O What A Night (Updated)

Update is in bold letters.

Tonight was mine and Mike's gift to each other...a trip to Saskatoon to see Stuart McLean's Christmas show. As a quick aside, we came this close (I'm holding my fingers less than an inch apart) to smoking a buck. Given that the sun sets at 5:30, our entire drive to S'toon was in the dark. We were roughly 40 km outside the city when all of a sudden, there was a HUGE buck in front of our van...his rack was massive! He was hauling ass across the highway and thank God he was running as fast as he was...Mike barely had time to hit the brakes and we were literally within an inch of hitting his rear end. All I managed to do was dig my feet into the floor of the van and push back on the seat as hard as I could, because that would, you know, help.

Anyways...onto the fun part. We were front and centre for Stuart's show. As always, he told wonderful, humourous stories complete with appropriate pauses and his brand of perfect enunciation. Stuart showcases up and coming Canadian musicians as part of his show. Tonight, he had Matt Andersen on stage with him (this link takes you to the first song he sang earlier in the evening...but video recordings never do the live performance any justice. Still...check it out.)*. Mike and I were blown away by his voice. Although we are not typically blues fans, we couldn't help but be enraptured by Matt's amazing voice. I was not expecting what happened later in the show.

After another Stuart story, Matt came back to sing another song. As he opened his mouth and the first line of "O Holy Night" left his lips, I began to cry. Given that we were sitting a foot away from the stage, I did my best to stay composed, but I just could not help myself. I cried and cried and cried. I did manage to refrain from letting out a choked sob (or any noise at all, for that matter), but Mike could tell from my change in breathing that I was struggling to keep my composure. I didn't even want to lift a hand to wipe away my tears until he was done singing for fear of breaking the magic of the moment. "O Holy Night" is my most favourite Christmas song and tonight, the words combined with Matt's voice just totally overwhelmed me and I was left a puddling heap of tears. By the time he was finished singing, my face was soaked with tears and mascara.

After the show, we waited to meet Stuart and to get him to sign our book. I told Stuart that while he's normally (obviously) my favourite part of the show, Matt's magic voice blew me away tonight. We chatted for a minute or two and then I asked if I could take a picture with him. As always, Stuart was very modest and humble. Thanks for yet another wonderful show, Stuart...we'll see you in P.A. in March!

PS - We asked Stuart to sign the book to Baby, so Stuart is the first official person to know her name!!



* I couldn't help but wonder how the other performer that night, Jill Barber, felt about the fact that Matt received not one, but two standing ovations during the course of the evening. While she was a great performer, there's no way she could match the power of Matt's voice.