It’s been a while since they were last here, so Lethbridge was stoked Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dollz had finally returned to the city for one of their awesome rockabilly/burlesque shows. This was their first time playing at Henotic (which is unfortunately ending operations in two weeks), and it was a fantastic venue for this show. As usual I enjoyed every moment of their performance, and wish they could have played for several more hours!

Disclaimer: Some of these photos come pretty close to being topless (but in true burlesque style, the girls are wearing pasties!), so if side-boob offends you or if you are at work you better not click through the rest ;)

Lethbridge’s own psychobilly band The Phantom Creeps opened the show, fresh back from touring!

Last Saturday Lethbridge was graced by the Kabuki Guns Burlesque (KGB) dancers from Calgary who put on a stellar show at Henotic. I was excited to see this as my only burlesque encounters up to that point had been seeing Big John Bates and the Voodoo Dollz, but I knew there was a whole other world of burlesque out there I had yet to experience!

Just after the girls arrived in Lethbridge, they took some time for an awesome photoshoot with myself, Michael (for a brief while before family matters called), and the lovely Starsha who assisted with lighting (and she has a fantastic eye for detail, so she doubled as our stylist!). We started with the girls’ solo outfits, and I loved their fun costumes. Every costume totally reflected each girl’s personality… and I was especially thrilled when Princess Leia walked out…

[No nudity follows, but burlesque costumes may not be the most "safe for work" ;)]

We wrapped up the shoot with some group shots on the restaurant level, but I don’t think the people dining seemed to mind :)

One of the cool things about the old Firehall are the jail cells that are still downstairs. The space is used as an artist studio, but we were able to sneak down for a bit and lock the girls up.

Later that night, Dirty Girl Social Club out of Calgary opened up the show.

The crowd responded wonderfully to the KGB girls, so I hope they come back to perform for us again!

I also got some props after :)
From their blog:

Our Lethbridge show last night was a hoot, so they’re keeping the bar pretty consistent for us. We had a rockabilly-feeling band open the show with a fun swinging set, I saw the tallest man in town, Johnny Smalls (that’s his really-real name… no lie) and didn’t see if the talented photographer Tanya was there. Hopefully she was, and I just missed saying hello to her and her camera.”

It's always fun when people you know are the “victims.”
Travis had to “take his medicine”:

Even better, the newbie they picked happened to be Ryan!

(Click here to browse through the photos)

Phew, I just finally caught up on going through all my live shots. I think I don’t have time to keep doing it this way anymore. I’ve been doing it the way I do it for so long that it’s hard to give up on the idea, and frankly it has always been a really great (free) marketing tool. The bands are happy to see their photos, and since they are able to copy the photos over to their MySpace pages my name gets around. My passion for concert photography was what made me decide to become a photographer and Supermarket Trashbin is what made me known. However, it might be time to move on. I still want to show my live shots, but I may have to pick the best few from every month or two, and make a quick flash gallery out of them.

Your opinion?

Again, the rest can be viewed at Supermarket Trashbin.