Recap: Black Mountain Symphony / Enter The Haggis at Cohoes Music Hall -By: Rob Smittix

On Friday October 20th my wife (Laurie) and I (Rob Smittix) decided to go out for a date night but we also decided to go out and support live music. This is a vibrant area with lots going on but The Cohoes Music Hall was the place that we were compelled to go to.
First we stopped for some Italian food. It was delicious but I’m not going to tell you where we went exactly because they aren’t an advertiser, yet! The most important thing was that Laurie got her margarita and I found myself a cold bottle of Heineken 0.0. I will add that if you order vongole like I did be very careful. You may find shards of broken clam shells throughout the dish. It tasted great but I can assure you I was nervous that I could be leaving the restaurant with a bloody mouth. My attention to the matter paid off and we left the restaurant without injury.

My wife and I have very different tastes in music. I knew that she would enjoy Black Mountain Symphony because she’s seen them once before and Bear the keyboardist actually is a member of my band as well. I wasn’t sure however if she would be into Enter The Haggis or not. We shall see.

I got my wife a press pass for the concert because I wanted her to feel cool and to realize just how cool I am. She was not impressed, I think that the press pass interfered with her outfit so she didn’t wear it. Oh well. In the lobby of The Cohoes Music Hall while waiting in line for another Heineken 0.0 from the bartender Sarah, we ran into Christina (Bear’s wife) who was running Black Mountain Symphony’s merch table. Props to Christina, we could never get our wives to run the merch table at my band’s shows. They wives always wanted to be in the crowd dancing and having a good time. However, now that Bear is in my band, I’m thinking Christina may be down to sit at our merch table for us.
Black Mountain Symphony (BMS) was incredible as expected. What I’ve noticed is that BMS is very good at adjusting their setlist to cater to the type of show that they are playing. A few months ago we booked BMS for a gig with a couple of rock bands, so they rocked. Enter the Haggis is a Toronto-based Celtic band so BMS did what they do and threw some Celtic vibes into their repertoire. But that wasn’t all that they brought, Charlie who plays guitar also plays a cedar flute. It looked like a Native American contraption of an instrument to me, Charlie gave us a brief history lesson on the tribes of the area and paid homage with his breath.

Another really cool aspect to BMS is that they don’t have a front-man/woman. A bizarre concept to me because that’s my role in my band but for BMS it works. The band shares lead vocals throughout the group, even Bill (drummer) does his share of lead vocals without ever missing a beat.

Greg Bell (Guthrie Bell Productions) puts on some of the area’s best concert events and this certainly was one of those evenings. It was a good sized crowd too, especially because just a few miles down 787 Les Claypool was having a concert at the same time.

So because it was date night and I wasn’t sure if my wife would like the Celtic sounds of Enter the Haggis I made it a point to let her know that we could leave early if she wasn’t feeling it. After Enter the Haggis played a few songs I noticed through my peripheral vision that Laurie was grooving to the music. At one point I said I was going to get another drink and asked her to come with me but she declined because she was into the show.

I, myself have never seen Enter the Haggis live but I’m so happy that we stayed. These are tremendous musicians. It was clear that we were Enter the Haggis virgins because unlike 90% of the crowd we didn’t know the words to all of the songs but that didn’t mean that we weren’t taking it all in and enjoying every second of the show. When the band left the stage no one in the audience moved. The “one more song” chant grew louder and the band came back out and played a few more for us. What an amazing performance!
Enter the Haggis even paid tribute to The Cohoes Music Hall’s ghost Eva Tanguay as they said from the stage they may have just found their new favorite music venue.
When Laurie and I got into the car she looked at me and said I had a great time and I’m going to have to buy some Enter the Haggis music. WIN WIN!