Hannah & Kitty

Last night kicked off my slew of April concerts (in this case, "slew" = the devilish number 6). Since coming back from Italy, and, I might add, being under the concert-going influence of a certain Nicky (concert photographer extraordinaire), I have rejected my old favourite-band-concert-only ways for a new attitude. I now get tickets to any musician I am interested in. Even if I only know one song.  More like especially if I only know one song. Such was the case for Bombay Bicycle Club, Maurice, and Bahamas, and such will be the case for Gotye tomorrow.

Front row slightly right-centre at the Commodore

I got to the Commodore Ballroom at 8:45pm and easily made my way to the second row, later politely asking someone in front of me if a gap I saw was taken. Front row for me it was! A place to keep my jacket and not have to tiptoe to see over.

Hannah Georgas

I was excited that local girl Hannah Georgas was opening the show. I loved her songs "The Deep End" (I can't believe that came on the radio two years ago already!) and "Lovesick", plus Nicky had told me great things since she had seen her live before.

Hannah and her guitarist played some songs from a new album that will be released in the fall and ended her set with a ensemble performance of "The Deep End" which included the headliner Kathleen Edwards and her keyboardist. I like the uniquely sweet tone of her voice and how humble she seemed at being able to play at the Commodore. She has been singing backup vocals for Kathleen's tour.

Kathleen Edwards is a Canadian singer-songwriter with country leanings and a classical violin past (I only found this last part out after reading about her on Wikipedia). I first heard of her in a story for the CBC news a few years ago, shortly around the time she released the album Asking for Flowers. I quickly loved the song of the same name (among a few others) and recommend giving her newest single "Change the Sheets" a listen!

Kathleen with violin and guitar

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I only had the news still on that night because I was washing dishes. Happy accident!

Kathleen (Twitter handle @kittythefool) is an entertainer. She was hilarious with her sometimes borderline dirty anecdotes which to me showed how comfortable she was in her own skin. I loved how she interacted with her lead guitarist (very cute and chummily) and just really lost herself in her music. It was a long set too at 1.5 hours and had a nice pace and change of mood to it.

One of the standout performances was for a song called "Hockey Skates" that she dedicated to Canadian women (video from a 2008 London show below). This after expressing her disgust at The Real Housewives of Vancouver and how they could not possibly be Canadian.

Her reasoning behind the song was that she needed to create a sports analogy to help men understand relationships. Or so I understood.