Wide Mouth Mason @ The Roxy -- November 30, 2023
A couple months ago, iconic Canadian blues rockers Wide Mouth Mason released their latest album, Late Night Walking. They then hit the road, with a run of Canadian dates that including a show in Vancouver at... the Roxy.
With no opening band for the evening, Shaun Verreault and Safwan Javed hit the stage, joined by bassist Reed Shimozawa, to start off with “Habitual” and from there ran through their deep catalogue. From my favourites off the new album, like “Unshoot a Gun” and gritted-teeth bitterness of “You Pushed Me” to classics like “Smile” and “Why”, which had the bar singing along.
Throughout the set, Shaun switched back and forth between guitars and pedal steel, showing off his “Tri-Slide” technique (joking that when playing, one hand looked like Edward Scissorhands, and the other like C3PO), and often songs burst into solos and jams, where Shaun could prove himself as one of the best guitarist in the country, hands down.
Other highlights included “Sugarcane”, which features a little bit of the Stones’ “You Can't Always Get What You Want” slipped in, and “This Mourning”, which surprisingly had a little bit of Blackstreet's “No Diggity”; as well as the softer “Long Distance Love”, an older song that Verreault wrote while going cross country on a train, and re-recorded for the new album.
The trio brought the main set to an “end” with the gloomy “Midnight Rain” and a huge blues jam “Mary Mary”, but (thankfully) didn't bother with performative encore. Shaun just asked the crowd to pretend they went away for a moment and came back, before finishing off with another old favourite, the raucous “My Old Self”.
Even though I've seen Shaun play some solo shows over the past few years, it had been nearly ten years(!) since I last saw Wide Mouth Mason live. And in that time, they hadn’t lost a step, having as much energy as ever, refining their sound.
Before the show I was thinking that they are one of the longest running bands I’ve consistently been a fan of (as opposed to other bands from the 90s, which I’ve kind of fallen off & stopped following) and this show was a great example of why.
setlist
Habitual
You Pushed Me
Bodies in Motion
Every Red Light
Only Child
Unshoot a Gun
Smile
Long Distance Love
Why
Get a Hold Of You
This Mourning
Companion (Lay Me Down)
Obvious
Minus Two Minutes
Sugarcane
Midnight Rain
Mary Mary
("encore")
My Old Self