Elliott Brood w/Kacy and Clayton Concert Review

This past Saturday night as a part of the Jazz Fest, I saw Elliott Brood.  They are trio from Toronto.  No, they are not jazz.  Not everything at the Sasktel Saskatchewan Jazz Fest is jazz.  Let's get that straight.  The opening act was a young duo from Saskatchewan, Kacy and Clayton.

Now, I had nothing to go off of for the opening act, Kacy and Clayton.  Looking them up on YouTube, they've played in Saskatoon before.  With that being said, Kacy has a voice like a lot of indie artists like Feist and Nataly Dawn to name a couple.  Being that I am a big Nataly Dawn fan, I like Kacy's voice.  Even though her voice cracked during one of the songs, she still did a great job.  Clayton on the other had wasn't perfect, but he has some serious chops on the guitar for being that young.  He was doing blues fingerstyle.  If he is that good now, he will be so amazing later in his career.  You can tell they need to work on their stage presence because they don't do any bantering between songs or tell stories.  All that was really said is Kacy said to pick up their CD at the back and that they played a bull sales while nobody paid attention.  Sure they will get audiences attention with their music, but they need to engage the audience with stories or banter.  Overall, they were good, but it's just this one thing they need to work on.

The headlining act was Elliott Brood obviously.  Ha!  I've only heard a couple songs from them.  "Northern Air" is a great song.  I kept yelling that and they said they would get to it.  Just before they performed it, they dedicated the song to The Deep Dark Woods, which is a great Canadian folk rock band.  They also played "When I Get Old" which is the other song I know from them.  All the songs they did were awesome.  They one song they did which part of the song is "hey, hey, hey."  The crowd chanted that.  That song had awesome energy.  All the songs they did had great energy.  The uptempo songs, especially, had great energy.  The crowd was on their feet for all the uptempo, high energy songs.  It got hot and humid with everybody dancing in the Broadway Theatre.  But it was awesome!  They are another act that didn't fail to disappoint.  That's mainly because I had no expectations of Elliott Brood because I had no idea what to expect.  That's what happened last year when I saw Tegan and Sara.  I had no idea what to expect from them and they blow my mind with how good they were.  So, with that being said, it's to good to not know what to expect from some artists at times because you could be disappointed.  But I've never been disappointed with a headliner of a concert.  I'd go see Elliott Brood again without question because they are that good.  Fun, high energy show.  Just awesome!

Before the show I was talking to these two people and the older woman was wearing a Che Guevara shirt.  I thought that was awesome.

Just a bit of random facts, the Sasktel Saskatchewan Jazz Fest is the fourth largest Jazz Fest in the country behind Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver.  Elliott Brood said we are the most friendly because they've never been invited to the Toronto Jazz Fest and they are from Toronto which I mentioned above.


I think I have to make it a yearly goal to go to at least one paid show at the Jazz Fest!  I hope they bring some great acts next year!