REVIEW OF STAGG RANCH #3

Materick Performance One Of A Kind

By Robert Reid - The Record of Waterloo Region

I have been covering acoustic concerts for more than 25 years and I've never had the privilege of reviewing a better one.

There are essentially two kinds of concerts of original music.

In the first, artists go through the motions of performing what they have written to the best of their ability. This isn't in any way bad; in fact, it's the norm. It's the game most artists play.

In the second, artists bare all, leave a big part of themselves behind and take a little part of the audience with them. These are rarer concerts that pierce the heart and lodge in the memory. The stakes are higher and the risk is greater.

The second is the kind of concert was given Saturday night at The Boathouse in Victoria Park.

Even Lucas Stagg, who invited the Hamilton singer/songwriter to perform as part of his monthly Stagg Ranch, admitted he's not likely to a host a better concert -- ever.

The evening began with Stagg performing 10 songs, mostly from his two recent roots albums, Play for Keeps and Love, or Lack Thereof, and a new Kris Kristofferson song.

He was joined by some musical friends, including Paris, Ont. songwriter/musician John Mars, on a Materick song from the 70s, Holiday Bar and Grill Cafe,

Then it was Shelley Gravelle, who served a short set of four acoustic blues songs on bottleneck guitar. Singing with a corn whisky voice, she evoked the humid heat and the dry dust of a Delta crossroads in high summer.

But the evening belonged to Materick who, although born in Brantford, lived for a while in Waterloo Region in the 1960s and 70s.

Amazingly, Materick propelled his way through 30 songs over two hours, including a five-song encore.

He didn't engage in much between-song banter. He let his music do the talking -- and talk it did, compulsively, intensely and passionately.

There wasn't a weak link in the chain of song from start to finish.

Whether fingerpicking or power strumming, standing or sitting, singing in a gravelly whisper or taking aim at the vocal rafters, Materick didn't flinch. When he broke a string, he continued undeterred with Stagg's guitar.

He was an artist on a mission and nothing would steer him off course.

He honoured a few songs from the 70s when he was a rising pop star on Asylum Records, including Lonely Hearts Hotel, Goodbye Again and Linda Put the Coffee On, a hit single he wanted to dispose of as efficiently as possible.

Most of the songs were drawn from the past six years, a period in which Materick grew as a person and matured as an artist who began crafting songs rather than simply writing them.

Like poets through the ages and the very best songwriters of today, Materick crafts songs about the universal things that strike close to the bone. The themes of love and loss, sorrow and joy, sin and redemption were not lost on Saturday's appreciative audience.

Taking a cue from his father, a big band musician-turned-preacher, Materick had a message he was determined to deliver through song.

And it was impossible to sit through the concert without feeling blessed.