Hedley at Kelowna's Prospera Place

Canadian Pop Rock group Hedley returned to Prospera Place and delivered yet another high energy performance that captured and captivated the Kelowna crowd through their entire, career spanning set. Often on their feet, this audience of everything from tween girls and their friends or moms and even a smattering of guys of all ages freely returned the energy and enthusiasm back to the band, which only took the level even higher as the night went on. However, the fun started long before the headliner took to the stage.

Opening on this night was Francesco Yates, the 20 year old Toronto born pop and soul artist whose first EP was co-produced by none other than Pharrell Williams. While his set was very short, it was enough to showcase what is a pretty amazing young voice. Lots of control and range, it was also rich and dripping with soul. The young girls in attendance didn’t seem to mind his looks either. They responded to his every move and to each of his songs and the building of excitement had begun.

Yates was quickly followed by Carly Rae Jepsen, the voice behind the sensation that was Call Me Maybe back in 2012. This 31 year old who looks 13 has sold 20 million albums worldwide with the aforementioned song hitting number 1 in 18 countries. Her time on stage was considerably longer and her performance only seemed to stoke the building fireball of energy higher and higher.

Of course Hedley was what everyone was really there for, and they did not disappoint. In an age of massive productions and tons of props and moving pieces all over the place, these guys kept it simple while working the whole stage with a minimum or pretense. They covered both some of their most recent stuff as well as many of their older songs while creating waves of intensity and release that occasionally gave the crowd just enough time to catch their breath before taking them right back up to the height of excitement.

Hedley played so many of their biggest hits and latest releases like Hello, Perfect, Don’t Talk to Strangers, and The Nights I Can’t Remember. They also inserted a couple of massively current massively huge hits like Bruno Mar’s Uptown Funk and Justin Bieber’s Sorry. While lead vocalist Jacob Hoggard spent a lot of the night prowling the stage with nothing more than his mic in hand, he also spent time chunking out some acoustic guitar parts and sat in front of a piano for some songs as well.

Hoggard and the rest of the band had the audience with them all night long, often encouraging the crowd to provide all the vocals while they drank in the adoration of their fans who knew every word to each of their songs. There was also a fun moment where he took a girls cell phone from her and starting looking through her text messages and even ultimately calling her mom. Great stuff. Everybody loved it.

It really doesn’t get a whole lot better than what Hedley and the two opening acts offered up to the Prospera Place crowd on this night. High energy, great songs played and sung well, lots of showmanship and entertainment. Everyone stayed until the bitter end, and everyone went home happy.