Ben klicked, Chris didn’t Buck
Special to The Okanagan Weekend
Creekside Theatre featured two of the hardest working Canadian acts for its first country concert.
The Chris Buck Band — the multiple-award-winning Vancouver group — brought its high-energy, kick-stomping country rock to Lake Country while Ben Klick and his band proved they can keep pace at a thoroughly enjoyable concert on Thursday night.
Buck may seem like a rising star with only two albums in four years but his peers in the B.C. Country Music Association recognized his band’s talent with Album of the Year on Oct. 22.
So, of course, the band performed their four top-40 radio hits from that self-titled album: Leave Your Light On, the anthem Sun Sets Down, danceable Giddy Up (to end the show) and the top 20 smash, That;s When You Know.
Since vocalist Kira Isabella isn’t on the current tour, Kelowna's Melissa Livingstone stepped in for the romantic pairing on That’s When You Know.
Not to be outdone, Phil Puxley proved why he won Special Instrument of the Year for Banjo, dazzling with his virtuosity as well as a ring of colour-changing LEDs around the banjo head. Puxley, bassist Michael Vanderlans, drummer Taylor Allum a.k.a. Chopstixdrums and session guitarist Paul Kinman (also a two-time BCCMA award winner) equalled Buck’s energetic stage performance.
And Buck brought Jeff Johnson of Baileyway Entertainment up to the stage to present the Coldstream resident with the Producer of the Year award from the BCCMA.
Klick, like Buck, has a parallel backstory of taking to the stage at a young age but quickly rising in the country ranks with only his second single — Butterfly Tattoo from the EP Today — submitted for radio play and making it onto the 2015 country charts, unheard of in country anals.
The 21-year-old has taken numerous workshops with renowned live music producer Tom Jackson as well as earning a sound engineering certificate from Okanagan College.
When Klick opened for Tanya Tucker in Kelowna on March 23, he performed solo on the Kelowna Community Stage and received an enthusiastic reception. With his bandmates on Thursday — bassist Cyril Schermann and drummer Darrin ‘Dirt’ Cherewayko, he was much more animated and his performance proved he has taken his studies seriously.
However, he didn’t perform two new singles which he is taking to Nashville for a recording session in two weeks. He did, however, present his sentimental Today (the title track from his sophomore EP), a heartfelt tribute to his father who has ardently supported him (along with the rest of his West Kelowna family) in his career choice.
In-between covers of The Gambler (Kenny Rogers) and Thank God I’m A Country Boy (John Denver), he sang What’s Going On, Butterfly Tattoo and A Sin Comin’ On (Jason McCoy). But it was his rendition of Keith Urban’s Clutterbilly — 1998 Golden Guitar Award for best instrumental — that had fans ecstatic.
Klick has won five North American Country Music Association Awards, two British Columbia Country Music Awards, a Performing Arts Award, Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award, Okanagan College Young Alumni Award, and was a Top 7 Canada’s Walk of Fame Emerging Artist, Klick was also one of the first local artists that Ryan Donn, theatre manager and Lake Country’s cultural development coordinator, worked with — as a busker and at West Kelowna and Kelowna music in the park series before his Tanya Tucker and Calgary Stampede gigs.
This won’t be the last we hear from him — thank God, he’s a (local) country boy!