Those not familiar with Matt Minglewood ought to be. The Nova Scotia native has been ripping up stages across Canada and beyond since 1966. With 12 albums under his belt since 1975, he’s created a solid legacy of his brand of rockin’, sometimes funky, sometimes country, blues.
Minglewood casually strode on to the stage and was warmly greeted by a full house of already converted mostly 60 somethings. With the support of his excellent band (whose combined age probably ended up somewhere around Matt’s 70 years) Minglewood made it plain he was born to the stage and going nowhere soon. His voice has lost none of it’s gritty passion and his guitar work the same.
In support of his latest album Fly Like Desperados the Minglewood band grooved and flowed and kept the crowd swaying, smiling and cheering all night long. The tracks performed from this album play like you somehow already know them. This could partly be because of Matt’s gift of storytelling and allowing the audience to get behind the meaning of every song. The songs Kandahar and Broken Dreams inspired by his recent trip to entertain the Canadian troops in Afghanistan, keep Minglewood’s latest work powerful and relevant.
There was nothing ground breaking about what went on this night, but the energy was high and the crowd was loving and enthusiastic. Finishing with his well known version ofMarshall Tucker Band’s Can’t You See, Minglewood was almost apologetic about mixing in his new songs with the more familiar. “After all, you can’t have the old songs without writin’ new ones. Heck, if I just wanted old songs, I’d have stopped at my first record. I’m 70 now. I’ll see ya at 80 for my next one!”
Keith A. McTaggart
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