Chris Isaak sparkles at Calgary Folk Fest
Chris Isaak wears mirrored suit for encore
Chris Isaak at the Calgary Folk Festival Thursday evening. Photo: Cole Grey, Compass Studios.
By Cole Grey
Chris Isaak has released 13 albums, done a little acting, toured the world, and made more than a few girls blush from behind the microphone. With his musical menagerie of some ultra talent on the instruments, Isaak rocked the Calgary Folk Fest last night.
He played some of his beloved hits and threw in some new ones from his most recent release “Beyond the Sun”.
” I took the band to Memphis to record at Sun Studio; it’s still a recording studio and it is an AMAZING room! We recorded in the late afternoon and stayed up ‘til way too late and we had a ball! We played, not worked…we really went for the style of recording that was used on those records early on,” says Chris Isaak on his website.
“We were all playing in the room together, nobody had any headphones, we just listened to each other and went for it. We cut way more music than we intended…we just couldn’t and didn’t want to stop. It’s the most fun I ever had making a record.”
Chris Isaak does a version of “It’s Now or Never” a song recorded by Elvis at Sun Studios, and there’s a note towards the end of the song that seems impossibly high, and just when you think Isaak may not make that climb, he gives a little pause and then steps into that note like it’s a well worn set of cowboy boots.
“You do a song like that one, you can’t leave out the guns,” he says.
The crowd was fairly relaxed through the amazing performances prior to Isaak’s stage entrance, but up on their feet, dancing with the beat and singing along when he belted out “Burning Ring of Fire” by Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Great Balls of Fire,” including stage flames and smoke pouring out of the piano, the effects were just as enjoyable as any high profile pyrotechnics laden show at the Saddledome.
Chris Isaak bounded from backstage for his encore wearing a fantastic mirrored suit and closed the show with a simple gospel sounding tune he wrote. His musicians joined him up front much like the Jordanaires did for Elvis back in the day.
Category: Entertainment
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