The Foggy Hogtown Boys were having a tough time with the first gig on their western tour. First stop was St. Bart's Church in Gibsons on March 8, but it took 18 hours of travel from Hogtown, a.k.a. Toronto, to get there. Also, as band leader Chris Coole sheepishly admitted, one of their members had slept in and missed the plane, consequently arriving late on the Coast for the 8 p.m. start time.
Then, as bass player Max Heineman started to stroke the borrowed stand-up bass fiddle during the concert, the instrument cracked, putting him out of business except as a vocalist, for the first set. It is a tribute to the Coast's love of stringed instruments that a new bass was found for him in under 15 minutes.
Despite the jet lag, the Foggies delivered a high-energy performance that roused the audience to thunderous applause many times. In a band in which each musician shows exceptional musicianship, the fiddler, John Showman, was terrific. His own composition written for his grandmother, The Burlin Reunion, was lovely and evocative. The mandolin performance by Andrew Collins on such new tunes as No. 89, named after his B.C. mandolin maker, demonstrated a speed and virtuosity that gives the Foggies their great sound. The group has an interesting stage habit of weaving in and out of one another as they perform, giving each musician a chance to be in the spotlight.
Their current CD, Pigtown Fling, is all instrumental, possibly its only negative factor. Several of the group, Coole and Heineman particularly, have good voices that could only enhance a recording.
The concert opened with a few tunes from new Gibsons resident, native ethnomusicologist and Appalachian style fiddler, Erynn Marshall. She performed some Mississippi blues numbers with her new musical partner Fabrizio Alberico. Marshall knows the band well and has a recording with Coole appearing this spring. She has also received a prestigious CBC Galaxy Rising Star Award at the Edmonton Folk Festival this past summer and her first CD, Calico, is an award winner.
