Last Thursday, Mer and I headed over to the Kent Stage in, well, Kent, to see one of our favorite bands, Great Big Sea. Great Big Sea is an interesting band – they are from Newfoundland, Canada, and their music has serious roots in the folk music tradition of Newfoundland (Irish and Scottish and lots of sea-inspired songs). However, they bring some modern attitude to their songs, but maintain traditional sound (with fiddle, whistles, accordion, banjo, and guitar) and have written original songs that sound as if they are one hundred years old. They also bring a ton of energy to their music. It is a mix of sounds that seems to work – Great Big Sea is very popular wherever they go, and they managed to sell out the 640-seat Kent Stage.

We met up with Clarice and Matt there and found what I thought we our seats. The seats were labeled by row letter, but were missing the seat numbers. It turns out that I was wrong, and we were sitting in four seats on the wrong side of the aisle. We moved, and all was well. It actually may have turned out for the best. The Kent Stage sells beer and wine, and the people we had been sitting in front of were feeling artificially good by partway through the concert and were not shy about dancing around.

There was no opening act for Great Big Sea – they did two long sets, so the concert was almost three hours long. It was great. The Kent Stage is mostly a folk venue, and I was quite surprised that Great Big Sea had brought a small but effective light show with them. Then, once the music started, everyone stood up and stayed standing much of the time. This was no ordinary Kent Stage show.

The audience was diverse; there were families with small children, college students, lots of thirty- and forty-somethings (the members of Great Big Sea are all in their early forties now), and a fair number of people with gray and white hair. Everyone seemed to be having a great time. Great Big Sea may very well give the best concert I have ever seen – lots of good music, good stage banter (without being obnoxious), and good rapport with the audience. One example – the band ended the first set by playing licks of various songs from the 80s, and the audience had to sing the lyrics. We all ate it up.

All in all, it was a pretty great concert. This was the second time we had seen them in concert (we had seen them a few years ago in Akron), and I would love to see them again the next time they are in NE Ohio. They started a string of good (according to us) bands coming through the area – in the next six weeks we have David Wilcox, Eddie from Ohio, and Over the Rhine all coming to play here. NE Ohio always surprises me at how much good music passes through here.