What: Lisa Fischer and Grand Baton with Blue Moon Marquee
When: Wednesday
Where: Royal Theatre
Rating: Four (out of five)
Lisa Fischer sure does get around.
On Monday, the singer played a 1,000-person concert with her band, Grand Baton, at the Edmonton International Jazz Festival. On Tuesday, she was singing before 25,000 fans at Milwaukee’s Marcus Amphitheater, with her other band, the Rolling Stones.
On Wednesday night, the New Yorker was back with Grand Baton, playing to a full house at the Royal Theatre as part of the Victoria International Jazz Festival.
It would appear Fischer is an expert traveller.
She didn’t have the look of a singer playing her third show in as many days, nor was her voice any worse from the wear and tear, despite having criss-crossed North America by plane during the past week.
Fischer — who also performs tonight in Vancouver, her fourth consecutive show — is quite noticeably a pro’s pro, from the care she takes in preserving her voice to the manner in which she commands the stage.
The night began with a rousing set from Alberta gypsy-noir duo Blue Moon Marquee. The pair cooked up a swamp-blues bouillabaisse, one that counted Tom Waits and late-era Bob Dylan among its key ingredients. And it did so with a flair for the atmospheric.
Led by A.W. Cardinal and Jasmine Colette, the coupling made economic use of its moving parts. Cardinal sang and played a mean guitar, while Colette, who played stand-up bass, had a few more items on her plate, including a pair of floor drums operated by her feet.
Blue Moon Marquee made some headway during its showcase and likely earned a new set of fans in the process. Kudos to them.
Fischer and her talented bandmates, guitarist J.C. Maillard, drummer Thierry Arpino and upright bassist Aiden Carroll, were already the toast of the town heading into their set, theirs being one of the most anticipated of this year’s JazzFest.
They did not disappoint. Opening with a cover of Amy Grant’s Breath of Heaven, followed by a saucy take on Eric Bibb’s Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down, they hit the stage well warmed-up. Fischer got the audience to interact during a call-and-response section of Bird in a House, a gem from New Jersey jam band Railroad Earth, but they needed no extra incentive during a sly interpretation of Led Zeppelin’s Rock and Roll.
Heads bobbed, people hollered, and when the band saw the classic rock song to a close, brought there by some spectacular vocals from Fischer, the audience bellowed forth its applause.
Having sung with the Rolling Stones for 26 years, there was the expectation that Fischer would sing a few gems by Mick and Keith, which she did in the form of Jumpin’ Jack Flash and Gimme Shelter. But not before she took a bow of her own, in the form of her own hit, How Can I Ease the Pain, which won her the 1991 Grammy for best female R&B vocal performance.
It was one of her finer moments on the night, one which made considerable use of a two-microphone set-up that produced one channel of clean Fischer vocals and another layered with effects.
It was a neat way for Fischer to get extra bang for her buck. Not that she needed the help.
