This was an unusually musical weekend for me, as I’d heard “The Jailer’s Daughter” on Saturday, and I got to see Al Stewart and Dave Nachmanoff at Hugh’s Room in Toronto yesterday.
It was my first visit to this particular venue, and (as always seems to happen) it took me longer to find it than I’d hoped. I actually passed it twice before noticing it — construction and road closures again figured in the disruption — and found parking a block or so away. The show was scheduled to start at 8:30, so I thought getting there by 6:30 would be more than enough time to get a good seat.
I got the very last table . . . and that only because there’d been a last-minute cancellation. The table was right at the back of the room, so my photography plans were already gang aft agley.
The food was very tasty, the wine list was okay (I ended up with a Chateau des Charmes Gamay Noir), but I’m not as comfortable eating at a tall table: my toes barely touched the ground while sitting on the barstool.
Photography was a bit fraught, as I was too far back from the stage to use my fastest lens or, for that matter, my slowest lens without adding in a 2x teleconverter. In the lighting conditions, using a 80-200mm zoom and the teleconverter, I was surprised any of the shots turned out, frankly (using a flash would only have illuminated a few dozen backs-of-heads, not the stage). I got lots and lots of not-quite-in-focus shots, and lots of nice-composition-ruined-by-camera-shake (hand-held shooting at 1/15s is very much not best practice for photography). By the end of the night, I was so happy to put the camera down . . . even with a light-body SLR, hanging a long lens and extender off the front makes for an awkward and heavy object.
Dave and Al during the opening set
Duelling guitars?
One of the few times Al backed slightly away from the mike . . . and I managed to get kinda-in-focus
During the second set
Al came out for the encore with his trademark glass of wine (he said it was his version of something Frank Sinatra used to do), and sang to Dave’s guitar accompaniment
