THUNDER BAY – Given where they’ve been this summer, it’s pretty hard to believe The War on Drugs had time to fit Thunder Bay in their schedule.
Fresh off a date at the Winnipeg Folk Festival, the Philadelphia rockers had high profile gigs at Glastonbury and Primavera Sound music festivals, taking them to England and Barcelona, not surprising for a globe-trotting band that does its best to deliver each and every night out.
It’s just too bad only 700 or so fans bothered to come out on Monday night to see them perform at the Community Auditorium.
The 110,000 who stayed home missed a pretty impressive performance.
The seven-piece band, fronted by vocalist and guitarist Adam Granduciel, have a broad range of influences they’ve drawn on over the years, hints of Tom Petty, The Who and even Bob Dylan showing up in their sound.
This was the second time in a little more than a month that I’ve seen them play, and the chance to see them at an intimate facility like the Auditorium was special.
I also caught their show in Barcelona, an outdoor gig with thousands in the crowd, so the atmosphere was a little different this time around, though I’ll give the Thunder Bay audience credit.
Unlike a lot of shows, they were on their feet the entire night, clapping and cheering, even having a little fun back-and-forth with Granduciel.
Boosted on Persians, and possibly Swiss Chalet – he joked about both multiple times in the two-hour show – Granduciel and the War on Drugs were on a jam-band-inspired mission on Monday night, rocking out to their own beat, willing to zig when the crowd expected them to zag, even taking a request late in the show, adding Thinking of a Place into their evening repertoire a song they skipped the day before at the Winnipeg Folk Festival.
“Yeah, we can play that,” Granduciel said.
Unlike a lot of rock bands, who want the spotlight, The War on Drugs spent much of the night in the dark, backlit from behind the stage, though a trippy light show more than made up for the lack of illumination from the front.
One nice feature of their tour is The War on Drugs tends to shake up their set lists from night to night, never playing the same songs in the same order from one show to the next. It makes for a unique audience experience, knowing they’re getting something special. As great as Paul McCartney is, he generally does the same show every night, with the same jokes, the same stories and the same songs.
Staples like I Don’t Want to Wait, Victim and Strangest Thing, dedicated on this night to birthday girl and keyboardist Eliza Hardy Jones, who was also feted with a fistful of balloons that towered above the stage, are near nightly occurrences.
Others find their way in occasionally, suiting the mood of Granduciel, bassist David Hartley, keyboardist Robbie Bennett, drummer Charlie Hall, sax-man Jon Natchez and guitarist Anthony LaMarca.
Bringing in a band like The War on Drugs was certainly a gamble for the Auditorium, but also hopefully the start of a trend, a modern rock band five years removed from a Grammy Award for best rock album. There’s an audience more than willing to pay to see acts like this, without having to travel half way around the world to do so.
Now, can we just get Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit on a local stage soon?
