Raine Maida

Mar 11, 2008

Commodore Ballroom

 

After achieving international success with the rock band Our Lady Peace, lead singer and lyricist, Raine Maida walked away from major label constraints and broke away from the band to create his own acoustic, poetry laced, politically charged, truthful, spoken word album, The Hunters Lullaby. In other words, a complete 180 away from Our Lady Peace. Earlier this week, Raine embarked on his first solo tour across Canada with Billy the Kid, and Tuesday night they entertained audiences at Vancouver’s Commodore Ballroom.  

 

Raine strapped with an acoustic guitar, confessed while making the record he didn’t think anyone would care, apparently he was wrong as a noisy crowd came out and showed their support, loudly cheering and hollering, interrupting Maida as he tried to banter with the crowd.

 

Maida played a number of tracks off The Hunters Lullaby including “Careful What You Wish For”, the upbeat “Confessional”, “Sex, Love, Honey”, “The Snake and the Crown”, and first single “Yellow Brick Road”. After admitting his love for Canadian music, Maida covered an almost unrecognizable, stripped and slowed down, acoustic version of Billy Talent’s “Try Honesty”. 

 

The proud Canadian tried to get a little crowd interaction going inviting the audience to sing along with him. After a lacklustre response, he questioned whether or not the audience was in fact Canadian because to Maida we sounded like we we’re from “Connecticut or some shit”. After a few more tries the crowd got the hang of it singing along like at a campfire, until a overexcited crazy from the audience jumped onstage, giving Maida a hug and singing with him for all of ten seconds, before a crew member started heading her way. 

 

Madia was also accompanied onstage by his wife, singer songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk, who played piano during the show. As the show winded down, Raine acknowledged he would be an absolute idiot if he didn’t let Chantal perform something. Seated behind a piano she covered The Pixies “Where is My Mind” during the encore.

 

Hardcore OLP fans who haven’t yet embraced Raine’s new record weren’t completely out of luck. In keeping with the tempo and atmosphere, Maida played an acoustic version of one of the bands big hits “Innocent” before closing the show with “One Second Chance”.  After much applause, Maida expressed his love for Vancouver stating “I will honestly say, I will remember this night for a very long time. Thank You.”

 

Raine continues to tour across Canada with a few stops in the U.S before reuniting with his band mates to finish up Our Lady Peace’s new record expected to be completed later this year.