Jeff Green | Feb 03, 2016


Performers are storytellers at heart. One way or another every song tells a story of some kind. Performers also tell stories between songs, and often develop a kind of patter that works for them as they travel from town to town.

It seems that singer songwriters who, like Matthew Hornell, are from the Maritimes, also like to tell funny and heartfelt stories between the songs. The stories help to cement the relationship between the performer and the audience. They tend to have an off-the-cuff feel even if the same story is told night after night on tour.

In Hornell's case, at least on Friday night, he would begin stories, then digress to another story, then shift to a different location at a different time in his life, and then say, “Don't worry, we'll get back to the story eventually.”

I'm pretty sure he always did, and it was a fun ride along the way. His songs have some of the melancholy edge from the East Coast, and a musicality and zip that comes from the mix of east coast Celtic and bluegrass influences. Hornell has been touring with dobro player Andrew Sneddon, but as he kicked off a mini-tour of eastern Ontario that continues in Picton, Wakefield, Ottawa and Peterborough, he performed solo, as Sneddon has backed out of the tour because of a family matter.

Hornell was more than capable of performing solo. His guitar work, singing voice, original songs and a few covers had enough variety to keep the evening flowing with no let up. He also paid tribute to the late Newfoundland songwriter Ron Hynes, the first performer ever to grace the Crossing Pub stage, with a tune during each set.

Near the end of the second set, local fiddle and mandolin partners, Gabrielle White and Nate Paul, joined Hornell on stage, and a different side of Hornell was shown, as a singer and player who loves to share the stage, on both Celtic and bluegrass-tinged numbers.

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