream, which makes sense, because by now they’ve firmly done that already. Classic singles like “Pinch Me” demonstrated more of that light rap style the band is known for. That syle, and the occasional turntable scratch in their songs, made me miss some of the fun aspects of the easygoing cross-cultural experiments of that era.

Robertson went back and forth with his bandmates–Jim Creegan on Bass, Kevin Hearn on the keys, and Tyler Stuart on the drums–about all manner of things, some political. Robertson riffed on hospital protestors, got the crowd to chant their support for being double vaxxed, and dug repeatedly at anti-vaccine rhetoric (“I did my research!”, he cried on several occasions). Sometimes it was funny, like when Robertson absurdly said the hospital protestors were making it hard for him to enjoy yelling at hospital workers like usual.

But at other times it dragged on. At one point after a few moments of other banter, Hearn clarified that when he’d supported “the protestors downtown”, he meant anti-oil protestors, not the hospital protestors. “I’d like to protest how long it takes us to play the next goddamn song!”, Creegan quipped. The joke landed, maybe a little too well.

Robertson announced they would play the theme to a popular comedy sitcom…and then played the opening chords to the Happy Days theme. That, on the other hand, was a good one. They then naturally launched into “The Big Bang Theory”, which as I often suspected, happens to exist as a full song, well beyond the 15 seconds of it seared into my memory from watching daytime television. The piece was a nice bit of musical fun with science, including an excellent synth solo, and a striking reminder of the band’s mainstream influence.

Beyond that bit of keyboard wizardry, the band made several displays of each core member–this was noticeably not just “the Ed Robertson show”. Hearn sang “The Township of King”, a nice, light song about rural Canada. Creegan got a minute or two to solo impressively off of Chic’s “Good Times” bassline, leading into “One Week”. And Stuart finished the set by covering “Livin’ on a Prayer” and “A Whole Lotta Love”. Stuart can really hit the high notes on those songs; it was definitely different from the rest of the set, but it made me think that I’d be happy to see a Tyler Stuart cover show, too.

Although it did make me miss the powerful camaraderie once shared onstage by Robertson and founding member Steven Page, I appreciated this nice gesture of whole-band togetherness.

Jann Arden closed out the night with more banter of her own, and largely pitch-perfect takes on her popular hits. The years have not dimmed her vocal range, and tracks like “Where No One Knows Me” sounded much as they did when they were recorded, but with the added warmth of high-quality, live instrumentation. The acoustic chord progression on “Could I Be Your Girl” sounded as comforting as when I heard it for the first time.

Arden has toured for decades, sat for countless interviews, and toured for years. Some artists can grow weary of this process over time, or lose their enthusiasm for playing their oldest tracks, but Arden showed no sign of this. Her stories and banter with the crowd had an amusingly loose quality; at one point she felt inclined to mention that she was totally sober.

In one of her stories, she talked about how life is full of unpredictable choices. Early in her career, she described taking the long way to a friend’s coffee shop through the park, where she overheard some music. It turned out to be Anne Loree, performing “Insensitive”. She wondered how different things would have been if she’d taken the short way that day, and the track sounded just as sparse and contemplative as in 1994.

But best of all, towards the end of her show, she reminded us that things can get better. “They will get better.” After a long hiatus from seeing most live music, it was a welcome message.