After spending most of yesterday at home, enjoying the day off, I hopped into my car and pointed my vehicle towards Detroit, Michigan.

I brought my Ipod with me, but didn’t power it up once. The entire trip was powered by a soundtrack of Yes and Springsteen concert bootlegs, on a day that was uncharacteristically perfect weather-wise. Often, when I drive to Detroit, there is a horrible rainstorm or snowstorm to make the trip a white knuckle experience. I felt pretty safe that I wasn’t going to meet up with snow on this particular trip, and felt thankful that I had been gifted with good weather.

Upon arrival in Michigan, I parked near the Magic Bag, and noticed that there was already a large line of people waiting to get into the club. I walked across the street and met up with my friend Mark, and after a couple of hours of swapping stories with Mark and a mutual friend, we made our way across the street to the Magic Bag for the show. On my way in, I bought a copy of BR bass player Bazil Donovan’s solo CD Matinee, and we grabbed a nice spot that was a lot closer to the stage than the last time we saw the band at the same venue. An impressive feat, since the venue was packed by the time we got there.

The old me would have been in that line, waiting for doors to get the closest spot to the stage. The new me, chose fellowship with friends over obsessively staking out my concert spot. And in the end, we ended up with a spot that was really just as good – perfect sight line of the stage, about 3-4 rows back from the stage distance wise, if there would been rows.

Blue Rodeo came on pretty late, at about 9:50 for a setlist that ultimately ran just about 90 minutes and 15 songs total. It felt a bit short, yet the song selection was superb. Regular keyboard player Bob Packwood was absent, replaced for the evening by Michael Boguski. Boguski had what looked like sheet music, and the occasional cue from a band member, so that might have been what contributed to the short set length. For a fill-in gig, he had some tough territory like “Diamond Mine” (usually about 10 minutes long) that he handled with ease. As BR forum regular Ann noted, Boguski’s take on the songs was a nice combination of “the best of Bob Wiseman, James Gray, and Bob Packwood.”

I agree. And she’s right, it is interesting to hear a new keyboard player tackle the standards. There were a number of songs in the setlist that I was happy to hear anyway, that he breathed additional new life into. I’m pretty sure that I’ve seen them do “Rain Down On Me” live before, but it was a very cool opener. Hearing “After The Rain” and “Try” in the same setlist, I was pulling hard for “House of Dreams” to score my perfect Jim Cuddy trifecta, but it was not to be.

It was a setlist that was short on surprises but loaded with plenty of satisfaction courtesy of the sequencing of the songlist, and the passion in the performance. My night @ the Magic Bag? Well yeah, it was “magic.”

Setlist:

Rain Down On Me

What Am I Doing Here

Blue House

Black Ribbon

5 Days in May

C’mon

Bad Timing

Diamond Mine

This Town

To Love Somebody

Head Over Heels

Try

Hasn’t Hit Me Yet

encore:

After The Rain

Lost Together

Relevant Links:

Blue Rodeo official website