On Saturday I went to Sugar Nightclub to check out the final date of Maurice’s tour of Ontario and Western Canada. I had planned on bringing my more covert recording setup to get some video but just as I was about to run out the door I noticed lead singer Jean-Paul Maurice posted a message asking if I wanted to shoot the show. So I quickly scrambled my better camcorder gear together and headed down to the club.
I unfortunately missed Kingdom Cloud so I can’t comment on how they were. I arrived just before Treelines took the stage. I looked forward to checking them out based on the positive review of their Rifflandia set by our friend at Island Soapbox. Gotta say my “clone” was right (If you don’t know, the person who runs Island Soapbox has the same name as me). Treelines are very good. If you get a chance to check them out I recommend it. I think the only unfortunate thing about shooting video of them this weekend was that it’s still “Movember”… Some people just shouldn’t have a mustache.
Maurice took the stage after Treelines. After seeing the full band perform an awesome set at Rifflandia where bassist Mark Lavoie even sacrificed his heel, I was looking forward to this show. Maurice did not disappoint and neither did the audience. When I shoot a concert I always stay aware of the crowd. The last thing you want to do when shooting a band is to pan to or go to a wide shot of a non-existant or dead crowd. A couple hundred people were in attendance on Saturday and many were dancing and singing along to Maurice’s songs which was great to see. This show was promoted the band’s new five-song EP called ‘Big Country’ which was available for free download for a while when it was first released. You can stream it at their website www.wearemaurice.com
The only problem I ran into while shooting the show was that the barrier that normally leaves a nice gap between the the stage and the audience wasn’t in use for this show. It made moving around the stage for different angles a challenge. I also discovered my Canon HF S100 doesn’t like red light on red shifts in dark rooms. The camcorder’s auto colour correction goes a little haywire and skintones start looking overly red on the camera’s LCD screen. Oh well, it’s still mostly a consumer camera so I don’t exactly have that much control.
Here’s video of Maurice performing ‘Robin,’ a song that has been getting a good amount of airplay on http://www.thezone.fm. A song known for being about a having a threesome.
And here’s Treelines performing the title track of their last EP with ‘Young Man’
