Spirit Of The West @ Central Park Summer Stage, NYC – 6.29.13

I’ve been listening to Spirit of the West for over 13 years now but I’ve never seen them perform before! I just don’t think or remember them ever coming to New York that whole time I’ve been a fan. Maybe John Mann here and there to perform at a small club but not the whole band.

It was Canada Day International festival at Central Park Summer Stage June 29th and 30th. On the 29th, they had some early day events, some NY Rangers alumni had a meet & greet and lots of other Canadian things. No drinking maple syrup contests or Zamboni racing right?

Spirit of the West was the first band to perform for that evening, which quite honestly they should have headlined since they pretty much created Canada’s unofficial anthem with “Home For A Rest.” That song got me into the band and undoubtedly into Celtic & folk music as well. I found out about them from a college apartment neighbor’s Canada friend who came down to visit for the weekend and told me about them back in 1999/2000. Long time!

It’s been about 2 years since shooting a show at Central Park but glad I was able to secure a pass to the concert in such notice. I saw Bumbershine.com and others posting about it and was like, wait SPIRIT OF THE WEST is playing today! I wasn’t planning on doing anything except edit video so I jumped at the chance to photograph a band I’ve been wanting to see for over 13 years.

The band was excellent and a lot of fun to see! They played a lot of their hits and of course ended with “Home For A Rest.” Hearing “Political” & “(Putting Up With) The Joneses” live was a treat too. Since the stage was really high up, I didn’t use my wide angle lens at all and stuck to the 70-200mm f2.8 lens for their set. I snapped away at the band, and got some amusing shots of John dancing around the stage. I’ll probably make some into animated gifs when I get some time.

I really hope SOTW comes back and plays a longer set in New York City hopefully very soon!

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Tags: Canada Day, Canada Day New York, central park summerstage, Concert Photography, folk rock, nyc, SOTW, Spirit Of The West