By Divine Right with Wayne Omaha and the Mark Inside at Lee’s Palace, January 10. Tickets: $10. Attendance: 350. Rating: NNN
Rating: NNN
wayne omaha got off to a slo-o-o-o-o-w start Friday night at Lee’s Palace. Poor guys didn’t get to do a sound check.
Then, about a quarter of the way through their set, when the sound got straightened out, there was a major turnaround. You could literally feel the shift in the room. Suddenly, Wayne Omaha was a lot of fun, and the rest of the set was spent in a busy, tunefully noisy, affable haze.
After Omaha’s high-note ending, it was disconcerting to find out, when By Divine Right hit the stage, that bassist Dylan Hudecki (aka the Dill) would not be in attendance. Seems he was in hospital after blacking out and hitting his head.
The good news is that the first thing Jose Contreras did was let everyone know that Dylan’s OK. Still, you could tell he was pretty upset.
With Hudecki out of commission, Brian Borcherdt did an admirable job of filling the bass slot.
So the show went on. After all these years, By Divine Right are still playing some good rock ‘n’ roll. They draw on the best classic influences, manage to avoid sounding like a rehash and are free of attitude, which is refreshing.
They’re a little on the hippie-dippy happy side (you just had to have a psychedelic screen behind you, didn’t you?) but we can overlook that in favour of well-written tunes and solid stage presence.
Nice. Not exactly transcendental — maybe with Hudecki they are — but nice.
Hope he’s feeling a lot better.
