Fred Penner - The Cat Came Back
Last night I went to a concert. That concert was Fred Penner. See I didn’t think I was gonna see a concert better than Born Ruffians this weekend. When I saw Born Ruffians I thought I was at my peak of concert going. I was wrong.
My roommate got some email from the University about a conference or talk that Fred is doing and as a side mention the email says, Fred Penner will be playing Chainsaw on Mar. 25. So we call and ask what time. In 20 minutes doors open. We quickly get ready and get there shortly after the doors opened. The bar was pretty full, but we could still find a table. An hour later and I don’t know if you could pack anymore people into the place. We sat and drank beer for a while. We joked that maybe it wasn’t actually Fred Penner but a band just named after him. We had no idea what to expect. Then the opening act got on. Tra La La. We couldn’t here what they were saying, no one was interested at all, and all you could hear was the normal hum of a busy bar.
Then Fred got onto the stage at around 9 o’clock. Silence commanded the stage and captured the audience like you would never believe. Suddenly everyone was listening. He joked about crawling through a log to get there and pulling “this” instrument out of the case. Waves of childhood memories flooded the bar. He had everyone in the bar singing along to “Take Good Care Of Each Other”.
Then it came to story time. I don’t think he could get over the venue. He joked that, “I bet this is the first time that anyone has ever had ‘Story Time’ in the Chainsaw”. He told this awesome story about his daughter learning to ride a bike, he got us to call out how many fingers he was holding up, and ran in slow motion. Then it all came down to swearing that we’d never ride a bike, or any other vehicle for that matter, with our eyes closed.
He referenced K-OS in the middle of the “Cat Came Back”, he had everyone singing along to “Sandwiches”, and slammed the Canadian government on multiple occasions claiming, “I don’t wanna get political”. All in all this was the most amazing thing I have ever seen, and I’ve seen the Roots. The way he commanded the audience and had everyone engaged, my roommate didn’t even know who he was, but found himself having an amazing time.
The best part was I left feeling really great about myself and everyone around me. There is no one like Fred Penner. NO ONE!
Graeme
