Yukon Blonde and Young Rival Showed The Grad Club a thing or two about Rock N Roll on Saturday night.

This was probably about the third or fourth time that I have watched Young Rival play in Kingston since I started following the music scene. This is a band who has gone through quite a change since I first saw them play the first time. I was still looking forward in hearing the older tunes as well as a bit of newer stuff as well. We were lucky to hear the a lot of new music which they are currently in the mastering stage in the production process. This is one of the reasons why I like live music so much you never know what your going to get to hear and sometimes you get to hear the new music first. The new songs have more of a rock sound compared to their older tracks, the surfer sound (Yardbirds) has been levelled down a little bit. One major factor with their sound was the fact that they are down to a three piece band now, this is the first time that I have watched Young Rival since becoming a three piece from a four piece. The lead guitar is now a heightened sense for the band, minus the ever  outstanding harmonica which used to accompany Aron on stage every time I saw them play before. Aron really knew how to showboat his guitar skill on the small stage which the Grad Club has to offer. With his guitar playing he filled the stage with enough sound to make up for the fact that he was now playing for two. It didn’t take long for the audience to take notice to this fact either. I also noticed that the vocals have partially changed as well, lessening the surfer sound from before and moving onto a more rock sound in his vocals. To accompany the guitar  there was Noah on the drum kit pounding away at some points setting the tempo for which Aron had to follow. To me missing the harmonica really put a damper on the songs that I wanted to hear but for the people who haven’t heard of Young Rival before after that performance on Saturday night I am pretty sure they will not be forgetting their name anytime soon.

I was still having a hard time believing that Yukon Blonde was here in Kingston to play the Grad Club I figured if they ever came to Kingston they would probably be at the Ale House, but here they played on the ever small but passable stage of The Grad Club. Since the Dan Mangan show finished during Young Rival’s set The Grad Club quickly began to fill in. It didn’t take long until people were should to shoulder with each other. Yukon Blonde drove up the anticipation a little after they set up their instruments as they left the sage for a little bit before returning to a loud cheer from the audience. They didn’t take anytime in getting down to business and hitting us with their brand of Rock and alt country. It didn’t take long for everyone to start singing along to every lyric which was coming from the stage especially from their debut album, the microphone could have been placed in the center of The Grad Club  Even at one point in the night one song in particular has a Indie underground rap version which has been tagged along with the song and somehow the audience member got spotted by Yukon Blonde and at the end of the song He was congratulated in knowing the off beat version of the song and they were going to try and fit that version into the set somewhere but it never seemed to take face as the night came to a close.

 Another hard hitting notion by about the second or third song Dan Mangan was spotted standing in the crowd and was quickly given a cheer from the audience and Yukon Blonde quickly invited Dan up on stage to play the tambourine for them, it took a little coaching from everyone in the audience but Dan obliged and hopped up on stage and played for a song. After a memorable thanks from Yukon Blonde Dan returned to dancing along with the audience. Yukon Blonde played songs from their past couple of albums and even slipping in a couple of new tracks as well. As well as playing their original songs they also found time to slip in a cover of Tears For Fears which some people got and some people did not, “Must be the generation gap” that was in the room.

To finish off the night they were not going to escape by not playing a couple of encore songs, they were barraged with a chant of “seven More Songs. Seven More Songs”. The guys stayed off the stage for maybe about a minute, mostly I think due to the fact that they had nowhere to go. They finished off the night with about a ten to fifteen minute encore set which was still met with encore chants at the end but quickly the house music started signalling the end of the night.

Yukon Blonde and Young Rival Showed The Grad Club a thing or two about Rock N Roll on Saturday night.

This was probably about the third or fourth time that I have watched Young Rival play in Kingston since I started following the music scene. This is a band who has gone through quite a change since I first saw them play the first time. I was still looking forward in hearing the older tunes as well as a bit of newer stuff as well. We were lucky to hear the a lot of new music which they are currently in the mastering stage in the production process. This is one of the reasons why I like live music so much you never know what your going to get to hear and sometimes you get to hear the new music first. The new songs have more of a rock sound compared to their older tracks, the surfer sound (Yardbirds) has been levelled down a little bit. One major factor with their sound was the fact that they are down to a three piece band now, this is the first time that I have watched Young Rival since becoming a three piece from a four piece. The lead guitar is now a heightened sense for the band, minus the ever  outstanding harmonica which used to accompany Aron on stage every time I saw them play before. Aron really knew how to showboat his guitar skill on the small stage which the Grad Club has to offer. With his guitar playing he filled the stage with enough sound to make up for the fact that he was now playing for two. It didn’t take long for the audience to take notice to this fact either. I also noticed that the vocals have partially changed as well, lessening the surfer sound from before and moving onto a more rock sound in his vocals. To accompany the guitar  there was Noah on the drum kit pounding away at some points setting the tempo for which Aron had to follow. To me missing the harmonica really put a damper on the songs that I wanted to hear but for the people who haven’t heard of Young Rival before after that performance on Saturday night I am pretty sure they will not be forgetting their name anytime soon.

I was still having a hard time believing that Yukon Blonde was here in Kingston to play the Grad Club I figured if they ever came to Kingston they would probably be at the Ale House, but here they played on the ever small but passable stage of The Grad Club. Since the Dan Mangan show finished during Young Rival’s set The Grad Club quickly began to fill in. It didn’t take long until people were should to shoulder with each other. Yukon Blonde drove up the anticipation a little after they set up their instruments as they left the sage for a little bit before returning to a loud cheer from the audience. They didn’t take anytime in getting down to business and hitting us with their brand of Rock and alt country. It didn’t take long for everyone to start singing along to every lyric which was coming from the stage especially from their debut album, the microphone could have been placed in the center of The Grad Club  Even at one point in the night one song in particular has a Indie underground rap version which has been tagged along with the song and somehow the audience member got spotted by Yukon Blonde and at the end of the song He was congratulated in knowing the off beat version of the song and they were going to try and fit that version into the set somewhere but it never seemed to take face as the night came to a close.

 Another hard hitting notion by about the second or third song Dan Mangan was spotted standing in the crowd and was quickly given a cheer from the audience and Yukon Blonde quickly invited Dan up on stage to play the tambourine for them, it took a little coaching from everyone in the audience but Dan obliged and hopped up on stage and played for a song. After a memorable thanks from Yukon Blonde Dan returned to dancing along with the audience. Yukon Blonde played songs from their past couple of albums and even slipping in a couple of new tracks as well. As well as playing their original songs they also found time to slip in a cover of Tears For Fears which some people got and some people did not, “Must be the generation gap” that was in the room.

To finish off the night they were not going to escape by not playing a couple of encore songs, they were barraged with a chant of “seven More Songs. Seven More Songs”. The guys stayed off the stage for maybe about a minute, mostly I think due to the fact that they had nowhere to go. They finished off the night with about a ten to fifteen minute encore set which was still met with encore chants at the end but quickly the house music started signalling the end of the night.