RAMA, Ont. - Two decades later, Bachman & Turner - guitarist Randy Bachman and bassist Fred Turner - are rolling down the highway once again.
The two musicians, who played together in famed '70s Can-rock act Bachman-Turner Overdrive, have teamed up again 20 years later for a reunion tour which played Casino Rama on Thursday night leading up to the Sept. 7 release of their new self-titled album.
"We are back," said Bachman simply, after opening with Roll on Down The Highway and Rock is My Life.
Now both 66-years-old, Bachman and Turner, who share lead vocal duties, are touring without the two other original band members - drummer Rob Bachman and guitarist Blair Thornton - who have legally prevented them from going out under the BTO name.
In their place are the much younger members of Bachman's band, guitarists Mick Dalla Vee and Brent Howard and drummer Marc LaFrance.
After a tentative start and a muted response from the audience of about 3,600, the band started to gain momentum by the fourth song, Hey You, due in no small part to the guitar playing of Bachman, who has kept his chops up over the years with The Guess Who reunion and his solo work. (Turner was touring with BTO until 2004 and pulled out of retirement by Bachman.)
Bachman's playing also stood out on the AC/DC reminiscent Rock Is My Life, the jazzier #1 (as in "Looking out for number one,") and Blue Collar, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, and he even used a drum stick on his guitar neck during Stayed Awake All Night.
Turner's bass got a major workout on the harder rocking Not Fragile and Blue Collar.
Oddly though, it was a Guess Who song, American Woman, that got one of the biggest responses of the night.
The duo also inserted three new songs - Moonlight Rider, Slave To The Rhythm, and Rollin' Along - into the 80-minute set but Bachman insisted he didn't want the crowd to notice it was any different from "the old, roll down the windows, crank it up and drive stuff" favoured by BTO.
And for the most part that was true, particularly the harder sounding, Turner-penned Moonlight Rider.
Other standouts, in terms of the hits, were Blue Collar, which Turner wrote while walking the streets of Regina in the wee hours, You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet, Let It Ride and Takin' Care Of Business, the latter two songs which made up the encore, and finally found the crowd on its feet and clapping along.
"This is the Canadian citizenship test, we want you to sing this song," joked Bachman as he handed over vocals to the audience on the entire opening verse of Takin' Care Of Business.
For his part, Bachman was also thrilled when he saw T-shirts featuring blue sledgehammers held up by two concert-goers at the front of the stage in honour of BTO's heavy rock ballad, Sledgehammer, which they also played.
"Home Depot for Valentine's Day," he suggested as a retailer and a holiday.
Bachman & Turner began their reunion trek back at the end of May at a club in Winnipeg and have played other smaller theatres and festivals in Canada this year with a larger festival tour planned for Europe and North America next year.
SET LIST:
Roll on Down The Highway
Rock is My Life
Hold Back The Water
Hey You
Moonlight Rider
#1
Not Fragile
Stayed Awake All Night
American Woman
Four Wheel Drive
Slave To The Rhythm
Blue Collar
Sledgehammer
Rollin' Along
You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet
ENCORE:
Let It Ride
Takin' Care Of Business
Entertainment Plaza - TV, Movies, Sports, Music
http://members.shaw.ca/almosthuman99
Babe Of The Month
http://members.shaw.ca/almosthuman99/babeofthemonth.html
Hunk Of The Month
http://members.shaw.ca/almosthuman99/babeofthemonthman.html
No comments:
Post a Comment