The Pairs shine

The Pairs are fine. It does not matter the province. They were awesome in June, Under the Spire as well as last Friday at The Sanctuary in Ridgeway, Ontario.

In May, as we began finalizing our summer travel plans to the Canadian Maritimes, my wife Beth stumbled upon the Festival of Small Halls in Prince Edward Island.

Serendipitously, our final night before driving home there was a show planned within driving distance of where we planned to stay before our flight home from Halifax. The artists were British Comedian James Mullinger, The Pairs and Beolach.

Mullinger was funny. Beolach offered awesome Irish Trad music. The Pairs blew us away so much so that I started tracking them for a show we could drive to from Niagara Falls, New York.

Taking a step back, our travel logic was Porter Air flies on a budget from Hamilton to points all over Canada as well as Mexico and the Dominican. Domestic turmoil with the FAA or TSA could not impact our travel as long as we made it past the Canadian border.

Last Friday we headed across the Rainbow Bridge and traveled Sodom Road all the way to Ridgeway, about 35 minutes (the same distance we would travel to The Cave or Ninth Ward).

We had no trouble crossing and shared a pizza, mac-and-cheese and a beer at Brimstone Brewing before the adjacent sanctuary opened at 7:30 p.m. for an 8 p.m. show. With a tip, our meal came to $45 US. It’s hard to get dinner for two that cheap stateside.

Just like in PEI, we entered the performance space 25 minutes before showtime and most seats were full. There weren’t a lot of people mingling, chatting or even scrolling on their phones. Instead, they sat, and waited politely. The place was 80% full by 7:37 p.m. It has a capacity of about 125.

I went to the bar to grab a Sinister Minister IPA and asked two people is they had ever seen the band before. They both said no, but they had checked them out online and bought tickets.

Ray Anderson, the Sanctuary’s regular sound engineer, said the same thing. He was playing background music before the show and I heard things I like and, for the first time ever, saw Shazam get skunked for 3-in-a-row. I never had a chance to ask him about it.

Rita Visser and the Day Dreamers opened the show with acoustic songs accompanied by Danielle Marconi on fiddle and Dave Matthews on banjo. Her songs were heartfelt, political and personal.

Visser took a photo with her phone before the show because “it’s all about you. You are the star of the show.”

One song stuck with me, about when she worked at a homeless shelter in Thunder Bay. “It’s a fine line between us and those we serve.”

As Rita finished, The Pairs gathered, just to our left, waiting to take the stage. We recognized but did not disturb them. Like Ben Folds Five being 4, the Pairs are 3 because Hillary’s twin split but Renee and Noelle stayed.

In PEI, they closed with an acoustic sing-a-long of Pete Seeger’s “If I had a Hammer.” This time, they opened with it and it fell flat because the crowd wasn’t intimate yet.

The trio has “blood harmony”, the sort of tonal perfection that comes from a lifetime together – indeed, Hillary said they were playmates from the age of 2. When the voices are going to shine there is no need for more than one guitar at a time so they took turns.

“It was a really good bad day” was so tight it evoked memories of Moxy Fruvous, a Canadian band I hadn’t thought about in years. After all, everything ends, including fear, friends and conversations we won’t have again. There is a fine line between self aware and self obsessed.

The band members seem to playfully bicker somewhere on the spectrum between gentle teasing and a real disagreement. Shows for them are likely cathartic.

As Renee put it, “we are touring musicians and therapy is expensive so thank you for helping us.”

We stopped to chat after the show. Renee immediately recognized the shirts we bought in PEI, saying “hey, I have one of those.”

We checked the schedule for The Sanctuary. It seemed to have mostly cover bands and not much original music, though we would return for The Pairs.

We also asked about the chance they would come stateside. Renee said they are awaiting work Visas.