Hawksley Workman

A Prairie Congregation
Review by Taylor

To begin, a BIG kudos to the Folk Festival rep at Darke Hall who was organizing volunteers and the like. I attended the Regina show with my younger brother, my Dad and a friend. One of my Hawksley show cohorts is a paraplegic, and the venue was completely inaccessible to those in motorized wheelchairs; we spoke to the rep about 4 hours or so before the show and she graciously offered to open up the doors an hour before other HawksleyWorkman.com ticket-holders to allow space and time to dead-lift our friend and his 400 pound chair up a few flights without causing a ruckus or fighting a crowd. In addition to this, we were offered dead-centre front row seats so that Cole could park his wheels somewhere off the beaten-track. She was a pleasure to meet and a wonderful person for ensuring that Cole and the rest of us had an amazing experience.

And it certainly WAS amazing. I had attended the show at Broadway Theatre in Saskatoon the night prior, and countless shows over the years ~ yet the event in Regina equally surpasses all others alongside the Treeful of Starling tour shows. The eclectic and bohemian attendance played an essential part in the evening's success: appropriately subdued and conversational after the initial jitters that accompanies any intimate show; quick on applause and participation; and often offered a silence between break-downs where one might expect applause and cheer that was instead intensely electric, respectful and damp with anticipation.

As with the rest of the tour, the ensemble opened with a puerile set accompanied with toy instruments, bug-antennae and a laptop receiving the contact-mic feeds from Mr. Lonely and Mr. Workman's piano and drum kit. Opening with "We Will Still Need a Song" and then proceeding directly into "Safe and Sound" seemed to lubricate the rest of the crowd and prepare us all for the sometimes silly, often magnificent departure from track structure and expectation that many were no doubt supposing despite Mr. Workman's previous track-record of delightful abandonment.

The general theme and flow of the concert was similar to most others of the tour (and it has been written of often enough), and so I won't delve into the minutia of it all. I will say that as the evening progressed the entire audience was humming, toe-tapping, standing, clapping and singing as a congregation of travel- and winter-weary folk encountering that special warmth only a good laugh and good times can provide. Smiles, goofy smiles, and laughter were in abundance.

We were all invited to sing along during the unplugged set and those that knew the words certainly obliged, if not indulged in the offer. As luck and circumstance would have it (front and center) my cohorts and I were literally singing at Hawksley and his rag-tag ensemble. The closeness that one feels when actually singing WITH someone is always a rhapsodic action; but this was simply elating.

The evening ended with the standard exit-encore. What was especially unorthodox, however, was what took place as an encore. It is possible that I have missed this variation along the way, but Mr. Workman sang us his 10 minute rendition of devotion and of his desire to lick our toes. (Fine by me!) Above all, being wooed by a master of words alongside friends and family in a commensurate state made the evening that much more than nearly any other encounter I've had with the Hawk.