Seacliff Park Ampitheatre/Seacliff Park/Seacliff Beach/Lake Erie/Leamington, ON.
9:15pm
1. Innocent
2. Is Anybody Home?
3. Superman's Dead
4. One Man Army
5. Paper Moon/Life
6. Somewhere Out There
7. Drop Me in the Water
8. Thief
9. 2029/In Repair
10. Rabbits
11. Not Enough
12. Clumsy
13. Naveed
10:23pm
10:25pm
1. 4AM
2. Starseed
10:35pm
Leamington, ON is about 30 miles SE of Windsor, ON. It is known as the Tomato Capital of Canada. Point Peele, which is the southern most point in all of Canada, is located in Leamington. Seacliff Park is a municipal park with large tracks of land for BBQ/picnicking, a splash pad with washrooms/changing area, access to a sandy beach and a decent size pier running out into Lake Erie. The city of Leamington recently built a state of the art ampitheatre completed in the spring of 2017. It is capable of hosting local bands and plays to national rock acts like OLP. Behind the ampitheatre is the beach and lake. The ampitheatre is built at the lake/beach level. The stage is about 5 ft. high with a a large cement pad in the shape of a half circle. Rising about 50 yards upwards from the cement pad is a huge, gently sloping grass hill, also in a large half circle.
The title of the OLP event was called Hogs for Hospice. Earlier in the day there was a motorcycle rally to raise funds to build a new Hospice Center in town. The ride and the concert profits went to this cause. The concert was scheduled to start at 9pm. Due to a late rush of last minute ticket sales and late arriving concert goers, the show was delayed 15 minutes to give the late comers a chance to enter.
After the first song, Raine was able to look out into the crowd and realize its huge size. He said he didn't realize Leamington was a 'rock capital'. Our Lady Peace always delivers an entertaining performance, but tonight it seemed each of the band members was surprised by the large audience and additionally motivated by its energetic response to the music. (There was at least 10,000 fans at this concert, maybe as large as 13,000 fans).
I like GA shows like this one. I prefer to stand between Steve's & Raine's mics. It gives me a good view of Raine and I enjoy watching Steve's awesome guitar solos. Due to how the VIP area was set up, I wasn't able to be in my favorite spot. I did the next best thing and grabbed a spot between Raine's & Duncan's mics in the 2nd row.
Raine gave a wonderful vocal performance. He hit all of his falsetto notes which is always enjoyable to me. I know a lot of the OLP lyrics and I love to sing along with Raine. I know many of his voice inflections from listening to OLP albums repetitiously. Raine's voice was strong and he held all the long notes perfectly. Raine fooled me numerous times as he sang certain lines in a different cadence or changed the repetition at the end of songs. It was a nice change to his delivery.
Steve was on fire. I have come to expect this, but instead of having Steve right in front of me, I watched Duncan Coutts closely for the first time. Duncan was without the cast on his leg. He was much more mobile and agile then when I saw him perform just over a month ago. Duncan may be a little different then most other bass players in a band. I noticed many bass players usually just mimic the main guitar riff or the main drum beat. Duncan does this at times also, but many times he plays an independent riff which accents the guitar and drums. Duncan plays his bass guitar with some of the same flair that Steve possesses. I have a new appreciation for Duncan's talent.
I have said this before. I enjoy how Jason Pierce plays the drums. He's got great energy. I remember in the middle of one of the songs the band was jamming together and Raine calmly turned around to look at Jason. Jason was pounding away at his drum kit when he noticed Raine. He gave Raine a knowing nod and continued to jam. Raine had a slight grin on his face as he turned back to his mic.
On the new music front, Raine mentioned during the concert that new OLP music was going to drop in 8 days. He said the title of the new album is "Somethingness". He said the song, Drop Me in the Water, will be on the new album. Then they played the song. I could be wrong, but I thought I heard Steve add a new guitar part to his solo outro for that tune.
My wife & I got some good photos. Enjoy!