Justin Rutledge Takes It To Church

Trinity-St. Paul's United Church

Toronto, ON

on May 30 2008

Kate Harper (CHARTattack)

06/02/2008 3:00pm

The last thing you expect is to walk into a church that's more than 100 years old and see a stage adorned with daisies, photographs and book shelves filled with volumes clearly transplanted from someone's home. This is what Justin Rutledge brought to the stage inside Trinity-St. Paul's United Church on Friday. Most of the props were provided by Rutledge's friend and Six Shooter labelmate Neville Quinlan (a.k.a. NQ Arbuckle). While it was strange to see them there, it was also interesting to see Rutledge trying to be creative with his stage set-up.

Melissa McClelland got things started. Husband Luke Doucet joined her on stage with his somewhat infamous Gretsch White Falcon guitar. McClelland and Doucet have incredible on-stage chemistry, both musical and otherwise, and had no problem holding the audience's attention. The two traded acoustic and electric alt.country guitar riffs throughout their set and lobbed witticisms back and forth. You had to wonder if McClelland and Doucet would pull a V.V. and Hotel when they faced each other and stood pretty close together near the end of the set, but nothing like that resulted.

Rutledge took the stage with his band a bit later and launched into "A Penny For The Band," "Everyone's In Love" and "St. Peter" from his recently released Man Descending album. He paused, took a look at the audience, and wittily quipped, "I used to be an altar boy, so this is freaking me out a bit," before playing a very appropriate version of "Lay Me Down, Sweet Jesus" from his 2005 No Never Alone debut.

Halfway through, the band left him alone to run through some tracks by himself, which was easily the highlight of the set. When he began his solo version of "Waterloo," I started wondering if he could pull it off, since the original features a drum part that's pretty integral to the track's structure. He nonetheless managed to render a new spin on it and the three others he played alone ("Come Summertime," "1855" and "San Sebastian"). That the four songs stood on their own with nothing behind them proves Rutledge is one of Canada's best — if underappreciated — songwriters.

Rutledge was gradually rejoined by his band before he ended the set with "Greenwich Time," "Alberta Breeze" and "The Suffering Of Pepe O'Malley Pt. III," arguably three of his "loudest" tracks — if you can call someone like Rutledge loud.

But that wasn't all. Rutledge had barely left before he bounded back up on stage, followed by his band, who were all carrying acoustic instruments. They waded into the crowd and began playing live favourite "Don't Be So Mean, Jellybean." The track turned into a full-on call and response session between Rutledge and the audience. It's a feat to get Toronto audiences involved in live performances, and Rutledge had the whole church singing and clapping to a song that's anything but gospel.

Earlier in the set, before running through tracks from 2006's The Devil On A Bench In Stanley Park, Rutledge self-deprecatingly called it his "Juno-losing album." In response, a fan screamed out, "It should have won!"

Rutledge is only 30 years old and with live performances like this one and more albums like the three he's released, maybe one day he'll have enough Juno Awards to adorn the stage at other shows. But I think he'd be too modest for that.