He moves. He grooves. He’s Mason Rack, the wild bluesman from Australia and he’s back at LB’s Pub tomorrow.
Rack is a pure, full-throttle showman with a way of tearing up the stage that leaves audiences gobsmacked. At one point during every show, Rack dashes into the audience and plays anything he can find all the while challenging drummer Joel Purkess and bassist Kris Strangland to a drum duel.
It’s precisely this loose-cannon style of improvisation that audiences feed off and sends records up the charts.
Back in 2009 over a five-month period, Rack criss-crossed Canada several times estimating he’d travelled roughly the circumference of the world. “By the end we were so ruined from being on the road, we had to take four weeks off.”
But while here, Rack recorded live music at various Canadian clubs and released a double blues CD in Australia. “It reached second place on the blues charts in Australia and in the same month it was 17th in charts in the United States. I was astounded,” says Rack who up until a year ago managed his own bookings.
Since his return more than a month ago, he has played a variety of festivals from Calgary to Montreal, always with the same spontaneous, energetic response from audiences.
“Our show grabs them with a diversity of material. We don’t play the same tempo or the same type of blues. We cross over to rock. We swap instruments and we have drum duels.”
Despite some of Australia and Canada’s similarities, audiences react so differently to his music. “Canadian audiences are more enthusiastic. They’re right into the music and they have fun. I’ve played over 150 shows in four tours and I’ve seen one altercation at a show. At home, every second or third gig has a fight. Here everyone is so easygoing.”
If anyone can paint the gritty side of life, it’s Rack. Over a decade ago living on Queensland’s sunny Gold Coast, he ventured into the crazy surfer crowd’s party lifestyle. After a serious stint of drinking and drugs, Rack lost everything. But after bottoming out, he entered rehab and turned his life around.
Today his storytelling songs reflect those hard-won experiences, and with 70 original tunes he’s raring to go. “Thank you for coming and I guarantee you’ll see something you’ve never seen before. If you’re not 120 per cent satisfied, I’ll give you your money back and a free T-shirt and CD.”
Visit www.masonrack.com or call LB’s Pub at 780-460-9100 for more information.
