Posted by On October 5th, 2024 m’lady and I made an excursion into Town to see our favourite little St. John’s band at our favourite little St. John’s venue. In this case, the band in question was instrumental trio extraordinaire Big Space; the venue was The Black Sheep on George Street (née The Fat Cat). We booked a room at the Hilton on points and had a great pre-show dinner at Yellowbelly Brewery (this was our second visit to the Hilton and our first to Yellowbelly. I highly recommend both).
Before we moved to rural-ish Harbour Grace this was exactly the sort of excursion that we’d imagined we would be taking on the reg, but of course the pandemic had other plans. And the pandemic’s plans involved cancelling everyone else’s plans. And so we all just sat around looking out the windows instead.
But now, nearly five years into our Newfoundland adventure things had finally returned to complete and utter normalcy. With the exception of the very occasional mask sighting, we had slipped into a life that contained no discernible remnants from the covid era whatsoever. In fact, life was so normal that when I mentioned all of this to m’lady during the drive she didn’t even bother to shrug.
Normalcy, indeed.
Got to Town, checked in and walked out, arrived at Yellowbelly Brewery on the corner of George and Water just before their $5/pint happy hour ended at 6pm. I ordered a Yellowbelly burger and two Come From Away IPA’s to be delivered fifteen minutes apart and got down to enjoying the ambience of the ancient stone-and-brick building*.
By the time I finished my second $5 beer it was time to go. A short walk halfway up George Street (which is a pretty short street even at its full length) and we were at The Black Sheep. The three-set show was slated to start early (at 7pm) so I wasn’t surprised when m’lady and I were the first ones to pay the $10 cover charge. We said hello to the guys in the band and grabbed the front table. When they started playing (admirably close to the advertised start-time) m’lady and I made up half of the audience. By the end of their first set the crowd had swelled to fifteen. By night’s end there’s no way more than twenty-five people had paid to get in.
But those of us that did were treated to an amazing show. The band was on fire. I guess I’ve seen them maybe seven or eight times now so I think I can judge a good Big Space show from a better one, and this one was even better than that. Grant doesn’t always look like he’s having a great time but he sure did at this show, smiling and laughing through his brilliant chops all night. And his guitar playing was wildly fluid and flawlessly aggressive right out of the gate; he sounded like he had been warming up all day, even if he probably hadn’t. Ashley sat bolt upright behind him beating the living hell out of his drums, thrashing them in perfect compound time as if he was trying to purge demons. And meanwhile Ian was the low-end laser beam that kept the songs the songs. Dude’s timing is simply immaculate and the one extended solo he took in the night was sublime. He built a musical house of cards that couldn’t be torn down without once exceeding 180hz.
For as many times as I’ve seen them I still have no idea what any of the songs are called (the drummer seems to have finally learned the titles though; the other guys no longer have to hum the melodies to him before every song). But that makes sense, it’s not like they announce the titles or anything, and even when I listen to their record at home I generally don’t have the cover sitting in front of me. That said, I just scoured the record looking for the song that Big Space began their second set with and I am surprised that I can’t find it. Whatever it is, they play it all the time so it should be on the record. I know I’ve heard the song a bunch of times because it always seems to me like a jazz-fusion Eye of the Tiger. The two songs sound nothing alike in a chord/melody/rhythm sense, but they both share a short, mounting anticipation that resolves every time with such verve, such gusto that is nothing short of Stallone-esque.
I don’t know what the Big Space tune is called, but it should be called The Italian Stallion (or maybe Survivor). Anyway, the song is awesome whatever it’s called, as is the band on the whole.
After three great sets of this awesomeness and as many large IPA beerses it was time for m’lady to lead me down the hill to the relaxed comfort of our hotel, where a large bag of roasted chicken flavoured potato chips and a couple of chilled beers raced each other down my throat, a contest that ended in a tie. A glorious, messy tie. Luckily it wasn’t a photo finish.
And there it was, ladies and gentlemen, another regular, normal, “pandemic? what pandemic?” night out on the Town. It’s what we cultured baymen do.
*If I were the sort of writer who clamoured at low-hanging fruit I would make an analogy between the seemingly random and wonderfully engaging marriage of rough stone-and-mortar and old red brick that make up the walls of the Yellowbelly building and the congruence of the often-angular yet ever-grooving compositional chunks, motifs, and passages that make up Big Space’s repertoire.
And really, I generally am the kind of writer who clamours for low-hanging fruit, but I pretty much used up my quota already with the Rocky reference, so I’ll keep it to an asterisk**.
**For those that read the asterisk parts as the narrative progresses rather than just reading them once you get to the end of the story: Spoiler alert (Rocky reference ahead).
Todd Man Out 