For my third night of Canadian Music Week, I decided to finally find out for myself what Hawksley Workman is all about. For years, many people have told me about his amazing talents, but I’ve never had a chance to check him out for myself, so this year I decided to change all that.

For the most part, the rumours are true: Workman is an amazingly talented singer/multi-instrumentalist, and he’s surrounded himself with a diversely talented band (the inventive violin/mandolin/guitarist was especially impressive) with which to tour his sixth album, Between the Beautifuls. You’d think that with all this incredible talent under one roof I’d have my socks rocked off, but after two and a half hours of watching these performers showing off I was surprised to find myself bored silly.

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As the second night of Canadian Music Week rolled around, I found myself running just a wee bit behind. I got to Lee’s Palace just in time to catch the tail end of Rebekah Higgs‘ set. I’m not sure what the rest of her material’s like, but it’s pretty obvious that I’ve caught her and her band on their “rockin’ out” number, which seems to consist primarily of Rebekah wailing wordlessly into a microphone with far too many effects while the band bashes one chord as enthusiastically as possible. Pity.

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