Sea Salt

No complaints about the Great Big Sea show last Friday at Boulder Theater. Rousing crowd and a genuinely fun, affable band. Couple of things struck me about them.

There's a very neat balance between the three principals - guitarist/vocalist Alan Doyle is the MC, funny and self-effacing, a natural showman and keenly in tune with his audience and how they respond to the band. Did a funny and recurring bit about making out with Emmylou Harris at Telluride, as well as leading off an 80's cover singalong (who cops Rick Springfield onstage on a dime?). A bit kitsch in spots, but he had the bobbing and singing and nicely lubed-up audience more or less in the palm of his hand.

Sean McCann plays the balladeer, probably the best lead vocalist of the three, reserved but comfortable in his role. Played a ballad or two from his recently released solo album, Lullabyes for Bloodshot Eyes.

Bob Hallett, the quiet fireplug multi-instrumentalist on stage left, is the least effusive of the three, more or less content to lend the accordion or bouzouki or fiddle fills around the band's big-acoustic arrangements and sit out the onstage banter and joshing. He sports a bass/almost baritone vocal that plays a deceptively key role in the band's vocal harmonies, and one senses he's the quiet anchor behind GBS, they guy who keeps them most obviously tethered to their roots.

Couldn't help but think this division of labor, even if an unintended by-product of their lengthy tenure, is a central component to the band's success.

Probably the other thing a GBS neophyte might notice, at least someone using their albums as point of reference (and Hallett, in his interview with me, cautioned that the albums are barely more than a formality in the band's career at this point - the live show is really the point...), is that the division between pop/rock and Celt-splashed Newfie folk - the shanties and jigs and so on - is decidedly more blurred on stage than on CD. Most of their pop songs are heavily weighted toward folk-rock stylings, and most of the trad (or trad-inspired) stuff is played fast and loud.

It underscored a point I think Hallett was trying to make in our interview - that short of the times when they delve really deep into Newfoundland or Irish traditional folk, and they can, most American audiences think most of what they do actually is trad...clearly it isn't, but it's to their credit that they polish their pop stuff with that fisherman's pub veneer so gracefully you barely notice the hybridization at work, and even if you listen closely enough to hear it, you don't feel like throwing a flag for larceny. These guys have grown up well past their influences, and visit them in earnest only sparingly.

Their gig is well traveled (17 years?), not overly polished, and they seem to genuinely enjoy doing it. Can't overstate the importance of watching a band that challenges you to have as much fun as they're having.