A Tribute to Neil Young 11/20/04 @ The Drake

[TimmyB]

I caught this show late as I was at Massey Hall seeing The Musical Box, but I was glad I made it.

I was walking through Sam The Record Man on Yonge Street and as I walked up to the counter to buy some stuff I noticed a advertisements for this:

A Tribute to Neil Young

Saturday November 20

The Drake Underground

1150 Queen St. W. (416)531-5042

The Mountainside Band

Kevin Hearn

The Real Priscillas

Wayne Omaha

Kurt Swinghammer

Astrid Young

Evil Doers

The Pinch

Mia Sheard

Dirty Hearts

David Celia

The Weights

Chris Bartos

Lysa Fina & Femke Berkhout

Marnie Lee McCourty

and some more special guests

Hosted by a man called Wrycraft

Doors at 8:00PM --$10 or pay what you can

Proceeds go to The Bridge School and integra children's charities.

Charity info: www.bridgeschool.org and www.integra.on.ca

Gig info: invisibleinc@sympatico.ca and www.thedrakehotel.ca

I got there at around 11:30PM right as Astrid Young, Neil's half sister who has often performed and toured with Neil in the last ten plus years. I caught her second of what I can assume was a two song set as that's what most artists did. The song Astrid performed was the title track to Neil's 2002 album "Are You Passionate?" Astrid appears on this album and it was nice to see her give it a solo acoustic performance with a 12 string guitar.

The next act up was the Evil Doers and they did two sub par versions of "Look Out for My Love" and "The Loner."

Next was one of the artists that I was hoping to see and luckily did, Kurt Swinghammer. Kurt was introduced by saying that he will soon be releasing an album with Kevin Breit and a fiddle player whose name escapes me. Kurt performing solo acoustic he gave an interesting introduction by saying of how much he wanted to be like Neil Young as a child but didn't want his epilepsy, and went on to mention how Neil had a few epileptic attacks during the recording of the album that this song was recorded. The album was "Harvest" and he did an interesting version of "Old Man."

Next Kurt surprised at least me by performing "The Bridge" off of "Time Fades Away." But he performed this piano song with his guitar instead.

After Kurt The Mountainside Band was up. The band had Skydiggers guitarist Josh Finlayson on bass. The performed "Don't Cry No Tears" and a stoned out version of "Come On Baby Let's Go Downtown."

After was a group I think was called Lightning Street. A three piece of two girls and a guy that peformed only one song and it was an acoustic version of "Words."

The final act of this tribute to the Bridge School created by Neil Youngs wife Pegi, was the Dirty Hearts. The performed an intense version of "Revolution Blues" from Neil's 1974 not often talked about classic "On The Beach." "Revolution Blues" was sandwiched between music that was inspired by the motion picture "Dead Man." They performed some of the electric guitar parts that was in the film.

The Dirty Hearts closed their set and the show with "Welfare Mothers" and during the song they were backed by the New Priscillas. I recently saw the New Priscillas open for Wilco at Massey Hall and during that show they opened the show with Neil's old Buffalo Springfield song "Burned." I can only assume that the New Priscillas performed this song again as I missed their set.

I caught two out of the three artists that I really wanted to see Astrid Young and Kurt Swinghammer. Though I unfortunately missed the Barenaked Ladies keyboardist Kevin Hearn. I saw him walk out though with an acoustic guitar case so I suppose he didn't perform the piano on stage or did he? I don't know.

It was a fun night and I'd do it again if it became an annual event and hey it's for a good cause.