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WINNIPEG - For far too long now, Matthew Good has been getting a bad rap.
Reporters -- often called on the carpet by the rocker for not being as news-savvy as he -- frequently dismiss him as "difficult," and by now, his dust-ups with bloggers, the boys in Nickelback and the city of Regina are the stuff of legend.
But Good has mellowed considerably in recent years, and we're happy to say none of the aforementioned aggression was on display during the first of his two sold-out solo shows at the West End Cultural Centre Sunday night.
For no matter how frequently Good aims his derision at the music industry, his former bandmates, or fellow musicians, he seems to maintain a healthy level of respect for his fans, allowing Sunday's gig to play out like a stripped-down show-and-tell session.
Performing without a backing band for the first time in nearly a decade, Good opened his set with the slow-burning Avalanche, from his 2003 album of the same name.
The song made clear Good's intentions for the night -- to engage his singer-songwriter side by presenting nuanced, frequently sombre versions of both better- and lesser-known entries from his catalogue.
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His instantly recognizable voice was in fine form, making the shift from whisper to scream without incident on unplugged versions of Prime Time Deliverance, Blue Skies Over Bad Lands and You Can't Get Shot In the Back If You Don't Run.
And as a rule, the solo guitar approach worked -- particularly on Fated, Strange Days and Alert Status Red -- although we still think Load Me Up sounds better with a band and missed the string section from the album version of In a World Called Catastrophe.
Every bit as interesting were the standup comedy antics Good indulged in between songs; eviscerating Ann Coulter (from whose book, among others, he read excerpts), reminiscing about defunct Winnipeg venue The Junkyard ("Never was a place so aptly named") or lamenting the lack of the "quality bulls--" like Caddyshack that dotted the cultural landscape in the 1970s and early 1980s.
And all jokes aside, the high point of the performance may well have been the pre-encore closer, which saw Good call opening act Melissa McClelland back onstage to sing harmony on Hurt, the Nine Inch Nails dirge famously covered by Johnny Cash.
McClelland -- a Toronto guitarist who's as adept at bluesy road songs as she is at Sarah Harmer-esque set pieces -- helped Good turn Cash's version into a folksy duet and delivered on the promise she'd shown during her too-brief warmup slot.