Hawksley Workman: circus sideshow

When Hawksley Workman was just a boy, his parents put him straight to work. They were so poor, he remembers, that he was "employed by the circus as a `mad maker.'" His job? To enter the lion cage and anger the beasts for the evening's show.

As Workman told his story last Saturday at the Jane Bond, the truth may have been in doubt, but the parallels that were drawn between his old job and his current career as a musician became obvious.

Waterloo's Jane Bond, decked out in orange lights like a coffee shop-turned cocktail lounge, played host to an exciting double bill with both Tegan and Sara and Hawksley Workman performing for a standing-room-only crowd.

Warming up the crowd for Workman were Calgary's Tegan and Sara, a teenage acoustic duo who successfully married Ani DiFranco's vocal skills with na‹ve charm.

The duo held the audience with both their musical ability and their hilarious honesty. The two, dwarfed by their acoustic guitars, performed several songs, each of them in turn drawn into the music and urging to stand with excitement.

"I always sing this one a little off tune at the start but, trust me, I get into it by the end," assured the tiny-framed Tegan as she moved into her set.

As the night progressed, the necessity to sell their product became too much, and Tegan joked that "it's a good deal; 15 bucks and you can keep us forever."

The audience, already standing for lack of room, was receptive and supportive of their insecurities, but were obviously there to see Workman perform.

Finally, it was time for the main attraction under the Big Top. Hawksley Workman took the stage, the orange glow of the mirrorball in the corner spraying coloured spots onto the audience, his drink in one hand and a guitar in the other.

Workman arrived at the Jane Bond in plain street clothes, adorned with only a simple scarf to set him slightly apart from the patrons, but appeared on stage in full costume. He mounted the stage in a black pinstripe suit, a white starched collar with a characteristically retro red and blue striped tie. An enormous white daisy adorned his lapel, shaking violently as he performed and the leopard-print guitar strap stood out perfectly against his stylish outfit.

Workman held the audience like he holds his faded yellow electric guitar; his tight arrangements and acrobatic melodies gripping his listeners. He hammered away at the Fender Tele with rhythmic thumping, pausing for infinitely long breaks mid-song, sometimes to talk to the audience, other times just to breathe.

"My name is Hawksley J. Workman. You can just fill in any Bible character you want," he quipped.

Workman played songs from his CD For Him and the Girls, and spent ample amounts of time just talking to the audience.

"Somedays I feel more like talkin' than singin'," he added.

Workman's music is heartfelt and honest. Lyrical one-liners hit home with the audience where songs like "Sharks Follow" include lines like, "Be clever not beautiful/If your goal is plain survival." Later on, he adds "You don't have to be happy, you just have to be mine."

Hawksley Workman stamps out staccato guitar-plucked songs, shattering the space between blows with operatic melodies. He pounds his musical anvil, beating out truthful lyrical incidents and one-time miracles.

As he stood on stage, Workman would move and dance to his music, his legs scattered in all directions, standing precariously on his vocal monitor and sipping from a glass of water with a bouquet of citrus fruit. The elaborate arrangement seemed perfectly suited to its secondary task of disguising the glass of scotch that he was actually drinking for the duration of the show.

Hands raised like a politician, Workman executed a beautiful set, adding a few new songs.

As the evening progressed, Workman confessed that he had bumped his head quite seriously earlier that day, and was "beginning to remember things" from his youth. As a result, the audience was treated to his tales of the circus, and his earliest days as a talkative boy whose father had to build a longer horse-drawn carriage just to escape the noise.

As it has been for hundreds of previous performances, Workman didn't fail to delight and satisfy his fans; his songs were sweet and memorable.

His hilarious stories of dubious truth were as enjoyable and endearing as his music. I guess these days, the lions are considerably more friendly.