Show review: The Nathan Ouellette Band
Date/location: Ribfest, London, ON. Aug. 3rd 2015
Every town has a cover band, dozens in fact, that play the local haunts and havens for live music. Most of them do fine work as fine musicians. Every now and then there is a special house/cover band that seems to be able to play every cover song perfectly in every aspect. It’s hard to expect a house band to be able to do a variety of other artists songs so well when it comes to the various styles of vocals, percussion, rhythm and such. When it comes to The Nathan Ouellette Band they exemplify this. And they don’t take the easy road of a thin set of songs from a small sampling 
of similar sounds. Tongue twisting eh? The majority of their songs are blues based, yet they will play many of the rock hits/staples from the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s and 2000’s which sound nothing like the blues. They throw in The Ramones and Green Day for a bit ‘o punk. Rock anthems such as KISS’ “Rock N’ Roll All Nite” is a regular as well. Old faves such as “Twist n’ Shout” and a little “Fight For Your Right to Party”, combine with “Suffragette City” and you have some fine variety!
Nathan will also delve into Jimi Hendrix and The Doors extensively. He plays with reckless abandon behind his head and with his teeth, OK, so not so reckless he has a ton of fun with it that’s my uncreative license taking over!
Dale Penney sets the standard for drummers in London, he seems to be able to cover everything and has a huge smile during most of his playing, and having fun watching musicians having fun is most of the fun for me. Makes perfect sense!
Mitch on bass provides the amazing backing vocals, which sadly many house bands seem to forget are the cornerstone of great songs.
On this day, at an early afternoon timeslot the band played to a sparse yet gracious amount of people on the holiday Monday in London, at Ribfest. The weather much better than the night before!
So once again I urge you to search out and support local live music, you never know the gem you may find. It doesn’t always need to be new/original music either.
– Blair De Abreu
