Hedley recently released their third studio album “The Show Must Go” and have been doing a nationwide tour dubbed “The Show Must Go...On The Road Tour” with special guests Fefe Dobson, Stereos, and Boys Like Girls. As a huge fan of Hedley as well as Stereos, I was really excited to see the show and was able to catch it during their stop in Ottawa.
Before the show, I was fortunate enough to meet the band who were super nice. I had a friend that was supposed to meet them with me, but she was unable to get off of work in time for the meet and greet (she did attend the actual show with me though). As a result, when the band saw me alone and I explained how my friend was working, Jacob cut me off and was like “you were supposed to come with a friend....and YOU GOT DUMPED!”.Playing along with their joke, I said yeah unfortunately, and when I did the band got serious and felt bad, “Are you serious, omg, wow sorry.” “I’m just kidding, she had to work,” I replied. “Oh good, I was going to say you’re a huge trooper if you still decided to come out to the show the day you got dumped!” he replied. It was a really fun meet and greet, although it was a bit short, the band was really nice and meeting them made me more stoked for the show.
The show started about an hour later with Fefe Dobson opening. Fefe Dobson released her debut album in 2004 and had a few somewhat popular singles including Take Me Away and Bye, Bye Boyfriend. Her sophomore album went unreleased when she parted ways with her label, and she is currently finishing up her new sophomore album for release sometime this year. Opening for Hedley would be the perfect way to do early promo. She performed for about half an hour singing songs from her debut, and a bunch of new songs. To me her performance was below average. She had this rocker look going on during her performance, however it seemed so force and unnatural. Her live voice wasn’t horrible, however most of the songs she performed were just screaming and/or sounded the same. From the crowd response, I was’t the only one not impressed with her performance. Thankfully, it was only an opening performance so it was short.
The second performance of the night was with the new boy band Stereos. Stereos gained recognition on MuchMusic’s Disband from which they landed themselves a record deal and released their debut album last year. Since then, their popularity significantly increased and they did their own nationwide tour last year, toured the U.S. with Kill Paradise early this year, and are now opening for Hedley. Their music is a fusion of rock, hip-hop, and pop and thus they have a pretty big fan base. The crowd went wild when they showed up on stage and they didn’t fail to disappoint with their performance. As a matter of fact, people got so into their performance you could actually feel the floor shake during some of their songs, especially during “Turn It Up”. It was really interesting to hear them live as their music uses real instruments as well as the recently popular auto-tune and hip-hop beats. Lead singer Pat’s voice isn’t the strongest voice, but he did prove that he could sing without the use of auto tune, and the rest of the band put on a great live show. They were definitely a good opener for Hedley and they definitely had great stage performance. This is rare for new bands, especially when these new bands perform at arena sized venues as opposed to clubs.
The third performance was by American band, Boys Like Girls. I was actually surprised that Boys Like Girls was opening for Hedley as they are pretty big themselves, not only in Canada, but in the USA as well. Not being a huge fan of the band, I still managed to enjoy their performance. I saw them a few years ago playing alongside Good Charlotte at a club venue, and performing at a bigger venue wasn’t a hard transition for them. They opened the set with a cover of I Gotta Feeling by Black Eyed Peas and went on to perform a half hour setlist including their hits Love Drunk, Two Is Better Than One, and The Great Escape. They brought a fan on stage as well, and the lead singer sang to her. Overall, they put on a good show.
Of the three openers, I would have to say Stereos were my favorite.
After a short wait, the lights dimmed and the crowd began to scream louder than they did for any of the other acts; it was Hedley time. Their performance started with an intro video that showed each member of the group doing their own day to day activities, when they receive a phone call that they have to be at a performance. All of them rush to get to the performance, which of course, is our show. It was a neat idea for an introduction video and definitely built excitement for their show. They opened their set with Cha Ching and did not disappoint. It seemed as if Jacob didn’t know what city he was in for the first few minutes of the performance as he addressed us as “Kingston” a few times. By the end of the song, he finally got it right and called us Ottawa. I wasn’t sure if that was an intentional mistake or if he was reliving his show from last night. Either way, the performance was a great opening song and they did not disappoint with their stage presence. They had props, videos, costume changes and divided their show into sections. One section of their show was campfire songs in which they brought some fake trees onto the stage, logs to sit on, a fake campfire, a video in the background depicting the night sky and sounds of owls hooting, and a fan that let out a gentle breeze in the audience. They definitely set the mood and started performing some of their slower and more acoustic songs. This included “Friends” from their latest album which became one of the highlights of the show. Other songs they performed included Perfect which was done on a grand piano and was very raw. You could hear and feel Jacob’s emotion during his performance of that song; it was another highlight. Of course the show wouldn’t be a true Hedley show if there weren’t some shenanigans on stage. During the performance of Don’t Talk To Strangers, Jacob did some butt shaking and some of the other members showed some of their rear end on stage during the camp fire scene. They performed almost all of their singles including 321, Gunnin’, On My Own, She’s So Sorry, Trip, and Never To Late which was the final song before their encore. During the encore, they performed For The Nights I Can’t Remember on the grand piano in which Jacob made a really deep and touching closing speech. In his speech, Jacob told the fans how much their support means to them as well as talking about how everything they do is for the fans, and they don’t deserve the success they have etc. Although some lines of the speech did seem a little rehearsed, made up and simply crowd pleasing, it did seem honest and sincere. I believed it.
Overall, the show was fantastic. Hedley definitely proved they can put on a great live and visually appealing show, something that I haven’t seen from a rock show as of a late. For being band with not much popularity outside of Canada, they definitely put on a show equivalent to the level and quality of some major international tours by worldwide famous artists. The funny thing about that is that had the group not have all the cool sets, videos, and props, the show still would’ve been just as good. Their live performance is just so raw and brilliant that it doesn’t need the aid of visuals to get itself across.
The Show Must Go...On The Road was an amazing show that did not disappoint in any expect (minus Fefe Dobson’s opening) however by the end of the show, that was all forgotten about. Here’s hoping a tour DVD is released!
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