{"id":1247,"date":"2011-11-04T13:38:42","date_gmt":"2011-11-04T20:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=1247"},"modified":"2011-12-04T21:22:17","modified_gmt":"2011-12-05T05:22:17","slug":"wil-blew-musical-load-at-upstairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2011\/11\/04\/wil-blew-musical-load-at-upstairs\/","title":{"rendered":"Wil blew musical load at Upstairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Wil w\/ CR Avery
\nThursday, November 3, 2011
\nUpstairs Cabaret<\/p>\n

A slam poet, a beat-boxer, a harmonica player, and a keyboardist walk up to a microphone\u2014and they\u2019re all the same guy. It\u2019s CR Avery, a one-man band who\u2019s toured with artists such as Ani DiFranco, Tom Waits, and Sage Francis. His musical talent is as diverse as his influences and his performance. And this time, he was there to open for Wil.<\/p>\n

The audience at Upstairs Cabaret on Thursday night didn\u2019t know what to expect from Avery, but now they know: a man who can brilliantly play harmonica while beatboxing and playing a keytar at the same time.<\/p>\n

If Avery was complicated hip-hop style beatbox blues, then Wil was simplistic, passionate, roots, rock, and roll.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Starting his set strong, Wil played crowd favourites like \u201cWedding Dress,\u201d \u201cBoth Hands,\u201d and \u201cNew Deal.\u201d<\/p>\n

In between songs Wil charmed the audience with his wit, at one point telling them he was going to play \u201cTell You Twice\u201d before repeating himself verbatim a moment later. Later on, Wil took a moment to thank everyone in the audience who was seeing him or Avery for the first time.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything you do you did for the first time at some point,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Something else new for the show was the addition of a drummer, Jason Cook. A childhood friend of Wil\u2019s, Cook actually also co-produced and played drums on Wil\u2019s latest album, Heart of Mine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Wil claimed the two had only played four shows together before, which was hard to believe: they sounded like they\u2019d been playing together their whole lives.<\/p>\n

When Wil offered to take requests from the audience he was surprised by how many people shouted their favourite songs back at him. Afterwards he humbly remarked that he had expected maybe one or two people to know his tunes.<\/p>\n

The set finished with Wil\u2019s epic closer, \u201cHoney Pie.\u201d When he came back to the stage for the encore, he briefly considered taking a request before telling the audience a short story about previously playing at Upstairs earlier on in his career. Wil then announced that he was going to \u201cblow his musical load.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cFour String\u201d will always bring the house down. It\u2019s Wil\u2019s passion expressed in its truest form. It\u2019s a musical climax that demands to be experienced live, and the ideal epilogue to a night of roots, rock, and roll.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wil w\/ CR Avery Thursday, November 3, 2011 Upstairs Cabaret A slam poet, a beat-boxer, a harmonica player, and a keyboardist walk up to a microphone\u2014and they\u2019re all the same guy. It\u2019s CR Avery, a one-man band who\u2019s toured with artists such as Ani DiFranco, Tom Waits, and Sage Francis. His musical talent is as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1248,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1247","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","category-webexclusive"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1247"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1250,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1247\/revisions\/1250"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1247"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1247"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1247"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}