I know it seemed unusual that I would subject myself to such a wretched choice of music yesterday night, but I did it knowing that tonight, my ears would be healed, and my soul would waltz with the melodies and harmonics of the fantastic Chantal Kreviazuk.

Raine Maida, the lead singer for Our Lady Peace back in the day, opened up his wife's concert, and while his lyrics show his deeper and dark side, with politics and social injustice as themes, replacing, uhm, whatever it was OLP sang about, his voice was as captivating as I remembered it to be.

Going into the night, I actually didn't realize how many hit songs Chantal had, until she slowly started churning them out, and I strangely knew a ton of the lyrics. Sadly, a sing-along never broke out amongst the Markham Theater audience, but that didn't stop her from bringing down the house with her sometimes grandiose (almost operatic), mostly catchy, and always intimate style.

Early on in the show, she requested some people move up to fill up some empty seats in the second row, which of course thrilled the heck out of the lucky few that upgraded their seats. A little later on, everything felt as it should when she politely asked the audience to get up on their feet, as I'm a little used to being asked to stand for worship services.

I actually didn't get any pictures, so I'm going to leave that one up there and pretend I did. It's my memories and no one has to know. Even if her hair is now a rich dark brown.

And I still can't get over how ridiculously talented the rest of the musicians on stage were. The cellist and the violinist doubled QUADRUPLED as guitar players, flute players, and backup vocalists. And of course, Raine came back out to play the bass a little bit because he probably got bored backstage.

I have a feeling that I'll be singing under my breath tomorrow. And that I'll soon own all of Chantal Kreviazuk's albums. And that it won't hold a candle to the show she put on tonight. Live music will forever sound better than recordings.