Daniel Lanois at the Hiro Ballroom

Last night I went to see Daniel Lanois at the Hiro Ballroom. The ballroom is in the basement of the Maritime Hotel, next to the Japanese restaurant. It boasts a kabuki stage and huge barrel ceilings. Lanterns dot the space, hanging from the rafters or suspended on posts. It's a small, intimate space.

The concert was advertised as starting at 8.00pm, but Lanois didn't appear until near nine. An announcer said he would be debuting his new album, an instrumental work called Belladonna, and he proceeded to play track after track, sometimes on pedal steel guitar, sometimes on his electric guitar. Behind him, his drummer played throughout, the band augmented occassionally by a second guitar and a bassist who doubled on keyboards. Towards the end, a trumpet player emerged from the crowd, and a singer joined the band. For one song, a woman appeared on stage to do an interpretive dance.

The music was pleasant in the way of Daniel Lanois, but felt like jams in search of songs to be pegged to. My attention wandered. At the end of his set, Lanois apologized to people who had come hoping to hear songs, but said that they had decided to stick with the instrumentals. He left the stage as people called for an encore. A few minutes later he reappeared with his drummer and they began to play "The Maker." Suddenly, the evening was worth it. He called out to the rest of his band to join (they were drinking whiskey in the back) and soon everyone was on the stage, drawing out the song into an extended jam that finally seemed to make sense. Posted by eku at June 8, 2005 9:50 AM