Live Review: The Lonesome Ace Stringband – First Unitarian Fellowship, Nanaimo, BC

Considering the small size of my Vancouver Island hometown of Nanaimo, the community’s music lovers are well served by a group of dedicated promoters spanning pretty much every musical base. While several operate on a catch-all principle others specialize, such as the excellent Harbour City Concerts (HCC). Although they do not stage too many shows, with a flawless track record to date this independent concern is intent on bringing only the absolute cream of (usually Canadian) roots talent to Nanaimo… and it really doesn’t get any creamier than the dazzling Lonesome Ace Stringband (LAS).

Describing themselves as an “old-time band with bluegrass chops that plays some righteous folk and country music,” this virtuosic trio comprises Chris Coole (clawhammer banjo/vocals), John Showman (fiddle/vocals) and Max Heineman (double bass/vocals) – three gentlemen my dear wife describes as “freakishly talented.” (For the record and details nerds like me, Coole and Showman are Toronto-based, while Heineman resides in the wonderfully named village of Horsefly, in British Columbia’s Cariboo region.) All three are members of the Foggy Hogtown Boys, a powerhouse six-piece that remains the most exciting bluegrass outfit I’ve seen in my thirteen years here. Additionally, outside of that and this project these guys really get around: I’m only scratching the surface of their live and recorded activities when saying I’ve also seen Coole play with David Francey; Showman in New Country Rehab, and Heineman with Annie Lou, every show they’ve had a hand in being truly memorable. However, even though LAS already have been a thing for a decade and boast four albums under their belts I’d not previously had a chance to catch them live, so considering everything I’d seen (and heard) the component individuals and their ‘main band’ deliver to date you’ll imagine I was pumped for this show.

While they occasionally stage shows at other venues, the folks behind HCC have set up a regular home for their events at the First Unitarian Fellowship, an intimate church-run community centre in Central Nanaimo, where snacks at the unlicensed bar can include such as homemade carrot cake and butter tarts. It’s a multi-purpose space lending itself well to live performance, and in boasting enviable acoustics is an ideal venue for unplugged music such as produced by this fine trio.

The house was packed for the LAS, and true to expectations they delivered two extraordinary 45-minute sets. Mixing bluegrass and country covers with their own fine material, the core of the performance-focused on their snappily titled new album, Modern Old-Time Sounds for the Bluegrass & Folksong Jamboree, with all twelve of its tracks peppering the two sets. An early highlight was a Showman-arranged and sung version of Hazel Dickens’ harrowing mining tale, Black Lung. With coal having been discovered here in 1849, Nanaimo pretty much developed out of the mining industry, with the majority of the coal exported to San Francisco. On May 3^rd 1887 a mine explosion here killed 150 miners, so lyrics such as those of Dickens’ classic acapella carry great weight in my town.

Another industry (controversially) vital to Vancouver Island’s economy is logging, so a rendition of Craig Johnson’s logger’s lament, Damned Old Piney Mountains, also bore great resonance to this audience when performed in the second set. Otherwise, this breathtaking yet unassuming trio of master bluegrass musicians delivered their takes on songs by the Carter Family (I Will Never Marry); Marty Robbins (Big Iron); (flattop-era) George Jones (Too Much Water) and Gus Cannon and His Jug Stompers (Going to Germany). However, although the set also included an unrecorded Bill Monroe tune, Farewell to Long Hollow (performed, as the Farewell Medley, in a set with Emmett Lundy’s Highlander’s Farewell), and the Stanley Brothers (Stone Walls and Steel Bars), the LAS are far from preoccupied with foundational bluegrass, also reinterpreting more contemporary material, and from outside the genre. Winnipeg’s wonderful singer-songwriter Richard Inman’s 2015 track Lake Town Blues received a beautiful treatment, as did Darrin Hacquard’s 2017 song, Never Again, segued into by Showman’s own Sweetberry Wine, exactly as sequenced on the band’s 2018 album, When the Sun Comes Up. The most surprising cover choice of all was Fool’s Gold, introduced by Heineman as “a mature look at infidelity,” and originally recorded by Lhasa (de Sela) on her third and final, eponymous album. Tragically, in 2010 and aged just 37, the still revered Lhasa passed away from breast cancer in Montreal, but in such as the LAS her gorgeous music lives on.

So, everything that makes bluegrass such a euphoric live experience was delivered by these three incredible musicians in abundance. The level of musicianship, the spine-tingling harmonies and lead vocals from all three were superb. The hoedowns were smokin’ hot and the tearjerkers were exactly that. The full house lapped up every joyous second, whooping and hollering as proceedings hit fever pitch when the guys were in full flight, and affording the band a standing ovation when it was all done and dusted. The intimate venue, where audience and performers are so close to each other, is conducive to the promotion of an interactive experience, so much so that Heineman jokingly referred to it from his perspective as ‘disconcerting.’

This comment was fairly typical of the dry, self-deprecating humour that was shot through the entire performance. Just before the interval, concluding his sales spiel a po-faced Coole said, “Do come say hello. You’ll find we are fascinating men to talk to in person.”

Fascinating? Probably; brilliant – definitely.