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On August 19th, 2023 m’lady and I drove across the barrens to Heart’s Content to see Blue Star Juniper perform at the Regional Centre for the Arts.
If you’ll allow me to unpack that intro a little…”the barrens” is what they call the hump of geography that lies between the east and west coasts of our peninsula here in eastern Newfoundland, a gradual up-then-down chunk of land that spans about twenty kilometres*. “Heart’s Content” is a town of 330 people over on the Trinity Bay side of the peninsula. It’s one of three optimistically-named “Heart’s” that amazingly lie within just seventeen kilometres of one another along a winding ocean road, the other two being Heart’s Delight (pop. 646) and Heart’s Desire (pop. 184). “Blue Star Juniper” is the name of a newly-formed duo of Newfoundland musicians, and finally the “Regional Centre for the Arts” is in fact a small wooden church that has been spendidlly converted into a small wooden performance space with a proper stage, an entrenched sound system, and even a pair of professional LED lighting racks.
M’lady and I stepped through the door, got our tickets torn, we bought a mittful of 50/50 tickets and found a place to sit in the second pew…err…row. That still put us in the front, as the rest of the 30+ people in attendance hung back in the latter rows.
In no time at all a man stepped onstage to introduce the musicians. He couldn’t get the mic to work but no matter, everyone could hear him just fine; he didn’t even have to raise his voice. He said he was quite familiar with the Craig Young half of Blue Star Juniper – Craig being a world-class guitar player and singer who’d spent years working in Nashville before returning home and quickly becoming a mainstay on the Newfoundland music scene – but he admitted that he was wholly unfamiliar with the other half of BSJ, namely singer, guitarist and banjo player Andrea Monro. Me too, on both counts.
Craig and Andrea stepped onto the stage and started with a country song I was unfamiliar with. It was nice. The woody baritone timbre of Craig’s voice blended perfectly Andrea’s honeyed high-and-lonesome vocals, and her softly plucked banjo chords complimented his deftly perfect strumming. It was really nice.
Next up was a run through Dolly Parton’s Jolene that was nothing short of album-worthy. I mean it was freakin’ gorgeous. Craig didn’t lean on the song’s original arpeggios, instead he kept time by outlining the chords with a miraculously unjarring irregular strumming pattern peppered with subtly blistering guitar lines. Every once in a while he came in with a vocal harmony that elevated the song exponentially. They were playing acoustically with the two of them standing on either side of a big old-style ambient microphone, so whomever was singing would lean in whilst the other would lean out, all the while maintaining just the right balance. Altogether it was nothing short of blissful sonic joy, and the walls of that old wooden church were doubtlessly happy to absorb it. I know I was.
And the guitar solos?!? Omigawd, Craig is such an astounding soloist. I mean the guy is drop-dead amazing. So smooth, so relaxed, so endlessly creative. That Martin guitar of his just sounded like butter. It was so, so indescribably delicious.
Gosh, what else did they play in the first set? They did one of their own that Craig mentioned had been getting some airplay around the province, St. Jones Within, named after a tiny town outside of Clarenville. Yes, the town is actually called St. Jones Within. No wonder Craig wrote a song about it. They also did a couple of Merle Haggard tunes, a Carter Family tune, Galileo by the indigo Girls…I tell you, it was all so great.
They did the 50/50 draw at the setbreak. At $87 the take-home was much higher than I thought it would have been; people sure like their 50/50 here in NL. But the bottom line here is that $87 went towards the upkeep of the Regional Centre for the Arts, which is pretty imprtant. I didn’t win but I sure was happy to have contributed.
The second set included a killer Walking After Midnight by Patsy Cline,Don Williams’ Lord, I Hope This Day is Good, a Billy Joel song I had never heard before called The Downeaster “Alexa” and a whole bunch more. Just like the first set it was all breathtakingly beautiful. Special mention definitely goes to their version of John Prine’s Angel From Montgomery, which was just as exquisite as Jolene had been sublime. M’lady mentioned that she had never heard anyone play the banjo like Andrea did – so gently and so non-aggressive – and I agreed; her playing was simply simpatico and it added a mound of placidity to the music.
After the pair left the stage we few dozen in the audience clapped enough for Craig to poke his head comically out from the wings, assessing the encore situation with raised eyebrows and exaggerated head turns. They came back out and finished the evening with Townes Van Zandt’s Pancho and Lefty.
What could be finer?
It was a slow, dark, moose-free drive home across the barrens, a ride we did with the stereo off so we could relish what remained of the music that still rang softly in our ears.
Sometimes it’s really easy to love it here.
*It could be that the land between coasts of all the peninsulas in Newfoundland (of which there are many) are referred to as “the barrens” or maybe it’s specifically the one we have here. I haven’t worked up the courage to ask anyone.
Todd Man Out 