Private Matterz may be one of the hardest acts for me to review.
That's partly because whenever I see them, I break one of my own rules.
I'm normally there to watch the performance. I pay attention. I make mental notes or actual ones. I try not to be one of those annoying people having a conversation while musicians are playing.
At a Private Matterz gig, I'm one of those annoying people.
Saturday night at The Kilt & Clover in Port Dalhousie was no exception. I was at a pub with friends, moving around the room, talking to people and generally not behaving much like someone who was planning to write a review the next morning.
And somehow, with Private Matterz, that works.
Steve Crew and Mike Prentice, both on acoustic guitar and vocals, may be the ultimate jukebox in the corner of a pub. That isn't intended to diminish what they're doing. Quite the opposite. They understand the room they're playing and become part of the social experience rather than demanding that the entire room stop everything and watch them.
But every so often, that jukebox in the corner makes everybody pay attention.
Part of the fun is the songbook. Private Matterz can wander from Duran Duran to Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Ricky Nelson, the Allman Brothers, Tom Petty, Foreigner and Neil Young, throw in some country, and then head somewhere completely unexpected.
And I do mean unexpected.
At another Private Matterz gig, Prentice explained that his daughter had introduced him to a song that didn't exactly scream two middle-aged guys with acoustic guitars in a pub. Somewhere along the way they had worked it into their repertoire and given it the Private Matterz treatment.
I remember one mom in the crowd suddenly recognizing what they were playing and yelling:
“Holy shit!”
That's Private Matterz. You're talking to somebody, half-listening to the music, and then suddenly:
Wait... are they actually playing THAT?
The familiar songs get recognized and cheered. The oddball choices make heads turn. Prentice occasionally reaches notes considerably higher than you expect to come out of him, while Crew keeps the songs moving and the pair sound completely at home bouncing between decades and genres.
There isn't much ceremony to it. There doesn't need to be.
This isn't the sort of performance where I came home wanting to dissect a particular guitar solo or explain the intricacies of an arrangement. I came home realizing I'd spent an evening with friends while two musicians I know provided the soundtrack — and periodically managed to interrupt our conversations by playing something that made us turn around and pay attention.
Maybe I should have taken more notes.
Then again, perhaps not.
Private Matterz works because you don't have to study them. Have a drink. Talk to your friends. Sing along when you recognize something. Cheer when they pull out an old favourite. And every once in a while, stop mid-conversation and wonder what the hell they're going to play next.
For a Saturday night in a pub, that's a pretty good gig.