Last Thurs­day I went and saw Daniel, Fred & Julie play at the Horse­shoe, the per­fect venue to hear them play their gen­tle folk songs. Last fall when I first caught wind of this project, I imme­di­ately knew I’d love the record. It’s no secret that I’m a huge fan of the music these three peo­ple make, so to have them team up for a record had me pulling out my wal­let faster than you can say “Sackville.” Truth­fully, it made sense for them to join forces: Julie played in Fred’s old band “Shot­gun & Jay­bird,” and when that band broke up, ex-member Shot­gun Jim­mie recruited Daniel’s band Attack in Black to be his back­ing band. Attack in Black’s album Years fea­tured guest vocals from Julie Doiron, who in turn cov­ered two of Fred’s songs on her last album.

Are you with me still? If so, please enjoy their song “Run­ner” from their self-titled debut record, out now on You’ve Changed Records.

Open­ing the show was Baby Eagle. What’s there to say about lit­tle ol’ Baby Eagle, other than it’s the project of the Con­stan­tines’ Steve Lam­bke, and that he’s great? I guess the first peep I ever heard from him was the last track on the third Cons album (Tour­na­ment of Hearts), a ditty called “Windy Road.” It had Steve singing, but instead of the usual scrappy punk song we got a pleas­ant acoustic num­ber. It was an album high­light for me, so I was happy when he started play­ing solo shows later that year. Two quick albums in 2006 and 2007 fol­lowed by a split with Attack in Black late last year brings us to today. I’m sure we’ll be hear­ing more from him soon – his setlist was all new songs, and it looks like he’s going electric.

Tags: Attack in Black, Baby Eagle, Daniel Romano, Frederick Squire, Horseshoe Tavern, Julie Doiron, Shotgun & Jaybird · Leave a comment

This is a spe­cial video for sure. Jim Guthrie hasn’t been play­ing much lately (in fact, I think I caught his last solo show way back in 2005), so when it was announced that he would be per­form­ing at the El Mocambo a few weeks back I got very excited. Jim has been one of my favourite musi­cians for a long time after I dis­cov­ered him through his con­nec­tions with my other favourite band the Con­stan­tines (they both used to share a label, the aptly named Three Gut Records). His last album, 2003’s Now, More Than Ever is a mas­ter­piece – 10 per­fect songs. Luck­ily for those of you who haven’t heard it, it’s being reis­sued very soon (on vinyl!), so please, do your­self a favour and get it. This song pre­sented here is “So Small” from that same album.

PS: My web­site is named after Jim’s sec­ond album (another great record) Morn­ing Noon Night.

Tags: El Mocambo, Jim Guthrie · 2 Comments