{"id":24309,"date":"2004-04-05T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2004-04-05T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/features\/great-big-sea-hits-the-landlocked-midwest\/"},"modified":"2026-07-04T12:01:31","modified_gmt":"2026-07-04T12:01:31","slug":"great-big-sea-hits-the-landlocked-midwest","status":"publish","type":"feature","link":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/features\/great-big-sea-hits-the-landlocked-midwest\/","title":{"rendered":"Great Big Sea Hits The Landlocked Midwest"},"content":{"rendered":"

“I wish all our first concerts in a town were this good.”<\/i><\/p>\n

<\/em>
Journalistic neutrality be damned, I’m going to be a shameless fanboy here. If you don’t like it, well…you have my apologies.<\/p>\n

After six years of waiting, I finally got to see Great Big Sea live this last week, and it was, in a word, incredible. Simply put, the concert was incandescent in its energy, enthusiasm, and talent, and the band proved that no matter how good they are on CD, they’re even better in person.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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GBS is currently doing a US tour in support of their latest CD, Something Beautiful<\/i>. The tour is the full five-piece lineup of Alan Doyle, Sean McCann, Bob Hallett, Murray Foster, and Kris MacFarlane — Foster and MacFarlane are new to the band with this CD. One expects when you add two members to a touring act that things might run a bit ragged, but there was no sign of that. Foster is at least a touring veteran, being a longtime member of Canadian quirk-rockers Moxy Fruvous, and while there were a couple of moments where he seemed a little out of sync, he recovered quickly and performed admirably. His baritone harmonies fill GBS’ already harmony-laden sound out nicely.<\/p>\n

Doyle and McCann were the two faces up front, and they were magnificent. While the Patio in Indianapolis has a stage about the size of a postcard, necessitating repeated instrument changes from offstage, it was handled with aplomb and grace. Better still, perhaps, was the crowd; I don’t think Great Big Sea expected this kind of response in Indianapolis (not known to be a hotbed of Celtic or Canadian culture).<\/p>\n<\/td>\n

\"gbs_350\"
Bob Hallett, Alan Doyle, and Sean McCann of Great Big Sea <\/font><\/em><\/strong>
Photo courtesy of <\/font><\/em>The Official Great Big Sea Website<\/font><\/em><\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

You could watch Doyle’s smile widen each time something new happened; when the crowd knew the words to the old stuff, when they knew the words to the new stuff, when they were willing to dance in place in a packed, crowded, shabby, smoky club. The energy was contagious, and by the time the band hit “When I’m Up”, the third song in the set, the joint was rocking.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Opening act the Pushstars were surprisingly good as well — and when I discovered their lead singer had co-written several songs with GBS on their Sea Of No Cares<\/i> CD, the connection and the chemistry became obvious. Highlights of the evening included a slow, gentle ballad take on “Sea Of No Cares” with Chris Trapper, the lead singer of the Pushstars, on guest vocals; the crowd roaring “Fare thee well!” to “Helmethead” and watching Bob Hallett’s delighted grin; the crowd going utterly and completely nuts as Alan Doyle sang “I drank sixteen doubles for the price of one…” to open “Old Black Rum”; a solo acoustic version of “Lucky Me”; and the final triumphant sing-along of “Rant and Roar” to close the show. GBS showed Indianapolis a damned good time, and I think Indianapolis returned the favor to the boys from Newfoundland.<\/p>\n

Great Big Sea remains on tour through May 22 with dates throughout the US. Check out their Web site<\/a> for more information.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Patio, Indianapolis, IN; 3\/30\/2004<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":51168,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"tags":[],"feature_type":[32],"class_list":["post-24309","feature","type-feature","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","feature_type-feature"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature\/24309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/feature"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature\/24309\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24309"},{"taxonomy":"feature_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyvault.adishjain.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/feature_type?post=24309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}