After a humid and busy Saturday at Art on the Boulevard, we headed out on Sunday morning for a pleasant and scenic drive along the lake to Niagara Falls. Besides a nice excuse to visit one of the Wonders of the Natural World, we had a more important reason for the trip - tickets to see Greta Van Fleet at the Fallsview Casino. One of our favourite bands, we had yet to see them live.
We arrived just after lunch and explored the Falls and Clifton Hill area, on a rather hot and busy day. Hardly surprising given that it was a summer long weekend. After walking the Falls area, we wandered up Clifton Hill, where we paused for some shade and refreshments at Niagara Brewing. Live music on the breezy patio was a nice complement to the cool beer.
We kept it simple for dinner and walked over to Zappi's for delicious takeout pizza, which we ate back in our room at the Comfort Inn Fallsview.
We arrived somewhat early for the concert at the OLG Stage, but the merch line was already so long they were turning people away. We found our seats up at the very top (400-level, row J) and met our friendly neighbour for the night. To see a band like GVF in a such a small and acoustically-designed venue was extra special.
Opening band Crown Lands were local - hailing from Oshawa - and were extremely talented. They managed to rock a very Rush-like performance with just TWO members - one guy on guitar, bass and keyboards; and the other member on drums, vocals and wind instruments.
Greta Van Fleet was simply incredible. Josh brought his trademark vocals and a large number of wardrobe changes, while the rest of the band rocked out around him. Each got a few opportunities to showcase their individual talents, and the pyrotechnics show was also quite spectacular. We could quite literally feel the heat above, each time they went off.
After opening up with "The Falling Sky", they played a lot of songs off their current Stargazer album, plus of number of older favourites as well. The groupies were plentiful and the crowd was wild! The hit "Highway Song" turned into an extended jam that also segued in and out of some classic blues covers. They did a bit of an acoustic interlude as well, including a memorable version of "Black Smoke Rising".
The band played for about two and a half hours before sending us off happy into the night. The only drawback was the merch line again - this time lined up out the doors and into the street. We opted to skip the wait for a night-time view of the Falls again before heading back to the room.
On the holiday Monday, we headed out and took a relatively quiet back way to diagonal across to Ancaster and the 403. We stopped in London on the way through and picked Dave up for a visit.
Awesome show - would see both bands again in a heartbeat!
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