My favourite record label Out of this Spark cel­e­brated their 3rd anniver­sary in Jan­u­ary with a con­cert at the Gar­ri­son, with per­for­mances from their entire ros­ter: Jenny Omni­chord, Evening Hymns, For­est City Lovers and The D’Urbervilles. At the end of the evening, all the bands returned to the stage to play a few songs together, includ­ing this one by Jenny Omni­chord called “Pain of Maybes.”

Let me tell you a lit­tle bit about Jenny Omni­chord in case you aren’t famil­iar with all that she’s done. Her old band, The Bar­mitz­vah Broth­ers, released five albums between 2000 and 2007. Their last album together, 2007’s Let’s Express Our Motives: An Album of Under-Appreciated Job Songs, is one of the best albums of the last ten years if you ask me. It’s pretty much per­fect. Each song tack­les a dif­fer­ent occu­pa­tion, from library page to jan­i­tor to rodeo clown, using a wide range of styles to cap­ture the essence of each job. Since then, Jenny has released two more full-lengths and a few EPs, her most recent being Char­lotte or Otis: Duets for Chil­dren, Their Par­ents and Other Peo­ple Too, which fea­tured col­lab­o­ra­tions with Jim Guthrie, Tony Dekker, Shad and many more.

Based off of Jenny’s almost annual out­put, we should be due for another album this year, and I for one can’t wait! As for Out of this Spark, it looks like it will be a pretty busy year, with new albums from For­est City Lovers and The D’Urbervilles antic­i­pated for the fall.

Tags: Forest City Lovers, Jenny Omnichord, Out of this Spark, The D'Urbervilles, The Garrison · Leave a comment

Gather ’round chil­dren, it’s sto­ry­time! Back when I was 19 years old, at the height of my salad days, I was going to a few shows a week. This was long before I made the big move to Toronto; I was still liv­ing with my par­ents in Oshawa. We had this great venue in town called the Vel­vet Elvis, which was really the only place around where you could see inter­est­ing bands from Oshawa and abroad. It’s where I met a lot of my friends and saw some great bands for the first time (Evening Hymns, The Rural Alberta Advan­tage, and Ohbi­jou to name a few). When I found out that Julie Doiron was com­ing to town I def­i­nitely knew that it was a big deal, though I wasn’t too famil­iar with her music at the time.

Arriv­ing at the Vel­vet Elvis that night I can still clearly remem­ber the scene. I showed up for the show way too early, so that it was pretty much just me, the staff, and the bands. The Elvis was a small room; I don’t think the place was sup­posed to hold more than 40 peo­ple (though it often held much much more). So there I was, awk­wardly clutch­ing my cam­era, prob­a­bly lean­ing against the bar try­ing my hard­est not to look like a com­plete nerd. Soon the room filled with friends and strangers, far past capac­ity. Julie played a very casual set, play­ing songs off her new album, tak­ing requests, and even throw­ing in some choice cov­ers. There was even a mem­o­rable moment where an ine­bri­ated man asked if he could sing a duet with Julie, which she han­dled like a pro, humour­ing the guy until he wan­dered upstairs to pass out on the couch. I really enjoyed Julie’s set, and even got to speak with her briefly after the show.

The scene at the Cobourg a few weeks back was like a mir­ror image of that night at the Vel­vet Elvis. Once again I found myself in a very small room over­flow­ing with peo­ple, while Julie played a nice selec­tion of new songs, requests, and cov­ers. Once again, I was way to early for the show, how­ever instead of mum­bling a few words to Julie after her set like I did the first time I saw her, when I arrived she invited me over to chat. Under­stand, after see­ing her in Oshawa, I quickly became a huge fan, buy­ing all her albums and see­ing her every chance I could; I even got the oppor­tu­nity to inter­view her on sev­eral occa­sions, so it’s got­ten to the point where we’ll always have a friendly chat. Con­cern­ing the show, thank­fully there wasn’t a drunk man demand­ing a duet, but Julie did sur­prise a mem­ber of the audi­ence by request­ing help on one song. The audi­ence mem­ber hap­pened to be Gen­tle­man Reg, and the song hap­pened to be one of Julie’s most well known tunes “Will You Still Love Me in Decem­ber.” I’m really glad I was film­ing when this hap­pened because it was def­i­nitely one of the high­lights of the night, and it prob­a­bly won’t ever hap­pen again, so enjoy!

Open­ing for her was Will Kid­man, who usu­ally plays in the Con­stan­tines but on this night was play­ing solo. I’ve seen Will play a lot over the years, which is strange since it doesn’t hap­pen that often. I guess I’m just always at the right place at the right time. He hasn’t had an album out since 2006’s Quiet Waters, but with the amount of new songs he was play­ing hope­fully we’ll be get­ting a new one soon. I think this song is called “Crime Dog.”

Tags: Gentleman Reg, Julie Doiron, The Cobourg, Will Kidman · Leave a comment

This past Novem­ber, Evening Hymns released Spirit Guides, which was one of my favourite albums of the year. I’ve been a fan of Jonas Bonetta (the man behind Evening Hymns) for a long time now, so I’ve been really happy to see so many peo­ple dis­cover him with his lat­est release. For the longest time, Jonas was a one-band-band, using only his gui­tar and key­board (and a few loop­ing ped­als) to cre­ate his lush sonic land­scapes. For Spirit Guides, he enlisted the help of his many tal­ented friends (includ­ing Sylvie Smith of The Magic, Tim Bru­ton from The D’Urbervilles, Shaun Brodie of the Hid­den Cam­eras, and most of The Wooden Sky), result­ing in his most diverse and tran­scen­dent album to date.

Jonas brought out these friends for his album release show back in Decem­ber, and I was for­tu­nate enough to be in the audi­ence. Here they are per­form­ing his song “Bro­ken Rifle” – see if you can count how many peo­ple are on stage for this.

Bry Webb, also of the Con­stan­tines, opened the show. Now, I’ve seen him play many times now going back sev­eral years, and each time has been spe­cial. The first time was almost five years ago, also at the Tran­zac. I believe that was one of Bry’s first solo shows, and he only played a hand­ful of songs (it was an after­noon gig in cel­e­bra­tion of Three Gut Record’s fifth anniver­sary). The next time I saw him play was two and a half years later, once again at the Tran­zac. For that show he had an entire band back­ing him up, with mem­bers of sev­eral promi­nent bands fill­ing out the ranks. Now jump ahead to this win­ter, a few more years have passed and I find myself back at the Tran­zac watch­ing Bry Webb (this time wrapped in blue Christ­mas lights).

It’s actu­ally unprece­dented for me to have seen a per­former so many times (I failed to men­tion above that I’ve seen Bry play at least two other times) and know the songs so well but not own their record. I can’t be blamed in this case since he’s yet to release an album!  I’ve heard for sev­eral years that he’s been chip­ping away at one, so hope­fully we’ll have some­thing by the end of this year. If you’re really jonesing for some solo record­ings, check out 2007’s Friends in Bell­woods com­pi­la­tion for a cover of The Vel­vet Under­grounds’ “Oh! Sweet Nuthin’” he did with Ohbijou’s Casey Mecija, or try track­ing down the sound­track to This Beau­ti­ful City, which fea­tures two orig­i­nals by Bry Webb called “Big Smoke” (which nom­i­nated for a Genie last year for Best Orig­i­nal Song) and “Pos­i­tive Peo­ple.” Whew.

Tags: Bry Webb, Evening Hymns, The Wooden Sky, Tranzac · Leave a comment

Maybe I’m just not see­ing the right bands play, but going to a Steam­boat con­cert is prac­ti­cally the only time I see peo­ple really cut loose at shows. Sure, I’ll see peo­ple danc­ing at other shows, but usu­ally that’s just a few peo­ple up front, and only after the lead singer has repeat­edly told them to (or worse, actu­ally jumped into the audi­ence and forced peo­ple to shake their booties). For what­ever rea­son, a danc­ing audi­ence comes easy to Steam­boat. Peep this video I shot of them play­ing their song “Talkin’ Shame” at the Gar­ri­son a few months back where you can see that I was sur­rounded on all sides but folks cut­ting a rug. I must say though, Steamboat’s music lends itself to danc­ing far bet­ter than say, past sub­jects of this series like Julie Doiron or the Har­bour­coats.

For the unini­ti­ated, pick up either one of Steamboat’s EPs (both released last year, the first one is self-titled while the newer one is called Live in Nas­sau). Learn the words, put on your favourite out­fit, grab some friends, and make your way down to the next Steam­boat show. I guar­an­tee you a good time.

Tags: Steamboat, The Garrison · 1 Comment

Well, here’s some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’d never heard of this band before I shot this video, so don’t be sur­prised if they’re new to you too. I don’t think they have much recorded mate­r­ial, and speak­ing to them before their show they men­tioned it was their first time play­ing in over a year. Nev­er­the­less, I walked away thor­oughly impressed by their unique sound and cap­ti­vat­ing stage pres­ence. You may rec­og­nize a few of the mem­bers from other Toronto bands such as One Hun­dred Dol­lars, Trop­ics, and The Tor­rent, so it’s not really sur­pris­ing that they’ve got the chops.

I think this song is called ‘Chair­lift’ and it’s a song about lazy skiers. I’m glad I was able to cap­ture this show because who knows when’s the next time LSdou­bleD­cup will hit the stage. Also, Whip­per­snap­per is clos­ing down soon. What a drag.

Tags: LSDdoubleDcup, One Hundred Dollars, Whippersnapper Gallery · Leave a comment