Barry Gerding
Black Press
Shania Twain pulled out all the stops in putting a signature closing to her music live performance career before a sold-out crowd at Prospera Place on Tuesday night.
Twain has been on tour for the past six months after closing out her nightly show in Las Vegas, a tour that came to a conclusion with venue stops in Victoria and Vancouver before arriving in the Okanagan.
From the multiple costume changes with an apparent liking for knee high high-heeled boots to the seven-piece backup band, punctuated by four guitar players, and a light laser show bolstered by the occasion pyrotechnic blasts, Twain reeled off her many hits throughout the show, the only recent offering being a ballad that was produced by David Foster.
Otherwise, despite being off stage for nearly a decade after going through an ugly divorce from her husband and music collaborator Mutt Lange followed by a fear she had to overcome of getting back up on stage, Twain was feeling both celebratory and also a bit melancholy at times as she interacted with the audience about this being her final show.
She thanked her band and the road crew, all 105 of them, for their support during the tour across North America the past six months, a musical army that consisted of 15 semi-trucks, 11 buses and transporting 600 tonnes of stage equipment.
“That is a shitload of stuff, ” she said.
Twain was generous in pouring through her musical catologue for the show, singing hit after hit including I’m Gonna Getcha Good!, Up!, Don’t Be Stupid (You Know I Love You), (If You’re Not In It For Love) I’m Outta Here!, Any Man Of Mine and Party For Two (which she performed with her opening act Bastian Baker).
Sitting along on stage with a guitar, she gave a poignant rendition of Looks Like We Made It with a generous supply of audience participation, a song that seems a little more emotional than originally intended when the song was first recorded since it was written with her former husband.
She closed out the style in a predictable Las Vegas brash fashion with From This Moment On, No One Needs To Know and That Don’t Impress Me Much, and coming back for an encore, singing Man! I Feel Like A Woman.
If this is truly the end for Twain’s time on stage, she leaves behind a musical legacy unmatched by few performers in country or pop music, as she reminded her Okanagan fans at Prospera Place on Tuesday.
