Jeremy Fisher

Saw Jeremy Fisher for the third time last night.
He played at a place called the London Music Club, which I always thought was a music conservatory that gave lessons or something, but which turned out to be my new favorite live music venue in this city. Bonus to this -it's right by my place on Dufferin (post-show, on the 20-second walk home, my friend Andrew and I debated whether or not it's an actual stone's throw from my doorstep, and while he remains unconvinced of my fantastic strength, I'm pretty sure I could do it).
Anywhoooooo, ol' Jeremy. The first time I saw him was at a shoulder-to-shoulder showcase at Toronto's Rivoli during the NXNE Festival last year. If you've never been to the Rivoli, it's a highly pretentious hipster joint on Queen West (On Queen? No!) where drinks seem to be, as far as I can tell, priced differently according to where in the bar you purchase them, must be consumed within said designated area, left behind if you choose to move from that particular area, and replaced with new and foreign-ly priced drinks should you move into a new area. Now if that's not outstanding promotion of responsible drinking, you can poke me in the eye with a sharp stick.
But back to the music.
So.
The Rivoli.
Packed to the tits with elitist scenesters sipping their mojitos and scotches on the rocks, yammering endlessly to everyone within a ten-foot radius about whatever under the sun will take their minds off the all-consuming nic fits that have become a staple of their Saturday nights on the town since the no-smoking bylaw was introduced in Toronto.
Fisher hops onstage with a beat-up old guitar that makes me think of The Red Violin (only if the violin was a guitar I guess), a head full of Medusa-crazy curls and the first genuine smile I've seen in this city all weekend, and starts spilling these West Coast hippie, Dylan-esque anthems all over the getting-progressively-drunker crowd.
Some of his lyrics are a little cheese, I'll admit that, but he's an excellent guitarist, good on the harmonica, and he has the uncanny ability to make even the most hopped-up of bar-crawlers shut yap and take notice. The guy's just so textbook genial. I mean, I've heard a lot of people lay down a lot of shit about how "guy next door" certain singers are, and cliche as it is, Fisher must have been the inspiration for the term. It doesn't feel like a show, it feels like hanging out with some dude at summer camp (only in a bar...full of hundreds of people...who all think they're way cooler than everyone else). He shakes mistakes off with a toss of shaggy chestnut hair, owns up to nervousness with superconfident laughs that almost betray those nerves, and tells long rambling stories about the second time he biked across Canada, without being anything but a pure delight to listen to (I feel I must digress for a minute here to mention this fact: I dig the guy's music and he's a wicked entertainer, but I would be bleeding out my eyes with lies if I said he's not also wildly attractive, and that the fact that when he tours the country, he does it on a mountain bike with his guitar strapped to his back, makes him THAT. MUCH. SEXIER. To the point where I want to jump him in the hallway after the show and have my way with him on the pile of his own ice cream-coloured t-shirts that's fanned out over the merch table. Yeow).
So.
At the end of his 45-minute set he plays this song Fall For Anything, that breaks and smothers everyone in the bar. I shit you not. That place was full and feisty at the beginning of the night, and somewhere mid-show the roar moved down from dull to din to non-existent, so by the time he closes the set with the afore-mentioned tune it's pin-drop silent. Bizarre. Beautiful.
And there you have encounter number one, in far more detail than I planned to include when I started typing this out, but it laid the groundwork that lured me back to his audience last night, where I was, once again, blown away (which, I might add -his status in my books was in dire need of after he bailed, without warning, on a gig at The Ugly Mug back in December). He was all smiles and cinnamon hearts between songs and stories, with a considerate washroom/smoke (pick your poison) break in the middle and an accidental encore on a piano he happend to stumble over in the corner post-show. Far cheaper show the third time around, on a far better lit stage, in a place that was far more suited to the type of guy Fisher seems to be (they gave out happy face stamps at the door to keep track of re-entry and also, as owner Janice Denomme told me, "to keep you happy all night long").
I don't really have much of an ending left to pull this all together nicely because right now I really just want a cookie, but maybe once I've eaten one, and thought about it a little, I'll come back and tack something a bit more graceful on to the end of this bitch. In the meantime, grab yourself a cookie and sit tight.