Anyone who was following my CMF posts knows that my relationship with Paper Beat Scissors became a bit of a comedy of errors. As I noted before, I first/last caught Tim Crabtree back in 2009 at Clinton’s and he totally blew my mind. Accordingly, when I spotted him as one of the performers at CMF, I promoted his show, but unfortunately it was a VIP show only. But as luck would have it, Crabtree added two more shows once he was in town. One was at Tranzac, and the one I caught was at the Rustic Owl.
I arrived at the locked up venue shortly after 8:20 and set up. If you’ve never been to the Rustic Owl, it’s a charming little coffee shop in a minuscule Portuguese enclave of Bloor Street West. I initially saw Crabtree playing around with the various electronic accoutrements of his trade, but he ultimately settled for going doing a purely unamplified acoustic set which was a nice choice.
In the end there is not much I can put into words about the set beyond saying that with the exception of Ora Cogan’s performance at Tranzac many years back, I’ve never seen someone captivate an audience with pure vox and guitar better than Crabtree. And, to put things in perspective, that Ora Cogan set I’m talking about was in 2007.
Paper Beat Scissors was a brilliant end to my CMF experience. I apologize for not doing more on Sunday night, but as you can imagine, I was exhausted at that point.
Paper Beat Scissors @ Rustic Owl Cafe - March 24, 2013
