Photos and a review of Matt Good’s intimate show in Burnstown, Ontario

[Ross MacDonald was out again. – AC]

Monday and Tuesday nights may not be typical evenings to go out to a rock show, but Neat Coffee Shop in Burnstown (west of Ottawa) is not a conventional venue. And on Tuesday 24 September A Journal Of Musical Things was at Neat to cover Matthew Good’s second show with support from London rockers Texas King.

This was Texas King’s third visit to eastern Ontario, last winter they were on tour opening for Big Wreck, and in July they performed at Ottawa’s Bluesfest music festival. And although Texas King is getting some airplay on alt-rock radio stations, they are a band best experienced live.

Singer Jordan MacDonald is extremely dynamic and engaging. Throughout the show Jordan constantly made eye contact with the audience with varying facial expressions; he engaged with pretty much everyone, certainly everyone near the front of the stage.

On a larger stage Texas King move around continuously with jumps and kicks. It was not practical on the intimate stage at Neat, but the band members were still grooving and making the most of the space they had.

And their music is just as engaging, great rock songs that balance power and energy with melody and meaningful lyrics. A great example is their new, unreleased song ‘Ultraviolet’ that Jordan introduced “this song is about seeing through the bullshit!”

A little later Jordan brought some laughter to the crowd as he spoke about the upcoming song ‘Flowers’: “This next song sounds like a love song, but it’s a f**k off song!” (so in the same vein as ’Good Riddance’) Notably the song had an amazing guitar solo from Josh.

Texas King slowed things down a little with ‘I Remember Everything’, a slow song with lots of guitar reverb giving it a melancholy feel. Jordan mentioned that it is now out on Spotify.

At the start of ‘Boomerang’ Jordan opened with some guitar effects and feedback, then boom. And notably Melvin had some very fast fills. The band has a tight rhythm section with Melvin and Phil’s fast picking on bass.

Two songs that the band performed, ‘Ultraviolet’ and ‘Try’ are unreleased tracks from an upcoming album. Both songs had great response from the audience, they should be popular on radio/streaming and at future shows.

The stage was quickly changed, then the house lights went down and Soft Cell’s ‘Tainted Love’ was pumped over the PA system. But instead of an explosive entry of a typical rock show Matthew Good stood up at his microphone and quietly had a very emotional start.

The first two songs, ‘Champions of Nothing’ and ‘Tripoli’ were sobering and sombre, with everyone hanging onto Matt’s every word.

Next up were Matt’s hits ‘Symbolistic White Walls’ and ‘Apparitions’. The latter was a perfect showcase on how Matt can still hit his high notes clearly, alongside acoustic guitar. It was a beautiful performance.

It was time to pick things up so Matt asked the audience: “Do you guys want to do some singing? You’ll know this next song. I’ll do the verses, you do the choruses.” And the band broke into ‘Hello Time Bomb’, and yes everyone did know the chorus, plus they helped Matt with the verses for good measure.

It was unusual to see Matt standing onstage without his guitar. He addressed this “The reason I’m not playing guitar is because I can’t feel these two fingers. It’s called neuropathy, I can’t use my hand.” And then to add some light he added “I’m getting too old for this shit!”

A couple of songs later Matt said “We’re going to slow things right down. We’re going to do one of my favourite songs.” And Matt led the band with powerful and passionate vocals to ‘Cold Water’.

One of the bonuses of a Matt Good concert (besides the music of course), is Matt’s interactions with the audience. And it is especially wonderful with an intimate setting like Neat where anyone can ask Matt a question “I’m trying to think of some stories, but i got nothing. You would think that after 30 years I’d have some good stories. The amazing thing is that I’ve been doing this for 30 years.”

Matt closed out his main set with ‘Load Me Up’ and ‘Weapon’, two more opportunities for the audience to sing along to a pair of Matt’s popular hits.

Because of the intimate setting of a century old one room schoolhouse, it isn’t practical for a band to leave the stage for a break before the encore. Matt and the band did perform their final two encore songs ‘Giant’ with its quiet loud quiet tempo and closing with the meaningful ‘Black Helicopter’.

Nobody was disappointed that this amazing concert was mid-week, even though it would probably take a day or two to recover, everyone said it was worth it!