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Photos: Willie Nile inspires Salmon Arm audience with rocking, heartfelt performance

Residents complimented for being kind, open and welcoming

Kind, complimentary, compassionate, charismatic.

Willie Nile and his band were all that, plus more, during their well-loved concert Aug. 16 at Song Sparrow Hall in Salmon Arm.

Warning his audience that he and his band like to have fun, they proceeded to put on a rocking performance that lifted people out of their chairs and onto their feet.

Also uplifting, and penetrating, was the poetry of Nile’s lyrics.

Before playing a tune inspired by the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic and his witnessing of the hauntingly empty streets of New York City, Nile recited a few of his favourite lines from The Day the Earth Stood Still.

“When the ABCs of logic, meet the CEOs of greed,

Then the SROs of loneliness cry out and start to bleed.

There comes a time for judgment, a time to pay the bill

And that is just the way it was, the day the earth stood still.”

Nile was accompanied onstage by Johnny Pisano on bass, Jon Weber on drums and Jimi Bones on lead guitar and vocals.

A performer who has opened for The Who and sung with Bruce Springsteen, Nile repeated several times how much he and his band have appreciated the kindness and cordiality of Canadians and, in particular, people in Salmon Arm. He said they’d like to return.

Read more: ‘Celebrate compassion’: New York’s Willie Nile to rock Salmon Arm’s Song Sparrow Hall

Read more: ROOTSandBLUES: Artist captivates with musical retelling of Robert W. Service poem



martha.wickett@saobserver.net
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Martha Wickett

About the Author: Martha Wickett

came to Salmon Arm in May of 2004 to work at the Observer. I was looking for a change from the hustle and bustle of the Lower Mainland, where I had spent more than a decade working in community newspapers.
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