If you missed it, you missed it! The legendary Pat Travers rocked the Rockpile on Friday to a sold-out show! The west end of Toronto received the treat of the year.

Devilwitch

The night started off with a band called Devilwitch. Just from the name I thought this was going to be a mismatch because the name implied that they could have been a Metal Band. Well, I was proven wrong as this solid hard rock band pushed the audience with all the right buttons.

With a name like Devilwitch, they certainly were wicked enough with their wall of rock-solid sounds.  In fact, about half way through their set, they decided to do a Frank Zappa song called, “Magic Fingers”.  Well, Mikey Devilwitch proved himself in a huge way by taking on this song and letting the audience know, this guy knows how to play a guitar like a sorcerer.

At the end of the song someone in the audience yelled out, “You’ve got the fingers”! Yes, he did. In fact, the entire band proved to be a very tight unit. The drummer was both precise and wild at the same time. The keyboardist looked like Jon Lord and played meticulously. I had to smile at the bass player, because he had one of the coolest bass guitars I have ever seen and it was as tall as he was. That didn’t stop him from being awesome.

The band was finishing off their set with a jam session called “I don’t mind dying”, which sounded like something Black Sabbath would do.

With that said, the band got called to do and encore, and that is when Mikey called his father to the stage so they could play together like a rocking family. Dad was dressed like that classic 80’s Rockers and proceeded to sing Black Sabbath’s rare gem, “Hand of Doom”. Well, I was proven wrong; this was a great band to open for Pat Travers.

This is Devilwitch:

Pat Travers

Well, the Canadian Legend Pat Travers was there and live in front of a crowd of dedicated fans hungry to either snort whiskey or maybe just drink cocaine. Either way Pat entered the stage with his style of rocking blues which has it very distinct sound and flavour.

His drummer, Alex Petrosky was a concrete rock-hard hitter with timing speed and precision of a sonic engineer. I worked very hard to get a good photo of him, but it was hard to photograph a blur. He was a show onto himself.

That did not distract from the Bass player, David Pastorius, who I found out later is a cousin to the legendary Bass player, Paco Pastorius from the band Weather Report. His style reminded me of a spider on meth. The way he fingers along his fret board was hypnotic because you could never really tell where he was going next.

Then of course we have Pat Travers who was simply standing on his side of the stage and acting cool as a fan was blowing his hair like a model at a photo shoot. The first two songs were classic hard rocking blues songs to warm us up. When he got to his third song which was one of his classic tunes, “Crash and Burn”, he changed up the tempo to give this song a darker edge to it. It really felt like you were about to crash.  His fourth song went back to the funk and then he went back to his super rocking sound as he dedicated a song to Ronnie Van Zant.

Speaking of working with legends, Pat did a song called, “Getting better” which did feature Nicko McBrain of Iron Maiden on drums. Who has Pat not worked with?

When the middle of set was upon us, he pulled out a classic blues tune we all know well, “Born under a bad sign”. This was the turning point of the show. He brought the crowd to their knees with a version that was absolutely out of this world.

Pat must have been tired by this point, so the 70-year-old guitarist left the stage and let his Bass player and drummer simmer things down with a very intriguing duet that chilled out the audience. We also needed a break.

Did you know Pat Travers was born in Toronto, but by the age of 6, his family moved to North Bay. From there Pat moved around to Sudbury, then Ottawa. As a young man he actually got a job working with Ronnie Hawkins. Pat told us that time was both an exciting but very intimating time for him. He decided to move to London, Ontario and within a few months he got his first record deal.

He recorded a song called, “It makes no difference”. Well Pat pulled out this one out of the vaults and let us in to his really early tackle kit. It felt raw and very young all these years later.

Well, he couldn’t wait any longer; he went to his Halcyon days and pulled out, “Snortin’ Whiskey which got the audience raising their beer and yelling at the top of their lungs.  Now that Pat had the full attention of the audience, and he let everyone sing the next song. He sang “Boom Boom”, and we sang “Out goes the lights” This was the party Toronto wanted to go to for a very long time.

For the encore we got a great drum solo from Alex Petrosky and the David re-entered the stage to play along with the solo and the crowd got rowdy one last time as Pat finished the evening off with “Let the good times roll”. Pat, the man, the legend truly knows how to not only Rock, but he can Roll!

This is Pat Travers:

It has been a while since I walked away from a show and looked at so many satisfied faces. The Rockpile is one of those clubs that knows how to bring in quality artists and let the audience just release all the steam of a busy life. If you haven’t been, you should start going. They have plenty of parking and they are easily located at 5555 Dundas Street West.