JOHN DOUGLAS w/ LAUREN CALVE
@ THE MONARCH TAVERN, TORONTO
OCTOBER 15, 2024
On a chilly autumn Tuesday night, The Monarch Tavern hosted an incredible evening of music and stories featuring the headliner John Douglas. The Monarch Tavern was the perfect venue for the show. It proved to be an intimate, relaxed and entertaining evening.
Lauren Calve opened the show. Calve is an extremely talented singer/songwriter who has carved out her own distinct style. She mixes folk, with a bit of country and some good old rock ‘n’ roll. She isn’t opposed to throwing in some blues riffs either. During her set, she focused on songs from her new album, Shift. The majority of songs she performed were from that album, including the title track, “Shift”, the wonderful “Everything At The Same Time”, and the heartbreaking “Pretend To Forget”. She also performed a couple of older songs, such as “She Loves Waterfalls” from her 2020 EP, Wildfire. Knowing that the majority of the crowd was there for Douglas, she worked hard and was very engaging with the audience, and quickly won them over. She talked about where each song came from, and this provided an excellent context for each song. Her star continues to rise, and this was the perfect opportunity to see her before she is playing much bigger venues next time she is in town.
John Douglas took to the stage and very quickly established himself as the master storyteller. In all honesty, he could do a spoken word show, and it would not only be well attended but quite brilliant. Armed only with one acoustic guitar (as was Calve), Douglas captivated the audience immediately. He featured a great many songs from his self-titled debut album (2023) and even a couple of songs from his brand new EP Still Or Sparkling?. What made the night a little more special was Douglas’s stories about each of the songs. He talked about where they came from and how they all related to his, and our, story.
STILL OR SPARKLING? EP REVIEW
Of course, he did some Trashcan Sinatras classics and even a couple of cover songs. The Trashcan Sinatra songs were well chosen and certainly fan favourites. Douglas’s acoustic arrangements of the songs bring new layers to the classic songs. “Oranges & Apples”, a beautiful tribute to Syd Barrett, brought a different level of appreciation for the song. It sounded glorious and more than a little melancholy. Digging a bit deeper in his songwriting catalogue, Douglas performed the wonderful “My Favourite Dress”. This is a very poignant song about his aunt struggling with dementia, and he wrote it from her perspective. Douglas wrote the song with Eddi Reader, and it appeared on her album, Cavalier (2018). It is a moving and beautiful song that, from my calculations, did not leave a dry eye in the audience.
The covers Douglas chose to perform could have been songs he wrote. He did, indeed, make them his own. Prefab Sprout’s epic “We Let The Stars Go” and Tom Waits’ truly lovely “Johnsburg, Illinois” fit perfectly along with his own songs. Again, with every song, Douglas put the songs in context and provided a great deal of meaning behind each song.
As good as the covers and the classic Trashcan Sinatra songs are, it was his new songs that came alive and sounded fantastic live. He even performed a song so new that he didn’t even have a title for. That song was stunning and needs to be on his next release. But songs like “Lost”, “Still Or Sparkling?”, or the moving “Maid Of The Loch”, were delivered with passion and the accompanying stories added a great deal of depth to the songs.
All too soon, Douglas brought the evening to a close with the classic Trachcan Sinatras song “Weightlifting”, which was not only the perfect song to end the evening, but really the only choice. Again, once Douglas provided the context of the song, it felt like he was just one of the crowd talking about a song and then playing it. It was a dramatic ending to the evening.
Throughout the night, Douglas repeatedly thanked people for coming out on a Tuesday night for the show. Having been there, I can’t imagine there was anywhere else on the planet that I would have wanted to be, other than in The Monarch Tavern.
(Photography by Aaron Badgley & Shauna McLarnon)
SPILL FEATURE: SCULPTING SOMETHING THAT WILL LAST – A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN DOUGLAS (TRASHCAN SINATRAS)
John Douglas Photos (Credit: Aaron Badgley)
Lauren Calve Photos (Credit: Shauna McLarnon)
Artist Links
SPILL ALBUM REVIEW: JOHN DOUGLAS – STILL OR SPARKLING?
SPILL FEATURE: SCULPTING SOMETHING THAT WILL LAST – A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN DOUGLAS (TRASHCAN SINATRAS)
SPILL FEATURE: THE RISKS AND REWARDS OF DOING IT SOLO – A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN DOUGLAS (TRASHCAN SINATRAS)
