Craving some C.R.AVERY.

A concert review of the provocative bluesy rock band that’s turning heads.

Courtesy of Cravery

It’s poetry beat box meets string quartet. “This is the grey area of rock and roll,” C.R. Avery tells the Toronto crowd Thursday night at CBC’s Glenn Gould studio as he launches into his mish-mash of bluegrass, funk, folk, rock and comedy. I could have been at the Dakota tavern on Ossington Street, or, once the beat boxing through the harmonica started, at a club in the Entertainment District. At first I wasn’t so sure, but as soon as the violins were in full-throttle alongside electric guitar and cello thumping, I felt as though there was a viscous trampoline seeping into my body. I just wanted to get up and bounce.

Listen to his words and you’ll be equally surprised, switching from funny— a song about female orgasms played out through a harmonica (which was oddly quite realistic)— to one about war veterans smoking pot outside the Salvation Army. His cat is puffing smoke rings and for all you know you could be sitting with him in his East Vancouver apartment, for he’s got you frozen, waiting for him to finish the story.

About to launch into his next song he stops. “Fuck! I was in the wrong key, wasn’t I?” he asks his female crew of violinists. (I guess the ladies keep him in-check.) “And I was being so professional up until now. I was keeping my swearing down and I wasn’t even drunk when I came on stage and I blew it in the key of C.” Regardless, the crowd loves him, they’re laughing now, hooting and hollering like no regular white-haired Glenn Gould crowd does. It doesn’t matter that he briefly messed up, or that he’s wearing flood pants and a fedora (what kind of rapper-cum-conductor can pull that off?). “He’s kind of hot, isn’t he?” my friend says. An edgier Joel Plaskett, maybe?

Avery ends with a beat boxing tune at the grand piano; someone comments that it smells like hot, sweaty musicians in here, and I wonder, what would Glenn Gould think about all of this?

– Otiena Ellwand