Hawksley Workman - March 27, 2008

Last night's Hawksley Workman show at the Broadway Theatre was not what I expected - it was better!

I went in thinking "This is going to be a great mellow, sit-down show." I left thinking, "Hawksley Workman is a musical genius!" The show was anything but mellow. In fact, it was up, down, sideways, and back again. The whole show was performed like a play: there were different themes for each act and the audience was left wondering, "What is he going to do next." And just when you thought you had the plot figured out, something else would happen leaving you reeling and wondering how it's all going to end.

The show started with Hawksley's band wearing alien antennae while bopping along to what I can only call the "alien rock" that they were playing. Mr. Lonely and Hawksley played a little piano and a little drum kit, respectively. Hawksley changed instruments so often throughout the show that one never knew what he was going to play next. The whole evening was entertaining, light, kind of silly, and completely musically wonderful.

He played a lot of songs off of his latest album "Between the Beautifuls," a few songs off of "Treeful of Starling," some funny cover songs, and I'm assuming some older songs (I'm not very familiar with early Hawksley so I'm not completely sure). He definitely has lots of material to choose from considering that he has 9 albums out! I think he almost played everything he had because he played for over 2.5 hours. It was one of the longest shows I've seen in a while.

Near the middle of the show, Hawksley picked up his acoustic guitar and stood in front of the microphone and sang into the crowd. The whole band followed bringing their unplugged instruments and they played an unplugged, acoustic set of songs. The audience had to be very quiet in order to hear it... they had our undivided attention. It was a lovely part of the show. It was only one part of it before he went back into plugging in his electric guitar and telling storied about going for pasta in his pajamas with his brother in Calgary the day before. A storyteller, he most certainly is.

A highlight from the show for me was when he played "The City is a Drag" and infused it with an alien rock, abbreviated version of "Karma Chameleon" and then a bit of Starship's "We Built this City on Rock and Roll," but then went right back into the end of "The City is a Drag." He knew he was being silly and he obviously enjoyed making the crowd laugh.

Near the end of his show, all of the other band members left the stage leaving only him. He then proceeded to take off his jacket, then his tie, and then his button-up shirt. I couldn't help but wonder what he was doing, but he ended up uncovering a t-shirt that said:
STRIPTEASE
FOR ME
HAWKSLEY
Instead of taking off all of his clothes, he stopped there and put on a bright green coverall-esque jumpsuit, all while singing a song that I wasn't even paying attention to. His band came back all in matching jumpsuits to Hawksley's and they turned into a rock and roll band. It was intense and awesome. At the end of it, they said goodbye a number of times. However, they came back for an encore. The encore was much like the beginning, with the alien rock coming back and just general sound noise with some singing parts.

All-in-all, a great show. I am very lucky to have seen so many great shows in such a short amount of time. I guess when it rains, it pours in Saskatoon.

Crystal's rating: 9/10