Your correspondent (that\u2019s me) has seen Hazlett once before, performing an absolutely mesmerizing solo acoustic set last year at Seattle venue Neumo\u2019s (which might have actually been packed beyond capacity, but you didn\u2019t read that here). For his Folk Fest appearance, the Australian-born singer-songwriter (who is now based in Sweden) brought along a three-piece backing band, which brought new depth and atmosphere, to say nothing of a not-unwelcome country-rock feel, to signature tunes like \u201cBlame the Moon\u201d and \u201cMissionary Feelings\u201d. <\/p>\n
Hazlett (a.k.a. Mitchell Lewis) jokingly apologized several times for killing the festival vibes with his sad songs, but no one seemed to mind. The crowd certainly appreciated the nod to Canadiana when he performed The Band\u2019s \u201cThe Weight\u201d\u2014even if he did forget the words in the second verse and skipped the remaining three verse entirely. (Hazlett has no remaining Vancouver Folk Music Festival appearances.)<\/p>\n
His almost comically common name and guy-at-the-pub-with-a-guitar were quickly forgotten as soon as in-betweener John Smith stepped to the microphone. Good lord, does this guy have a voice; confident, a little gritty around the edges, but mostly just plain huge. Combine that with his stellar acoustic-guitar work, which finds a happy zone between percussive rhythm and ringing melodies, and it\u2019s little wonder that Smith is already a firmly established star on the U.K. folk scene. The Englishman noted that his only previous attempt to play Vancouver, in 2022, went awry when a positive COVID-19 test forced him into quarantine at the Holiday Inn downtown. Here\u2019s hoping he\u2019ll be back. (On Saturday at 4 pm, John Smith hosts Stories From Across the Pond on the South Stage, and performs a full set there on Sunday at 12:10 pm.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Your correspondent (that\u2019s me) has seen Hazlett once before, performing an absolutely mesmerizing solo acoustic set last year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":810949,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194298],"tags":[49,48,55],"class_list":["post-810948","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-vancouver","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-vancouver"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=810948"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/810948\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/810949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=810948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=810948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=810948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}