Last night, when I finally arrived at a crammed Horse­shoe Tav­ern, I had already missed both open­ers (Steven McKay and Lit­tle Scream) and Julie was well into her set, so fight­ing my way to the front of the stage took some time and seri­ous strate­giz­ing, but even­tu­ally I got close enough to get a decent shot.

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Tags: Horseshoe Tavern, Julie Doiron, Will Kidman · 3 Comments

I found myself at a half-filled Dakota Tav­ern on Tues­day night. I’m was there to see The Grey King­dom, the new solo project from Attack in Black gui­tarist Spencer Bur­ton. I met Spencer years ago in Sackville and I’ve always really liked the songs he wrote in Attack in Black, but I was still caught off guard when he handed me a CD-R at a show last spring. When I gave it a lis­ten, instead of an EP or some hastily put together demos, it was a fully fleshed out and com­pletely enjoy­able 10 song album. I asked him at the time if he planned on releas­ing it and he said he didn’t really know. That was a year ago, and since then he has offi­cially released an EP on Dine Alone Records (mostly dif­fer­ent record­ings of songs from the CD-R), and he told me a full album is com­ing very soon.

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Tags: Dakota Tavern, The Grey Kingdom · Leave a comment

It’s the start of a new year, which means it’s time for another Out of this Spark anniver­sary party. I must give credit to OOTS mas­ter­mind Stu­art Dun­can for switch­ing things up this year, mov­ing every­thing from the cav­ernous con­fines of The Gar­ri­son (home to last year’s cel­e­bra­tions, writ­ten up here) to the much cozier inte­rior of The Tranzac’s South­ern Cross Lounge.

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Tags: Evening Hymns, Jenny Omnichord, Kite Hill, OOTS Family Band, Out of this Spark, Richard Laviolette, The Pale Mornings, The Phonemes, Tranzac · 1 Comment

Well, Fred­er­ick Squire finally put out a record this year. As you all know, I’ve been his fan for a long time. He put out a record years ago — it used to be a free down­load some­where on the inter­net but good luck find­ing it (and if you do, send it to me) — but it was start­ing to look like we’d never get another one. That was until this year when the March 12 EP mys­te­ri­ously appeared on the merch table at early Daniel, Fred & Julie gigs. I picked up my copy, but those who didn’t got the chance a few months later when March 12 got picked up by Blue Fog Records and was expanded to become a full-length album.

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Tags: Dakota Tavern, Frederick Squire, Kate Maki · 1 Comment

Well, here we are, final show at the Cana­dian Corps, the legion hall down at King and Nia­gra. I feel like I spent a lot more time there than I actu­ally did  - it has that ultra famil­iar feel­ing that I tend not to get at most places I spend min­i­mal amounts of time in. Nev­er­the­less, this show was my first time tap­ing a band there and it will be my last since the build­ing has been sold and it’s being con­verted into art studios.

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Tags: Canadian Corps, One Hundred Dollars · Leave a comment

I was a really lucky boy on Thurs­day night. A favourite band of mine, The Bar­mitz­vah Broth­ers, played a reunion show at The Sil­ver Dol­lar to help cel­e­brate their old label (weew­erk)‘s 8th anniver­sary. I’ve always liked how record label’s feel the need to cel­e­brate each anniver­sary with some kind of event, and (weew­erk) cer­tainly pulled out all the stops this time ’round. Nearly every band on their ros­ter, past and present, showed up over two nights, but the band I was most excited for was actu­ally the one that kicked off the festivities.

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Tags: (weewerk), Silver Dollar, The Barmitzvah Brothers · 1 Comment

To cel­e­brate and offi­cially wel­come their new 7″ sin­gle, last week Tasseo­mancy played a rare Toronto head­lin­ing show at The Tran­zac. I first encoun­tered the twins Sari and Romy Light­man when I moved to Toronto in 2008. They were actu­ally the first group I inter­viewed (when they were known as Ghost Bees) for the National Post, and their album Tasseo­mancy was one of my favourites from that year. In the two years since then their music has evolved to have a much darker and atmos­pheric sound, per­fectly suited for their macabre lyrics and style. The addi­tion of keys and drums and switch to elec­tric gui­tar should help turn a few more heads, espe­cially those who had them painted as just another folk band with nice harmonies.

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Tags: Castlemusic, Tasseomancy, Tranzac · Leave a comment

Last month I was invited to a small house show hap­pen­ing at one of Toronto’s most infa­mous res­i­dences, !059.  I’ve been to a plenty of par­ties and shows there before, but this was my first trip there in quite some time. Usu­ally it’s packed past the point of com­fort, but on this night I was happy to find a much smaller crowd, surely do to the Monday-ness of the day of the week. What brought me out was a chance to see Laura Bar­rett play one last time as a cit­i­zen of Toronto. Word spread over the sum­mer that she was pack­ing up her instru­ments and mov­ing to Van­cou­ver come Sep­tem­ber, and while I’ve been told she’ll be back before too long, it still felt like a bit an occa­sion. The crowd was mostly made up of close friends and the whole affair was as casual as you’d expect at a house show on the hottest night of the sum­mer. Play­ing a mix of old and new songs accom­pa­nied at var­i­ous points by flute, banjo and vio­lin, Laura spent the night switch­ing back and forth between her trade­mark kalimba and the in-house piano, lit only by strange pro­jec­tions of what seemed to be old tele­vi­sion doc­u­men­taries. It was a great night, and a reminder that Laura is one of the most unique voices in Toronto, and Van­cou­ver is richer for hav­ing her. Enjoy her song “Decep­tion Island Opti­mists Club” above.

Tags: !059, Laura Barrett · Leave a comment

A few months back my friend Shot­gun Jim­mie was in Toronto and said to me “You gotta check out this band I played with in Win­nipeg, they’re called the Can­non Bros. They’re young and a lit­tle scrappy but their songs are good.” So I found them on MySpace and imme­di­ately heard what Jim­mie was say­ing. Basi­cally, they’ve got all the right ele­ments: they’re a gui­tar and drum boy-girl duo who sound like they were raised on a healthy dose of Cana­dian indie-rock.

As I said, they’re a two-piece com­prised of a boy and a girl, Cole Woods and Alan­nah Walker, but whereas a lot of other bands that fit that mold end up sound­ing a bit too “cute” for my lik­ing, Can­non Bros. man­age to avoid that pit­fall all the while still writ­ing catchy-as-hell pop songs.

Of course I knew I’d have to go see them play when they announced a late-summer tour that would take them around Ontario, includ­ing two shows here in Toronto. So, a few weeks ago I found myself out on a Wednes­day night at a venue far from my house to see a band from a dif­fer­ent province that no one has really heard of — and it was great! It was mostly all new songs (d’uh), includ­ing a wicked Shot­gun Jim­mie cover, and plenty of instru­ment switch­ing between songs.  I have a few videos here, check them out, and I’ll see you next time they come through town, ok?

Tags: Cannon Bros., The Boat, Winnipeg · 1 Comment

In the fall of 2006 I saw Shot­gun & Jay­bird play in my home­town of Oshawa. It was the only time I ever got to see them play, but it really changed my life. I’ve told the whole story here before, but in fewer words, that was the night I dis­cov­ered the great fes­ti­val that is Sap­pyFest, which I had the plea­sure of attend­ing in 2008, 2009, and again just this month. It’s actu­ally the end of the month now — I’m not sure what’s taken me so long to get down to writ­ing, but if I wait any longer no one will care anymore.

This year for Sap­pyFest I decided to go for an entire week instead of the usual 3–4 days. Part of the rea­son I went for longer was so that I could just relax in a nice envi­ron­ment, but I also wanted to check out more of Ok.Quoi?!, an arts fes­ti­val that hap­pens each year in the week lead­ing up to Sap­pyFest. I went to a round­table dis­cus­sion about pub­lic art instal­la­tions, lis­tened to some live exper­i­men­tal music, saw a ton of amaz­ing short films and ani­ma­tions, and even par­tic­i­pated in the “Con­sen­sus Bus” (a free bus trip open to any­one, but every­one who comes has to agree on the destination).

Of course, Sap­pyFest itself was another fine 3 days of music, with a whole lot of my friends and favourite bands play­ing this year that was a given, but there were also a few new dis­cov­er­ies along the way. I had planned to shoot a lot of video dur­ing the fes­ti­val, but of course, once I’m hav­ing fun I tend to “for­get” my cam­era when I go out… but I did man­age to cap­ture two bands from the first night. Nei­ther band should need any intro­duc­tion for read­ers of this web­site as I’ve shot them both many times before.

Toronto’s best party band Steam­boat played to a packed main­stage tent in what I believe was their first out-of-town gig! The response from the crowd was enthu­si­as­tic, and the band had another chance to get peo­ple danc­ing when they did another set (with plenty of spe­cial guest vocal­ists), clos­ing out the fes­ti­val on Sun­day night at George’s Fab­u­lous Roadhouse.

Finally, here’s Attack in Black play­ing a few songs. Lots of new mate­r­ial in their set, really hope they record them and make another album.

Tags: Attack in Black, Sackville, SappyFest, Steamboat · Leave a comment