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Colin Hay played at Edmonds Center for the Performing Arts on Saturday, the 22nd.
Who is Colin Hay? Well, he was the lead singer and main creative force behind the Australian band, Men At Work. The were hard to miss in the early 80’s. Men At Work broke up in 1986 and Colin has had a prolific career in music and acting since then. He’s mainly been a solo artist but he played and toured with Ringo Starr in his All-Starr Band in the early 2000’s. He’s voiced animated characters in movies and acted in 15 or 16 television shows, released 15 solo albums, recorded an audio book, performed in a one man show called “Man at Work” (get it?), and the list goes on. Colin was born in Scotland but his family moved to Australia when he was young. In the late 90’s he moved to Los Angles and has lived there ever since. To say he’s had a busy life is an understatement.
The Performing Arts Center in Edmonds is a nice venue. It seats maybe 600-700 people and has clearly had some money invested by the community in the theater itself. I think half the people there had season tickets and the average age of the population in Edmonds is probably…well, let’s just say it’s not the U-District…. Everyone was politely enthusiastic but this is a venue where dancing in the aisles would probably get you kicked out.
I went to see another fantastic story-teller/musician there last year, Ben Folds, so I knew how comfortable the seats were. My main concern going to the show was whether or not I’d be able to stay awake seeing as how this was something silly like the sixth concert in seven nights, especially given the fact that I knew my seat would firmly be planted in…my seat…all night. No worries though. Colin is every bit the performer I expected and it was a fun evening. He played three or four Men At Work songs but for the most part he played solo stuff, as you would expect.
Colin had a great backing band and he joked at one point that the whole band was immigrants. At least half the band were from Cuba and they were well suited to playing together. You could tell they were having a lot of fun, as did the opening band who I’ll mention in a minute. Especially notable was the main backing vocalist, Cecilia Noel. She was a ball of energy all night long. You could tell she and Colin were close but I didn’t realize until I was reading Colin’s Wikipedia page later that they’ve been married for 15 or 20 years and she is heavily involved in most of Colin’s projects, including helping with the production on his albums. For the last song of the evening the opening band came out and they all had their own little party. Apparently this was also the last show of the tour.
Opening for Colin was Lazio Bane, who I had never heard of but who was also quite good. It seems Lazio Bane is fronted by Chad Fischer. Chad and Colin have been good friends since the 90’s and Lazio Bane has opened for Colin on a few tours. Chad told the story of how they met when Chad returned from a tour he’d been on and walked into his apartment in LA to find Colin sitting in his living room. Turns out while Chad had been out on tour Colin had met Chad’s room mate and they had started dating. The girlfriend is long gone but Chad and Colin are still best buds.
I never watched the TV show Scrubs but if you’re familiar with it, Lazio Bane wrote and performed the theme song, Superman. Anyway, for this concert Cecilia came out in a superman costume and helped with backing vocals, the crazy lady. Incidentally, Colin also was in at least one episode of Scrubs.
BTW. If you watch the Lazio Bane video and notice the guitar Chad’s playing, he said his wife painted it for him. Talent is everywhere.
