Great Heart Festival, Bellwoods (June 17, 2012)

Luke Lalonde

Simple acoustic songs but with his inimitable vocal stylings Luke's 
set wasn't simple at all, though it was short. Leaving his Ruffian cohorts to watch from the grass with the rest of us (I saw Mitch anyhow) Luke entertained with a handful of tunes that put his talent on display. His vocal dynamics were on full display in this stripped down format, even on the cover tune that he mostly remembered the lyrics to (jokes - he'd warned us he might jumble a couple). In finale he played a song I'd heard debuted with the full band incarnation three days previous. While I'd thought at that time how well suited to them it was, with the multiple near full-stop breakdowns, Six Five Thousand also worked in this format. My only complaint was that I wanted more!

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Gregory Pepper
Humbly Greg took to the "stage" (see grass in the park) with his acoustic guitar and entertained us for a third of an hour. His songwriting is pretty interesting though I found the song making light of suicide very inconsiderate. Otherwise it was a fun, light set playing a number of older songs as well as some to be released. Definitely some quirk here and a nice reminder of how much I've enjoyed his previous releases. 



Donovan Woods

Rocking a pretty, acoustic guitar in the park Donovan was supremely entertaining. Utilizing light picking and interesting, literal lyrics the music was quite great and the pointless banter was funny and endearing.









Army girls

Actually a male/female duo with the man playing a covered drum and woman on an electric guitar (a departure from the primarily acoustic Live In Bellwoods theme). Hard to say what exactly was attractive about the set but it was quite a nice bunch of songs from the modest duo. My introduction to them following some good word of mouth reviews and definitely enough for me to follow up further!





Octoberman
The band featuring JJ Ipsen, a stand up bass, drums and two acoustics had to compete with horns, barking dogs, airplanes overhead and bike bells but they did it. Not much standing out about the set though the final song, Run From Safety, sounded pretty good.