Just a quick blog post tonight because I have to be up early tomor­row to leave for Sackville. I shot this on Sun­day at the Dakota, where Steam­boat were fin­ish­ing up their eight-week res­i­dency. They brought out spe­cial guest André Ethier for a few jams, includ­ing the song Cop Killer from his last album Born of Blue Fog. I’d say the night was a suc­cess — when I got there after work it was at capac­ity and there was a group of Steamies (offi­cial name for Steam­boat fans) up front danc­ing their butts off the whole night. Any­way, check out Steam­boat and André if you haven’t already, they’re both 100% rad­i­cal and whole­heart­edly endorsed by the pro­pri­etor of this blog (me).

Tags: André Ethier, Dakota Tavern, Steamboat · Leave a comment

I didn’t get off work until mid­night last night, mean­ing I missed Taylor’s big gig, but I still made it to the Tran­zac after­wards for the lat­est OOTS pre­sen­ta­tion. Luck­ily that seemed to be where most peo­ple ended up after the Tim­ber Tim­bre show so I was still able to see some friends, which is key. I missed the first few acts (Chris Yang and Gavin Gar­diner) but got there just in time to see Guelph’s Richard Lavi­o­lette, whose quiet mas­ter­piece A Lit­tle Less Like a Rock, a Lit­tle More Like a Home was a favourite of mine a few years back, and who I last saw at Sap­pyFest about a year ago. How­ever, in stark con­trast to that show, yes­ter­day Richard was backed up by his new-ish band (well, it was the first time I’ve seen them) the Hol­low Hooves, who brought some wel­come mus­cle to his frag­ile sound­ing songs. It was a very dif­fer­ent per­for­mance than I’m used to him putting on, but I liked it all the same.

I ducked out after a few tunes to catch up with some friends out­side, but hope­fully it’s not another year before I see Richard again.

Tags: Out of this Spark, Richard Laviolette, Tranzac · 5 Comments

I just uncov­ered this gem that I shot last month dur­ing NXNE.  I wasn’t able to take in too many shows that week due to my work sched­ule, but Casey and Jonas we’re play­ing right across the street at Whip­per­snap­per so I ducked out and caught a few tunes, includ­ing this one — a bois­ter­ous take of the track “Thun­derlove” from Ohbijou’s new album Bea­cons. It was a lot of fun see­ing them play together, they should do it more often. Evening Hymns have an album called Spirit Guides pretty much in the can, so hope­fully we’ll have it in our hands by the end of the year. I’ve heard a bit of it, sounds pretty epic.

Tags: Evening Hymns, NXNE, Ohbijou, Whippersnapper Gallery · 1 Comment