Midwinter, February 15, 2003, Night ShowOur second show of the day. We watched as the all the guys set up, and then Angus disappeared from the stage. Rick started out with a guitar riff, which went into AC/DC's Back in Black. T and Dez started following along, and Hamish picked up his didg. After the first part, Angus suddenly jumped out from backstage to screams.
He was dressed in all black, black tank with the Buddha, from Sterling, and he was wearing the black leather kilt, with black long john leggings underneath and black boots. Hamish was wearing the heart tie dyed shirt, with the black leather pants and red shoes. Rick was wearing the same tan leather pants as from earlier, but with a dark blue, long sleeved knit shirt on top. Dez was wearing a camouflage Utilikilt, with a dark grey tank, and black knitted cap with the grey stripe, and T was dressed the same as the earlier show.
The AC/DC song soon broke into the familiar rhythm of Unknown. Hamish introduced us all to Chris, who was brought onstage with a didg. Dez and Rick played the background harmonies, T banged along as Hamish and Chris shared one mic as Angus danced around the stage with Hamish's pipes. While Angus played, Hamish riled the crowd up and directed the band towards the end part of the song, where Rick joined in to echo Angus on the pipe line.
Back in Black intro
Unk
Bitch
Sweet
Funny
River
Romp
Fragile
Good
Crazy
Jam
ClumsyHamish told the crowd to "prepare to begin removing items of your clothing..." and encouraged the festival staff to turn off the lights in the rest of the hall, to bring the energy to in a bit, as Angus said, "let's get cozy". Rick started out the bare beginning to Bitch, with Angus vocalizing, and Dez providing wind like sounds, all in line with T's tapping drumsticks.
Bitch seemed slower than previous versions, but it didn't lose any of the intensity. Rick played some 70's style guitar riffs throughout the song and Hamish's section on the pipes was amazing, drawing many cheers from the crowd. This lead into bare bones verse of "you keep opening inside of me", just accompanied with drums and a little guitar. The final verse was capped off with banging drums and pulsating guitar sounds.
They were checking the sound, as Angus said that his wedge monitor was fading. He exclaimed, "Oh, we have no power, what can one do without power? As I've asked myself before 'Are you frightened? My reply of course was yes. Not nearly frightened enough'" which appears to be a quote from The Lord of the Rings. After some laughter, Angus declared, "this is the last time I wear leggings!" and they launched into Sweet Time.
The more I heard this song, the more it grew on me, the more it became a Brother song. It has hard-hitting guitar and drum parts; yet, Hamish and Angus blend extremely well with melody and harmony. The didg fits in well, and the song is interesting to listen to, especially as it breaks into a surprising quiet, flowing melodic part from Rick before the final verse.
Funny followed Sweet Time. Rick's guitar song to being the song brought out a few screams from the audience, and Angus held off starting the song for beat, building the anticipation. T has a staccato drum part throughout, which is hard-hitting and reminiscent of gunfire.
We cheered for Funny, and Hamish asked, "Now, did you really like it, or were you just being polite?" Of course, we cheered again, and he replied "ah, good." He then said, "We have a song called River, would anybody like to hear that?" Again, with the cheering, and he said, "would you really like to hear it, or were you just being polite?" Cheers, and he said, "Ok, so we'll leave that one".
Angus started River, very full of emotion, almost whispering at parts, with a bare accompaniment of Rick and T, and Hamish on didg. When they arrived at the verse where Angus comes in with the bass, he suddenly stopped, and glanced around the stage. As he continued the verse, he was singing with a big grin and laughter in his voice, as he realized he was in the wrong key. He asked on the stage what key they were in, to which someone replied "D". He came back in on "we're the river, let it flow" triumphant, with a quick "thanks" at the end of the line. The rest of the song continued, and once again, segued beautifully into Flow. When it got to Rick's spoken word part, Angus chimed in with him on "there is" and Hamish echoed it, causing the crowd to crack up. The sing finished with fabulous harmonies.
"Ok", Angus said, "I was about to say, that's never happened before... but I would have been wrong. Could be it has happened before. That always makes an interesting version when you're a semitone apart in a song. But, that's cool, it makes for something different." Hamish called out for DidgeriDrew to come up, and bring "a long B flat". Angus then said, "See, the thing is, it's really cold outside, but it's actually quite bloody warm in here." This lead to his shedding the black leggings on stage, much to the delight of the crowd.
DidgeriDrew joined the stage, and he and Dez created an atmosphere with the didg and keyboards. Hamish picked up his pipes and began to play on top of these sounds. Angus then picked up his pipes, and started to slowly go through the beginning of Romp. Hamish counted off, and they launched into Romp. They flew around the stage, and Hamish came to the front, and ended up on the shoulders of Brother fan John, who handily carried him all through the crowd in the room, then safely placed him back on stage, all while Hamish never missed a note.
Once Hamish was back on stage, Angus started vocalizing, and got the crowd to follow him along, ending with a "You rock". Hamish picked up his didg, and played along with Drew, and spun around to Dez and T as Angus improvised on the pipes with what Rick was playing. This came back around to a quick energy filled ending to Romp.
Rick began Fragile, and T's drumming soon had the crowd clapping along. Fragile sounds really great, the slight changes to the harmony have only made the song better. Hamish is playing the blue didg for this song, and it sounds great at MidWinter, filling the hall with the sound. The song ended with feeling and energy, and the guys then regrouped on stage to recheck how everything sounded.
Hamish came forward to the mic and said, "hey you're a rich man..." and scattered fans in the audience murmured, "walk in the park", which is what he replied. He then said, "Do we have any old men here?" and we all chimed in "put it away ", and he answered the same with a grin. Hamish then asked, "Now, who hasn't seen Brother before? A few scattered people must have answered him, and Angus replied, "I haven't". Hamish continued, "Ok, so quite a few of you are going 'get on with the show' 'aw, this is really boring'" and Angus chimed in with "they're not very professional, are they?" Hamish explained, "What you'll find with a Brother show, when you ease yourself into in, is that it's just like a family affair, we kind of just hang loose." A girl in the audience screamed out "You guys are awesome", and Hamish replied "oh thank you... that's a quote from a Brother virgin... I do believe... we promise to be gentle... 'cept now." Hamish talked some more, and said, "I'd like to suck on some helium." Angus replied, "Is there helium here?" and Hamish said, "I just saw a balloon floating in the air." He then bounded off the stage and Angus quipped, "He's supposed to start this song, it's really irresponsible of him to just leave the stage." Hamish returned victorious, with two balloons, which he and Angus quickly untied.
Rick and Dez were quietly playing notes from It's All Good in the background, and Angus began to sing the verse with a helium voice, which was absolutely hysterical, cause he sounded so serious on the words, yet so silly. Hamish then joined in, in helium voice, yet in harmony, which totally cracked up the crowd. He told the rest of the band to just take it, and T, Dez and Rick started playing. The song was full of grins, and had such a happy feel to it, which continued to when they turned the mics to the crowd. We sang, "It's all good, it's alright, it's ok" for a while, while Hamish and Angus turned back and joined T on the drum set. Rick then wandered over and picked up Angus' pipes, and looked like he was going to play them. He got very close, and then dropped them into the floor, and pretended to kick at them, while Angus' back was turned, which brought out some giggles from the crowd.
Angus then returned to his mic, singing, "all good, alright, ok". He sung it in falsetto a few times, then dropped to a very deep bass voice, and encouraged everyone to do it in different harmonies. Hamish called out for "just the lads" and Angus continued in the deep bass voice. Hamish then said, "girls", and Angus switched back to the falsetto. Hamish turned and looked at him and said "Girls don't sing like that Gus, only you." They both came in on the usual harmony, and slowly faded the song out.
T broke the fading out and kicked into Crazy. Crazy rocked out as the fans up front all started blowing bubbles. They extended one of the breaks, and gave us a lot of didg from Hamish. Rick took a bubble blower from one of the fans and blew bubbles back at us. Angus let the crowd sing one of the "you can say I'm crazy" choruses just over Rick playing the chords along. He slowly and soulfully sang over top, "make me crazy", which brought us to the last verse. Hamish powerfully played the pipes, while he, Angus and Rick bounced around the stage.
The guys thanked us, wished us a good night, and called for Bill and Karen, the festival organizers, to join the stage. Bill came up and said, "I haven't heard enough", to which Hamish replied "oh no, you have!" Bill asked the guys to do one more, cause they were awesome, and Angus said, "There's only one problem, we don't know any more." Hamish said "this is supposed to be a jam now" and Bill said, "we just want you guys to play a couple songs, they just want to finish up that way."
Hamish invited any musicians who had an instrument to come up and join them on stage, and decided to start in the key of C, so that the "drone-y people" could come up. Hamish took a seat in front of T's drum set and played his didg at the floor in between the monitors. The guys rocked out to a slow, mellow beat lead by Angus' moving bass line. Snippets of the Mission Impossible theme, as well as the Flintstones found their way out of Rick's guitar. Lori from Celtic Soul brought up her fiddle and DidgeriDrew also joined the stage, as Hamish picked up and played a few bars on his bagpipes. The jam grew and changed, and Hamish took the lead with the bagpipes. He and Lori passed the melody back and forth a few times, backed with didg from DidgeriDrew.
The fiddle and guitar dropped out, to where there were just some notes from Drew, and some drum hits from T, and incredible didg from Hamish and DidgeriDrew. T slowly built everything up to bring everyone back in together. It was just a conglomeration of sound, going around and around, back and forth. Rick wandered the stage a bit, playing T's cymbals, then over to Dez's keyboards to him there. Angus picked up Hamish's pipes and began Clumsy, bringing cheers from the crowd.
It was great to hear Clumsy with two didges and a fiddle part, all over pounding drums and sounds from Dez. After some wailing guitar parts from Rick, Angus was back on bass and Hamish had the pipes finish up Clumsy and close out a great Brother show. The guys hung out until all the fans were gone, singing things and giving out hugs. I wandered out into the brisk night air, looking up at the sky, wondering if the predicted snow was ever going to come. When I arrived at my destination, the news said late afternoon on Sunday, maybe, a few inches, more later. They were wrong. Way wrong.
Click the picture to go to the photo gallery,
or click here to return to the reviews.
Song Lyrics Copyright by Rhubarb Records, All Rights Reserved.
All photos, images and writing on this page are
Copyright © 2003 L. Bacher Don't steal, email me to ask first.
