Photos and a review of The Glorious Sons and the Blue Stones in Ottawa

[Ross MacDonald and Karen Coughtrey were out to cover another show in Ottawa. -AC]

A very Ottawa crowd (IYKYK) was ready to be rocked Thursday night (December 14) as TD Place welcomed The Glorious Sons and their guests The Blue Stones to the arena stage.

2020 Juno Award nominees for Breakthrough Group of the Year were first to take the stage. The Blues Stones duo hails from Windsor Ontario and features Tarek Jafar on lead vocals and guitar and Justin Tessier on the drums and backing vocals.

The stage lighting turned to shades of blue rolling like the waves of a storm punctuated by bright white flashes of light bringing some added depth to their presence as the duo took to the stage and opened with their song ‘Healing’.

The duo commands the stage, Justin’s kit is right up front. The tom and cymbals are kept low so that Justin can best interact with the crowd and Tarek who in turn fills the stage dancing and connecting with the crowd.

This wasn’t the bands first stop in Ottawa, and they welcomed returning fans from their Bronson Centre show last year as well as new fans and a good amount of the night’s attendees arrived early in order to take in their set. They would also announce a DJ set to occur at the night’s after-party at a nearby venue.

They rocked the crowd, trying their best to loosen them up through ‘Be My Fire’, ‘One by One’, into ‘Let It Ride’, had them getting closer to each other for love song ‘Magic’ and played one of their first singles‘Black Holes’.

The duo switched it up and Justin took on lead vocals and Tarek took to the keys for the opening of their last number ‘Shaking Off The Rust’.

Kingston Ontario’s latest beloved musical sons, multiple Juno Rock Album of the Year Award winners, The Glorious Sons couldn’t have helped but to feel the love from the adoring crowd as they took their turn on the stage in front of their stark backdrop emblazoned solely with the word “Glory” which was fitting both for the band and the season.

They opened with ‘My Poor Heart’ but paused multiple times to allow the crowd voices to ring out and of course for them to bask in the love and cheers of adoration of the crowd. The audience would continue to participate loudly through numbers such as ‘Mama’ and ‘White Noise’.

As he is known to do, Brett performed barefoot running around the stage expertly connecting with the crowd even jumping down on to the speakers to get closer during ‘Panic Attack’, a move that would also be used by Jay and Steve during ‘Kill The Lights’ as both guitarists took their turn to be centre stage, attention focused on their impeccable abilities. That same number saw Josh on keyboard shine on his solo in the outro.

The band interspersed their harder rocking hits with some slightly mellower favourites such as ‘Pink Motel’ and ‘Dream’, the former included a spoken word like outro by Brett and the latter of which allowed the whole band to showcase their musical prowess during a lengthy instrumental interlude.

“Been awhile since we played this one” Brett announced before leaping into ‘Lightning’, a fact not completely true as they played it earlier this month in both Sydney and Halifax Nova Scotia but the crowd was excited to hear it nonetheless.

The Ottawa audience, a town full of unionised federal government employees (and other unionised workers in many fields of course,) seemed to really come alive as the band performed ‘The Union’, singing “And I’d never join the union, ‘Cause I never wanted it easy.” loud and proud; likely thinking of the rock and roll rebel dreams they’d let slide in favour of stability.

The night only got better from there as they closed out the main set in strong fashion with three of their biggest hit singles; they had the crowd on their feet and singing along to ‘S.O.S. (Sawed Off Shotgun)’, ‘Heavy’, and ‘Everything Is Alright’. When they returned for the encore they promised to use all of the 40 minutes they had left on stage guaranteeing the crowd their hard earned money’s worth.

The Glorious Sons
Brett Emmons – lead vocals, guitar, harmonica
Jay Emmons – guitar, backing vocals
Adam Paquette – drums, backing vocals
Josh Hewson – piano, guitar, backing vocals
Peter Van Helvoort – bass guitar, backing vocals
Steve Kirstein – guitar, backing vocals

The Blue Stones
Tarek Jafar – vocals, guitar, keys
Justin Tessier – drums, percussion, backing vocals