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Melwood Cutlery
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Kensington Sound - Toronto, Ontario
2025-05-03
Michael Panontin
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A live performance by little-known Melwood Cutlery is a rarity these days. And for the Ottawa-area troubadour to make the trip to Toronto with a full band in tow an even rarer treat.
Cutlery first emerged here in the big smoke back in the late-eighties when he and his pop/dance band the Fashion Plates made a sizeable splash on the local scene, with accolades pouring in from all the major media. Since then he has released a cassette (1988's Imagination) and a handful of excellent CDs, the most recent of which is the curiously titled A Complete Display of Tackle.
This was the second of two nights that Cutlery played upstairs at the venerable Kensington Sound, where the likes of Teenage Head, Daniel Lanois, Jeff Healey and Murray McLauchlan once recorded and which has been a fixture in the Kensington Market neighbourhood for over fifty years. The intimate front room, which thankfully came equipped with its own grand piano, was the perfect space to capture a songwriter like Cutlery. Acoustics were - unsurprisingly - perfect, and the place was comfortably packed with about forty people.
Cutlery, who is now older and greyer, took the stage in a matching off-white fedora and 1970s leisure suit jacket, which he half-proudly/half-flippantly showed off as "100% polyester". His singing, which Jane Siberry once described as "one of the most beautiful male voices I've ever heard", was a bit gravelly that night. Which in a weird way lent itself even more to his evocative storytelling. After a solo segment, where he performed on either acoustic guitar or piano, Cutlery was joined by his group, a three-piece of singer Rebecca Campbell, Stuart Rutherford on pedal steel and dobro and Michael Ball on the double bass.
In the two sets, the first dedicated to his 'hits' and the second to the songs on A Complete Display of Tackle, there were plenty of standout moments. Among them was the poignant 'Cold Cold River' from his 1995 set Overstepping the Boundaries, a song that ached with sadness as he recounted the loss of a teenaged friend who dove into a river on a dare and never came up. Cutlery's guitar playing was exquisite on the deceptively simple 'Jimmy's Room', an equally personal account of a kindred spirit with whom he would often seek solace in tougher times. And then there was the usual levity of his yodelling crowd-pleaser 'Loon on the Lake' (which I was surprised to find myself whistling the next morning on a subway platform).
Cutlery has obviously honed his craft over the years, but credit also has to be given to his backing band, whose tight arrangements brought out the best in his songs. Ball's bass, which he plucked mostly with his eyes closed, was understated and sublime, as was Campbell's singing. And Rutherford's pedal steel was simply amazing, adding immeasurable beauty to an already wonderful night.
(photo: Kevin Fox)
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Melwood Cutlery
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