REVIEW | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Calgary

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE

May 17, 2013 - Scotiabank Saddledome

Calgary, Alberta Canada

Stevie told the audience in her dedication to Landslide tonight that she's been limping and the reason for that was she fell a couple of weeks ago and injured her right knee pretty bad to the point where she thought they might have to cancel or postpone shows. She had the Calgary Flames Physical Therapist do some work on her knee and said it was much better - she then dedicated Landslide to him.

Get well Stevie!

Ain’t no rumour: Stevie Nicks and Co. are still rock royalty after all these years

BY GERRY KROCHAK

CALGARY SUN

Photo by Mike Drew - Calgary Sun - View More Photos

Given Calgary’s spring and summer major concert schedule, you could be forgiven for wondering what year it is.

With Bob Seger, Bon Jovi and Motley Crue behind us, and Def Leppard (with Cheap Trick, no less), KISS, Rush and The Eagles ahead, it’s really no wonder that vinyl record sales are at a 15-year high — in Calgary and everywhere else.

Which brings us to last night: Back in 1977, Fleetwood Mac released a perfect record, and 36 years later, Rumours remains an undeniable and absolute pop-rock masterpiece. If there remained any question whether they could still pull it off live, the response last night was a resounding “yes.”

That second Lindsey Buckingham-Stevie Nicks effort, which followed Mac’s rich blues history with former leader Peter Green in the late ’60s, was, not surprisingly, the focal point of the evening.

Indeed, Buckingham’s vocals and otherworldly fretwork, and Nicks’ distinctive and still muscular pipes, fuelled the Rumours troika of Second Hand News, The Chain and Dreams to open the evening with a bang, and thunderous applause to match.

The 40- and 50-somethings were expected more than the healthy contingent of teens and 20-somethings, but all seemed in awe, in the presence of greatness even, by the time Nicks addressed the crowd for the first time. “Welcome Calgary,” she greeted the erupting throng. “It was a beautiful day here and thanks for spending tonight … with us.”

On an understated, but classy stage production, bathed in lights of greens, yellows, blues and purples and some video imagery, Nicks still demonstrates a mystical aura with her onstage demeanour.

While it’s true that the vocals and keyboard styling of Christine McVie are missed, musically, the band doesn’t miss much. Although a little more ragged and a little more raspy than in her glory days, the best thing you can say about Nicks in 2013 is that she still sounds like, well, Stevie Nicks.

Besides, two backup singers rounded out the sound (and hit the high notes she couldn’t) on Sad Angel (a new one from Extended Play) and a so-so interpretation of Rhiannon, in which she mumbled her way through the first verse before catching her groove.

Some nifty video images, including iconic footage of the USC Marching Band, accompanied a pair from ’79s Tusk: Buckingham handled lead through Not That Funny and the title cut from the late ’70s experiment which, depending on who you ask, either went very wrong or very right leading up to 1980.

Veteran sticksman Mick Fleetwood and bassist John McVie remained in the pocket, while Buckingham continued to lead the charge and Nicks picked up steam through stirring renditions of Sara, Big Love and, especially, Landslide.

The pace of the show never wavered and it was one of those nights where it felt like it was all unfolding too quickly. Gypsy, Gold Dust Woman, the outstanding Stevie Nicks solo cut, Stand Back, and, of course, main set closer Go Your Own Way were memorable snapshots during an evening many hoped would never end.

The encores were inevitable, but not obvious. World Turning preceded Don’t Stop — the Christine McVie lead that was missed the most — while Silver Springs and Say Goodbye rounded out a night that seemed over in a flash even though two hours had past.

No one ever retires from rock and roll — this much we know. And last night we were richer for it.

TALK ABOUT APPOSING VIEWS BETWEEN REVIEWS

Calgary Herald Review - online + Photo Gallery

Landslide / Never Going Back Again

Photo by Daniel Blais

 

Above Photos by: Stuart Gradon - Calgary Herald

 Above photos by Christopher Parent | Ernest Hon

 Above photos by Hollymariiie | Jody McPherson

 Above photos by snowronin

 Above photo by WBrett Wilson

  Above photo by Calon Cyca

 Above photos by snowronin | stebankag

 Above photo by K_danforth

 Above photos by stebankag | lsmith 

 Above photo by lisaostrickoff | Staceycarmsnz 

Above photo by lastnameleslie

So what's really going on with Fleetwood Mac and former member Christine McVie?

Lindsey Buckingham Discusses Christine McVie's Status with

Christine at the Ivor Novella Awards 5/15/13

Fleetwood Mac
So what's really going on with Fleetwood Mac and former member Christine McVie?

The issue came to light earlier this year when drummer Mick Fleetwood very publicly reached out to McVie, who left the band in 1998 and subsequently moved back to England. Fleetwood's gesture resulted in McVie, formerly married to Fleetwood Mac bassist John McVie, visiting the drummer at his home in Maui and also flying to Los Angeles to join the other band members for a reunion dinner.

Guitarist Lindsey Buckingham tells Gary Graff of WCSX


But Buckingham he doesn't foresee McVie doing much else with the band, and certainly not becoming a full-fledged member again:

5 Questions Mick Has Never Been Asked

Get the answers to these in the audio of Karlson & McKenzie’s interview at the link below.

1. Do you own a sombrero?
2. Have you ever worn a jock strap?
3. Have you ever used a drumstick as a weapon?
4. Have you ever Googled yourself to see what you’ve been up to?
5. What’s the grossest thing you’ve ever pulled out of your beard?

Mick on Fleetwood Mac: “We Actually Love Each Other”

Tim Staskiewicz / 100.7 WZLX

PHOTO: Christine McVie Red Carpet Arrivals 2013 Ivor Novello Awards - London

Never mind "The Year of Fleetwood Mac" it's more like "The year of Christine McVie popping up all over the place"... She kicked off the year holidaying with Mick and John on Maui in February, joining Mick at a live gig up on stage playing keyboards... then met up with the rest of Fleetwood Mac in L.A., rehearsed with the band no less... now she's out and about in London presenting at The Novello Awards.  She presented Best Song Musically and Lyrically... and the winner was "Next To Me" by Emeli.

Randy Newman won the final award of the night and in his acceptance speach said it was amazing 

to be in the same room as Ray Davies and Fleetwood Mac's Christine McVie.

She looks amazing!

Christine McVie at the 2013 Ivor Novello awards held at the
Grosvenor House Hotel, London May 16, 2013.

Metro

STEVIE NICKS, DAVE STEWART Documentary IN YOUR DREAMS to play Oklahoma's DeadCENTER Film Fest

Stevie Nicks, Dave Stewart | Documentary Feature
Stevie Nick: In Your Dreams
Grand Lawn at the Myriad Gardens, 9:30 PM Sunday, June 9, 2013
300 West Sheridan Avenue, Oklahoma City, OK
** Note: This is a free screening.

DeadCenter Film Festival

Want to own the film?
STEVIE NICKS: IN YOUR DREAMS DOCUMENTARY
Available now on iTunes

The film documents the making of her In Your Dreams album, which she did with Dave Stewart, and Stevie says she hopes the film will

 "make you want to listen to the real album because a lot of people didn't even know I had a record out. You know, that's how the music business is today."

Album Available on iTunes

The Documentary plays tonight in Calgary, Alberta Canada at Globe Cinema at 7pm and 9pm.  Stevie and Fleetwood Mac are now making their way through Canada with a show in Calgary on Friday and Vancouver on Sunday.

VIDEO: "Rhiannon" | "Dreams" Fleetwood Mac Live Edmonton

Fleetwood Mac Live

May 15, 2013 - Rexall Place

Edmonton, Alberta

Photograph by: Greg Southam, Edmonton Journal
View Photo Gallery

GYPSY (She wants to twirl at the end... But she just can't... It's her right leg that's bothering her. She does reach out and shake the hand of an audience member in the front... she did the same in Winnipeg.

RHIANNON
Noticeably missing... the black shawl Stevie's been wearing on this tour during this song.

DREAMS
Check out the Reviews - view more photos from Edmonton

Back on the Road: grandMA2 Joins Fleetwood Mac

(16/05/2013) Fleetwood Mac is back on the road and a grandMA2 console has joined the iconic band on the Fleetwood Mac Live 2013 World Tour. The new tour, which began in Columbus will wrap in Australia in December, marks the first for the band since 2009’s sold-out “Unleashed” tour. This year is also the 35th anniversary of their “Rumours” album, one of the most successful in recording history. It remained on top of the pop charts for more than 31 weeks and produced four Top Ten singles.

Lighting designer Paul “Arlo” Guthrie of Minneapolis-based Toss Film + Design is Fleetwood Mac’s long-time lighting designer. “I have to cater to four different personalities (Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks) and bring them together as one team,” he explains. “For this show we have four big soft box panels and 32 Clay Paky Sharpy Washes on curved lighting pipes, some of them on the floor, some on the rigs and some in pods that come out. They hang on weird angles and move during the show – some are on 45, 90 and 120º angles. They’re well featured – the main workhorse washlight of the rig.”

The lighting designer brought his own grandMA2 full-size on tour to run “the whole show” and reports that “it’s working as good as it always has. It’s super comfortable; it’s like hanging out with an old friend each day. My grandMA2 is more than capable of running everything, including the video.”

MA Lighting International, based in Paderborn, Germany, is the dedicated sales, support and service entity for the renowned control systems, digital dimming systems, networking tools and media servers of MA Lighting Technology, based near Wuerzburg, Germany. The product range offers cutting-edge solutions for control and dimming, including the award-winning grandMA2 consoles, the MA onPC command wing and MA onPC fader wing and reliable digital dimmer racks and packs. With its innovative MA VPU (Video Processing Unit) MA bridges the lighting and video worlds.

Today, MA Lighting is respected for its technical knowledge and has achieved a unique international reputation for its operational philosophy. The company offers more than 30 years experience and strictly follows a professional user-centric approach, getting as close as possible to the market via its own international offices and support centres in the UK, North America, Latin America, the Middle East/India, Asia Pacific and Scandinavia/Eastern Europe/Russia – supported by a world-wide distribution and service network.

Live Production

Previous Paul Guthrie Fleetwood Mac / Lindsey Buckingham / Stevie Nicks productions:

Fleetwood Mac 2003 & 2009

 Below Lindsey Buckingham | Stevie Nicks

REVIEW | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Edmonton

Fleetwood Mac ageless wonders
By Mike Ross
Edmonton Sun
Photos by Amber Bracken
May 15, 2013

Some people are griping that Fleetwood Mac touring without a major new album – or Christine McVie – is just a “cash grab.”

So what of it? Gotta make a living somehow, to maintain the lifestyle to which they’ve become accustomed. All those scarves can’t be cheap. No one makes money selling records anymore, do they? But the one thing you can’t download is a live concert (never mind the canned horns in Tusk).

The plus side of the cash grab for Mac fans is that the remaining fantastic four Mick Fleetwood, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks are solid. They should be. Since the band broke up for the first time, they’ve been touring on and off as long as they ever did back in the day, except maybe the epic Rumours tour. They’re more stable now, too, by the sounds of it. They’re all great musicians, and so the band has become nice and tight. Sure, Wednesday night at Rexall Place was just another gig in a long string not likely to end soon, but it was still special for that reason – because they’re working it, just like all the other classic rock bands out there.

Turns out Mac did release a new EP recently, very quietly, without any fuss. They pulled a new one tune at the show amongst the classics some 15,000 fans turned up to hear: Sad Angel, a brisk rocking groove, and somewhat downbeat message that may or may not be about the end of the world: “Hello, hello, sad angel, have you come to fight the war?” goes the line. Might have to let that one grow on you.

But admit it: Seems fans would rather have Christine McVie back than hear new Fleetwood Mac tunes. Most the thrills were reserved for the aforementioned classics: Like a double shot of Second Hand News and The Chain to open the show, showing the vocal talents of Buckingham and Nicks, respectively, their voices still blending wonderfully. Dreams – probably the band’s biggest commercial hit - was knocked off early, one of several favourites that showed the pair in fine form. The exes still seem to have a spark between them, some chemistry. During The Chain, Buckingham turned to his longtime musical and one-time sexual partner and put a little extra oomph into the line, “If you don’t love me now, you never will again!” That actually doesn’t make any sense when you think about it.

There are quibbles. At times it came off like the Lindsey Buckingham Show. Wasn’t it always, though? The guy remains a serious scary monster on the guitar, showing off great guns on a solo version of Looking Out for Love – singing while playing an impossibly fast riff at the same time. Nicks made it an acoustic duo next with the lovely Landslide, giving of her own extra oomph to the line, “I’m getting older, too.”

It was cool to see the band playing with the arrangements of songs they must’ve played 10,000 times. Save Me, coming late in the show, was elongated into a psychedelic blues jam and showcased one of Nicks’ best performances. Tusk, one of Mac’s weirdest and most wonderful songs, started with a laid-back, almost ambient vibe before breaking into the jungle groove we all know, and did I mention the canned horns? Maybe it was a really, really good synth patch. There were a number of backing musicians and singers toiling in the shadows to fill in the spaces. The best moments were the most stripped down, however. Back in the spotlight not for the first or last time, Buckingham spindled and mutilated the melody to Never Going Back Again, making for a simple yet passionate performance that had a lot more soul than if it had been faithful to the studio version. He cranked out more blistering guitar solos later on, proving he’s really the guy driving this band – no offence to the competent and sturdy drumming of Mick Fleetwood, a heavy hitter if there ever was one.

The notion that the parts are greater than the sum in this case were put to rest when the band kicked it up a few notches for the home stretch to end two hours of living, breathing classic rock nostalgia.  Go Your Own Way was magic. It’s nice to see the old-timers up there working so hard.

4 SUNS out of 5



Review: Fleetwood Mac brings landslide of hits to Rexall
Edmonton Journal
By Sandra Sperounes

EDMONTON - Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies about Fleetwood Mac’s sold-out show at Edmonton’s soon-to-be-secondary hockey arena.

The Edmonton Sun May 16, 2013

OK ... how ’bout the foursome’s rendition of Little Lies felt like the sonic equivalent of hugging a pack of angels?

It didn’t, of course, because Lindsey Buckingham, Stevie Nicks, Mick Fleetwood and John McVie didn’t play the tune during Wednesday night’s concert. (Christine McVie sings lead on the 1987 hit — and she no longer
tours with the band, preferring to hang out at home in England.)

Truth be told, Little Lies aren’t necessary — in their set list or about Fleetwood Mac’s show. The rockers, fronted by ex-lovers and hand-holders Buckingham and Nicks, took fans on an enchanting stroll through the ’70s and ’80s — filled with chimes, visuals of suns, stars and exploding glitter, and songs about love, poets, and gypsies.

The foursome, with at least four backup musicians, started their 2-1/2-hour set with a triple whammy of tunes from one of the biggest albums of the ’70s, Rumours — Second Hand News, The Chain and Dreams. These were soon followed by four songs from Fleetwood Mac’s difficult followup album, Tusk, which Buckingham described as their attempt to subvert the axiom of “If it works, run it into ground and move on” — using more words than he usually does in one of Saturday Night Live’s ongoing gags.

The Edmonton Journal May 16, 2013

Not That Funny felt like a reworked Sex Pistols tune backed by a piano. The title track lurched like a drunk and giddy parade of elephants, complete with invisible horns. (You couldn’t see them, but they sounded real — so perhaps their players were hidden behind a wall of speakers, much like the band’s second drummer.) Then came two of Nicks’s bewitching numbers, Sisters of the Moon and Sara, which she sang as she gently swayed, playing with the layers of her black skirt or the ribbons dangling from her microphone stand.

Buckingham and his bandmates managed to squeeze in two new songs, Sad Angel and Without You, from Fleetwood Mac’s four-song EP, Extended Play, released with little fanfare on iTunes at the end of April. (And, most likely, the precursor to more material, according to the tanned frontman.)

Sad Angel was one of the night’s fastest and most straightforward rock tunes, while Without You, a lost song from the ’70s, featured Nicks and Buckingham singing about their first experiences in Los Angeles. Neither are examples of their best work as tunesmiths, but at least they didn’t sound out of place in the set list.

While Nicks can’t quite hit the high and sighing notes, her remaining range still sounds powerful, deftly cutting through the cacophony of her bandmates. If she sounded a wee bit dodgy on Dreams, she more than made up for it on Landslide, as Buckingham stood at her side, playing acoustic guitar. Cue the flood of tears, goosebumps, Bic lighters and a spontaneous choir of baby-boomers, their not-so-young children and a few grandkids.

Buckingham was the real star of the night. His voice is still supple — whooping on Tusk, spitting with punk rage on Not That Funny, screeching on Big Love — and he plays guitar like no one else. His fingers rippled like a waterfall over the strings of his acoustic guitar as he played a more delicate version of Big Love, Landslide and Never Going Back Again. So effortless, so understated, so humble.

May Fleetwood Mac come back ... again and again. Next time, they’ll need to bring a unicorn (or winged horse) — and Christine.

FAN PHOTOS

NEW Fleetwood Mac Single "Sad Angel" Gaining Traction at Triple A

"Sad Angel" Picking Up Steam

Triple A Radio Stats - May 25, 2013.

These Triple A indicator Radio lists show the single is gaining at radio.

REVIEW | PHOTOS: Fleetwood Mac Live in Saskatoon "Buckingham was the straw that stirred the drink"

FLEETWOOD MAC LIVE

MAY 14, 2013 - CREDIT UNION CENTRE

SASKATOON, SK

Fleetwood Mac dispel bad rumours

By Cam Fuller

The Star Phoenix

There have been more than a few rumours of its demise since it formed more than 45 years ago, but Fleetwood Mac has survived it all: a foggy pre-history in British blues, unmanageable success, divorce, breakups, reunions, flops, side projects and rehab.

They're touring the world again, just like they did 35 years ago when the Rumours album made history with all of its No. 1 singles and sales of some 50 million.

Home to about 16 musicians at one time or another, the band's current lineup (but for the absence of the retired and missed Christine McVie) is the one everybody cares about the most: Mick Fleetwood on drums, John McVie on Bass,

Lindsey Buckingham on guitars and Stevie Nicks playing tambourine (and, yes, doing some singing!)

To remind us of its greatness, the band - with backing players and singers - started Tuesday's show at Credit Union Centre with indelible Rumours monster hits like Second Hand News, The Chain and Dreams. They could have played the whole album, in order, without a complaint.

Buckingham was the straw that stirred the drink throughout the concert. He pogoed and did guitar faces during the new song Sad Angel, he asserted his guitar mastery on Big Love, playing expansively, flawlessly and fast. For Never Going Back Again, also on acoustic, he looked like a classical guitarist who moonlights as a rocker. He was lathered up in his leather by then. "Make note that he's sexy," said an advice-giver in the crowd. Uh, no.

Nicks, in her velvet, layered skirt and platformed booties, moved with difficulty when she walked. She seemed so fragile, like a Victorian porcelain doll. The line in Landslide, "I'm getting older too," was extra poignant. But she's still Stevie Nicks, dammit, and despite the fact her high end is gone, she makes you remember her as the cool, aloof girl that's too too.

After reportedly just showing up the last time they were here, the band worked like mad to impress, and they did. It is kind of mind blowing that the same band that did the simple, sad Landslide also turned out the coolest weird song ever in Tusk. This was an early show stopper, done real savage-like with images of teeth and totems on the screen and faded old video of the UCLA marching band.

At well over two hours, fans got most of the best, relived more than a few youthful memories and got to see part of what rock history is made of.

FAN PHOTOS

Above 2 photos by Shleemaan

 6 Photos above by: Adrien Begrand

Above photo by Karin Yeske

Above Photos by Dakota Miller