SALT LAKE CITY If there's one thing Cody Canada has learned this year, it's that if you're going to go to Idaho for a week to hang out with the members of Reckless Kelly and Micky and the Motorcars, you'd better take the next few days off to recover.
Fresh off his annual trip to the Braun Brothers Reunion music festival in Challis, Idaho, an admittedly tired Canada made a stop in Salt Lake City Monday night.
Despite playing on a Monday in Utah before a small crowd in a small venue that wasn't licensed to sell alcohol, Canada and his band The Departed played a full 90 minute set and left no one feeling like they were short changed.
The band kicked off the show with "Lighthouse Keeper," a song Canada hadn't played in Utah since Cross Canadian Ragweed opened with it in Park City in 2007.
The venue, the Music Garage, was almost like literally playing in a room about the size of a large garage, looking more like a space that Ragweed may have used for rehearsals in their early days.
And while the crowd was small, the difference between Monday night's crowd and a Saturday night crowd was everyone in attendance wanted to be there to see Canada play through his 20-year catalog. No one stumbled in from off the street because they had nothing better to do that night. At one point, Canada even thanked the crowd for being so attentive.
Fans sang along to songs from the "boy band" that Canada used to be in, as he called it. "Fightin' For," "Record Exec," "Soul Agent," "Lonely Girl," "Smoke Another" and "Deal" were all played from the Cross Canadian Ragweed catalog.
If Canada was tired from the Braun Brothers Reunion, one would never have known it from his guitar playing. Canada shredded through solo after blazing solo Monday night.
Monday was also Canada and his wife's 17th wedding anniversary. Shannon Canada was in the audience as her husband asked everyone to sing along with him on "Constantly," a song he wrote for his wife that appeared on Ragweed's 2002 self-titled major label debut album.
There were new players in The Departed (again) since the last time they were here in January. But Canada promised that THIS was the lineup that was going to stick around awhile. Eric Hansen is now on drums and Ross Smith (ex-Wade Bowen band) on rhythm guitar and keyboards.
And of course Jeremy Plato, the original bass player for both Cross Canadian Ragweed and The Departed, was by Canada's side.
"In my lifetime I've had two bands, two kids, just one bass player," he joked.
Plato's vocals and playing skills on his fretless bass were in top from Monday night.
The Departed played several songs off their latest record, HippieLovePunk, including "Comin' To Me" "Inbetweener," "Easy," and "All Nighter," a song written for Mark McCoy, the founding bass player for Micky and the Motorcars who was killed in an accident on the Salmon River in Idaho in 2012.
It wasn't the highest energy show Canada and Plato have ever performed in Salt Lake City. But overall, not a bad way at all to spend a Monday night.