SLCR #332: The Jerry Cans (January 17, 2019)

I feel out of practice. Luckily, we’re hitting all the old familiar tropes so it should be easy to coast:

• A new-to-me band that I paid to see based on name recognition alone, rather than streaming some of their music for free
• A review I let sit for like a week and a half to ensure that I have since forgotten what little I’d had to say
• A need to rush through the review with another concert coming tonight and another tomorrow

I first became aware of the Jerry Cans in the summer of 2017, when they released their cover of the Tragically Hip’s Ahead by a Century, translated into the Inuit dialect of Inuktitut. It wasn’t long before it felt like I was hearing about them all over, playing at the Junos and on CBC’s New Year’s Eve broadcast. Even having heard only one song, over a year ago – and a cover, at that – I was looking forward to seeing them from the hype alone. That said, it’s January and it’s cold and I’m lazy and I was on the fence until the Monday before the show, when I fell into another SLCR trope – buying myself concert tickets because I’m grumpy about being at work. This is why I wind up going to so many shows.

Really, I knew that if I left it until the night of the show, I’d wuss out and stay home (see above re: cold, lazy). Turns out this was correct, as the show sold out not long after I got my ticket.

I got to the Artesian and was immediately cautioned that the band wanted people dancing up at the front, so if I wanted to sit, I should sit up in the pews or the balcony. I don’t know if “balcony” is really the right word for it, but it’s upstairs and has chairs in it, so whatever, “balcony” it is. And I’d never been up there, so that seemed like a decent plan. It was already pretty full, but there was a lone chair just sitting there, and it was kind of perfect. Lots of legroom, nobody near me. I got to spend 20 minutes waiting for the show catching up on phone crosswords and watching the parade of people come upstairs, look for seats, and go back down, disappointed.

The opener was Josh Qaumariaq, lead singer of Iqaluit band The Trade-offs. He went by Josh Q, which I appreciate as a fat-fingered white guy who writes these things in a program that doesn’t have a spellchecker. He did a few songs solo before a few people wandered on stage to help out; he later identified them as half of the Jerry Cans (LIES – it was two-fifths). This was blues-inspired rock – lyrically, it was not so much my thing, but you’re listening for the great guitar playing and an incredible powerful voice. Qaumariaq went from polite applause at the start to a huge ovation at the end.

Having only heard that Hip cover, I wasn’t sure what to expect out of the Jerry Cans, but that song actually worked as a fine introduction. Almost a Celtic pop/rock band – or maybe I’m going to say that about any band that incorporates a fiddle – but with the inclusion of Inuit throat singing. I can’t really speak too much about the content of the songs, since their lyrics were all in Inuktitut (almost – they didn’t translate their cover of Cypress Hill’s Hits from the Bong) though they did explain what some of the songs meant (Hits from the Bong didn’t require explanation). They asked for people to get up and dance, and the crowd was happy to do so – the band got a great reaction for their first-ever Saskatchewan show. And we might see them again soon – they hinted that they may be back for a certain festival this summer. Or else they were just trying to get booked on the show; either way, I’m good with it.