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REVIEW: Grapes of Wrath hits all the right notes in Barrie

Band plows through catalogue of fan favourites during first visit to city since 1980s

Canada’s folk-rock icons, the Grapes of Wrath, visited Barrie on Friday night for the first time since the 1980s.

A boisterous crowd filled the room at The Queens and unsurprisingly sang aloud to every song with the band as they ran through all their hits.

The trio was as tight-sounding as ever, with Tom Hooper’s mastery of the bass, his brother, Chris Hooper, sweating it out on drums, and Kevin Kane’s guitar work with his trademark jangle and shimmer.

All the fan favourites from their song catalogue were in the set, such as What Was Going Through My Head, I Am Here, These Days, You May Be Right, A Fishing Tale, and Do You Want to Tell Me.

The men paid tribute to their boyhood days, pre-folk, when they rocked out as a punk band, by playing an original called Rich Kids, and following that up with raucous versions of Surrender by Cheap Trick and closing the show with the Sex Pistols’ anthemic Anarchy in the U.K.


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Kevin Lamb

About the Author: Kevin Lamb

Kevin Lamb picked up a camera in 2000 and by 2005 was freelancing for the Barrie Examiner newspaper until its closure in 2017. He is an award-winning photojournalist, with his work having been seen in many news outlets across Canada and internationally
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