So last night I vis­ited Toronto’s newest venue, The Shop, located under­neath the restau­rant Parts & Labour in the heart of Park­dale. I remem­ber last fall when I started hear­ing peo­ple talk­ing about a new restau­rant, an off­shoot of Odd­fel­lows and The Social, open­ing up at Queen St. W. and Sorau­ren Ave. that was going to have a small “punk” venue in the base­ment. I’m always happy when bands have new places to play, but I was mostly excited to have a venue open­ing up so close to my apart­ment (Toronto’s west-end is severely lack­ing in rooms to see bands I like play). The venue now known as The Shop finally opened about a month or so ago and I meant to check it out sooner but I’m glad I waited until a show I really wanted to see popped up, as was the case on Sun­day night.

Will Kid­man opened the night with a quick set of songs that have yet to appear on any of his albums as Woolly Leaves (I’m still not sure if he’s play­ing under that name any­more). I cap­tured some video but I had a feel­ing, per­haps because he was still read­ing the lyrics off a sheet, that a lot of the songs were still being devel­oped and I don’t like to put stuff on the inter­net when it’s still being worked on. You know what I mean? Maybe it doesn’t mat­ter. Any­way, I thought all his songs were among the best he’s writ­ten, and his cover of Neil Young’s “Shots” (which he also cov­ered in the Con­stan­tines on their 2006 split 12″ with the Unin­tended) was par­tic­u­larly cool to hear.

Next up was Baby Eagle (Steve Lam­bke, also of the Con­stan­tines) who brought a full band with him, which I believed he dubbed “The Proud Moth­ers,” com­posed of three quar­ters of Attack in Black (Spencer Bur­ton on drums, Ian Kehoe on bass, and Daniel Romano on acoustic gee­tar). It was a fairly sim­i­lar set to the one I wit­nessed back in March at The Horse­shoe when he opened for Daniel, Fred & Julie, which was fine because it gave me a sec­ond chance to hear all his new songs. My ver­dict: I like ‘em! While not too much of a depar­ture from the rest of his mate­r­ial, with song titles like “Fish­er­man or Fish” and “River Bank Sit­ter,” mov­ing to the East-Coast def­i­nitely seems to have informed his lyrics, at the very least. He has a new record called Dog Weather com­ing out soon on You’ve Changed Records, but it was avail­able at the show last night! I lis­tened to it today!

Daniel Romano was last up, armed only with his trusty acoustic and Bruce Penin­sula’s Misha Bower singing in har­mony — the same for­ma­tion I saw just over a month ago at his album release show at The Dakota Tav­ern. It was nice to see a lot more peo­ple come out to Sunday’s show, the record seems to be pick­ing up steam and there were a lot of peo­ple up front lis­ten­ing atten­tively, but enough peo­ple towards the back of the room talk­ing loudly and play­ing foos­ball made for a worse expe­ri­ence than at The Dakota. That’s okay though, there a plenty of other venues in the city that are bet­ter geared towards folk music. I think The Shop will be a good place to see louder music, when a lit­tle bit of chat­ter isn’t such a distraction.

Now that I think about it, are there any good places to see quiet music in Toronto? I men­tioned The Dakota before, but even that place gets loud when there enough peo­ple there. I guess the only time you’re going to find a quiet room is if it’s a large venue and peo­ple have paid a lot of money to be there (Massey Hall for exam­ple). Any bar with a cheap enough cover is going to attract peo­ple who aren’t there for the music, and that’s okay. I feel for­tu­nate enough that I can even see musi­cians I like on a weekly basis play­ing rooms that I can afford. What are your thoughts on this subject?

Tags: Baby Eagle, Daniel Romano, Parts & Labour, Will Kidman · 2 Comments

Well, I’ve been putting off writ­ing this for days now and I really don’t think I can wait any longer. This year, like the last two years, I attended North-By-North-East. I decided to make more of an effort this year to check out mul­ti­ple shows each night and in the end I did pretty well. As usual though, I ended up grav­i­tat­ing towards bands I already know and love rather than check­ing out new stuff. Here’s my week­end, day-by-day.

THURSDAY

My night started at The Great Hall, a 120-year-old build­ing at Queen and Dover­court that recently started host­ing con­certs. It was my first time there, though I’d pre­vi­ously been to The The­ater Cen­ter (which is in the same build­ing). The Great Hall is a sim­i­lar room, with a bal­cony wrap­ping around the room, but instead of seats in the mid­dle, the main floor is entirely flat, which I guess explains the “hall” part of its name. I didn’t get too close to the stage, prefer­ing to lurk in the shad­ows under­neath the bal­cony, but the sight­lines were good from wher­ever I stood. This would be thanks to the high stage, which reminds me of a minia­ture ver­sion of the one you would find a The Opera House or The Phoenix. Together with some great light­ing and sound made for a pretty fine place to see some music.

The first band I saw was Women, who I last saw at the Horse­shoe in March 2009, dur­ing CMW. The Cal­gary quartet’s first album came out in 2008 and I can’t say I’ve lis­tened to it more than a hand­ful of times, but I remem­ber lik­ing much of it. Unfor­tu­nately, the band really stayed a bit too still for my lik­ing and my excite­ment waned early on. Still, the new songs were solid.

Tak­ing the stage after them was LA’s Best Coast, who I caught last time they were in town back in April. I liked ‘em then, and I liked them here too. Good songs, good style, look­ing for­ward to hear­ing their album.

I left after a few songs, hop­ing to catch Metz at The Gar­ri­son, but by the time I arrived they’d fin­ished play­ing. Nev­er­the­less, DD/MM/YYYY were about to take the stage, so I decided to stick around because it had been a long time since I’d seen them play. I’ve never really con­nected with their music in the past and my atti­tude didn’t change too much this time, but I do appre­ci­ate what they do more than before. Their long repet­i­tive grooves reminded me of Oneida, which I liked. They’re fun to watch and while the music isn’t always my thing, they obvi­ously work very hard and I can back that.

I hur­ried over to the Kelp Records show­case at Clinton’s, and caught a bit of The Michael Parks (fea­tur­ing Andy Swan, San­dro Perri, Greg Smith of the Weak­erthans, and Shayne Cox, most recently of Sports: The Band) and stayed for some of Andrew Vin­cent. Both acts were laid­back, loose, and delight­ful. Andrew Vin­cent was espe­cially enter­tain­ing, as he decided to sing/rap over pre-recorded back­ing tracks for the first few songs. That might sound strange, but his smart lyrics, awk­ward ges­tures and hushed voice made for fas­ci­nat­ing show.

I ended the night back at The Gar­ri­son, where my house-guests for the week­end, PS I Love You, were play­ing at 2 am. Not too many peo­ple were still there at that late hour, but you could tell that every­one who stuck around and saw them was pretty excited.

FRIDAY

The first stop of the night for me was the Glad­stone Hotel Ball­room for the NOW Mag­a­zine showcase. I was there to see Halifax’s Tasseo­mancy (for­merly Ghost Bees, they announced the name change mid-way through their set), the project of twin sis­ters Romy and Sari Light­man. I last saw them when they played a show at my apart­ment in March, and their new songs have really stuck with me. Right off the start I knew I was in for a treat, when I real­ized that Tim­ber Tim­bre’s Tay­lor Kirk and Simon Trot­tier would be accom­pa­ny­ing the twins, switch­ing between drums, gui­tar, key­board, and lap­steel. Also shar­ing the stage were a group of women cov­ered in body paint and car­ry­ing staffs and sculp­tures and essen­tially just adding a the­atri­cal ele­ment to an already dark and creepy set of music. One of them even did an inter­pre­tive dance to one of the songs, freak­ing me out fur­ther. Best thing I saw at NXNE this year, for sure!

Obvi­ously I wanted to stick around to see Tim­ber Tim­bre, but I also really wanted to go check out Katie Stel­ma­nis at Wrong­bar. I decided to try to see a bit of both sets, duck­ing out dur­ing Tim­ber Timbre’s third song to make my way west along Queen St. I don’t think I missed much — I’ve seen them play so often and I always enjoy it, but I’m really itch­ing for some new material!

It was my first time vis­it­ing Wrong­bar, and the lay­out was not at all how I pic­tured it in my mind, but I still thought it was a pretty cool room. I was able to catch the last half of Katie and her band’s set, which included one very dance­able num­ber that I’d never heard her play before. They’re one of my favourite acts in Toronto right now and I hope more peo­ple catch on to what they’re doing because it’s really quite good.

Dia­mond Rings played next, dressed like a pea­cock. Peo­ple lost their shit, of course.

At mid­night, I hur­ried over to the Dakota to catch Evening Hymns. The place was jam packed, and unfor­tu­nately it seemed like a lot of the peo­ple weren’t there to lis­ten to music. It was a damn shame peo­ple didn’t shut up for their set because from what I could hear it was beau­ti­ful. I got fed up with the chat­ter and left early to try to get into Lee’s Palace for PS I Love You.

When I arrived, Japan­droids had just fin­ished and there was a steady stream of peo­ple exit­ing the build­ing. All I could think to myself is, “These folks don’t know what they’re miss­ing!” I think a lot of Japan­droids fans would dig PS I Love You — they’re both gui­tar and drum duos who write really catchy ener­getic anthems — but if I’m not out there check­ing out new bands, I can’t expect oth­ers to as well. I found my spot up front and had my brain melted by them for the sec­ond night in a row.

SATURDAY

I was pretty exhausted after the first two nights, so for Sat­ur­day I chose to just one show: The D’Urbervilles at The Drake. They weren’t going on until mid­night though, so I decided to go see if my boys in Attack in Black were hang­ing out at the Horse­hoe. I’d be miss­ing their set for The D’Urbervilles, but it was good to hang out for a while any­way. I did man­age to catch some of Bruce Penin­sula’s set, and to my ears they’ve never sounded bet­ter. I wish I could have stuck around for their whole show.

So yes, the fes­ti­val ended at The Drake, with my old friends The D’Urbervilles. See­ing them play is a NXNE tra­di­tion that I’m happy to keep up.

To wrap things up, I agree with every­one else who has said this was the best NXNE ever. Though I wasn’t around in the mid-90s when it began, it was cer­tainly the most fun I’ve had out of the past three that I’d attended. With all the new venues that have opened up in the last year, and with the nice weather we had over the week­end, walk­ing around the city at times reminded me of being in Austin for South-By-South-West. About a mil­lion less peo­ple, but the feel­ing was still there.

If you’ve read this far, con­grat­u­la­tions, here’s a video of PS I Love You play­ing their song “Meet Me at the Muster Sta­tion” at Lee’s Palace from the Fri­day of NXNE.

Tags: Andrew Vincent, Attack in Black, Best Coast, Bruce Peninsula, Clinton's, Dakota Tavern, DD/MM/YYYY, Diamond Rings, Lee's Palace, NXNE, PS I Love You, Tasseomancy, The D'Urbervilles, The Garrison, The Great Hall, The Michael Parks, Timber Timbre, Women, Wrongbar · 1 Comment

I never got a chance to see The Deadly Snakes play live while they were around, partly because by the time I dis­cov­ered them, they were on the verge of break­ing up. In fact, The Deadly Snakes played their last show a mere 21 days before my 19th birth­day, and since it wasn’t an all-ages show, I didn’t get to go (the idea of sneak­ing into the Sil­ver Dol­lar never even entered my 18-year-old mind).

I kept lis­ten­ing to the Snakes, espe­cially the flaw­less double-LP ver­sion of Por­cella, and my wounds began to heal. After all, how many other great bands did I never get to see live whose music I still lis­ten to and love. The Snakes were dif­fer­ent in that I actu­ally had the chance to see them play, unlike say, Royal City, who broke up before I ever caught on to their music. Nev­er­the­less, after a few years I real­ized it was time to look ahead and put the whole episode behind me.

Of course, on Octo­ber 17th 2009 they played on-off reunion show… in Port­land, Ore­gon. So, good news I guess, at least they will play if some­one makes the right offer. Can some­one in Toronto please book them??? Until then, see­ing André Ethier sing Snakes songs with Steam­boat will have to do (I really appre­ci­ate it, guys).

Tags: André Ethier, Dakota Tavern, Steamboat, The Deadly Snakes · 3 Comments

Emma McKenna’s name has been tossed around a lot since I moved to Toronto some two years ago. For what­ever rea­son, my friends were always telling me about see­ing her play or just won­der­ing out loud when she would finally release an album. Once I finally heard Emma’s music, I under­stood exactly why every­one was always talk­ing about her.

I’ve lis­tened to her album three times today know­ing I would have to write about it, and I still can’t come up with a good way to describe it. She’s a singer-songwriter, that much I do know, but don’t let that paint a pic­ture of her as an acoustic folk bal­ladeer. Sim­ply put, Emma is fierce, with a voice that grabs you by the ear and doesn’t let go (in a good way).

I’m get­ting ahead of myself though, so let me back up. In March, my room­mates Adam, John and I hosted CMWTF?!, a house show fea­tur­ing acts not offi­cially play­ing Cana­dian Music Fest. John is friends with Emma so he asked her to play and I was delighted when she said yes. I thought the show went over pretty well, and I guess Emma did too because a few months later she approached us about play­ing our apart­ment again, this time to cel­e­brate the release of her long-awaited debut album, Run With It. Obvi­ously we said yes, and the date June 11th was decided upon. Our friends Jenny and Casey Mecija (of Ohbi­jou) opened the show as Cana­dian Wildlife, and Emma’s set had spe­cial guests in the form of Katie Stel­ma­nis and Tasseo­mancy.

Yes, it was a pretty spe­cial night, and with over 100 peo­ple in atten­dance it was a huge suc­cess. Check out the video to hear Emma play a song that isn’t on her album.

Tags: Canadian Wildlife, Emma McKenna, Hype House · Leave a comment

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

Hello, I’m going to try some early morn­ing blog­ging here. I’m in a bit of a rush, my ride for Austin leaves in half an hour, yet I’m still sit­ting here scarf­ing my face with peanut but­tered toast and 2% milk. Yes, that’s right, if all goes well on the way down, I shall be at SXSW again this year. I had a blast last year cov­er­ing the fes­ti­val for the National Post, but this time ’round I’m doing it on my lone­some. No fancy media pass (no pass at all yet, though we’ll see if my for­tunes change), but unlike like year, I actu­ally feel like I know what the hell is going on as far as cool bands to see (work­ing in a record store has helped tremendously).

So yes, I must be on my way, but I’ll leave you with some fun videos from this past week­end. Didn’t have time to edit them or any­thing, just dumped the footage on YouTube. First up, it’s PS I Love You fea­tur­ing Dia­mond Rings per­form­ing “Facelove” at the Sil­ver Dol­lar on Friday.

And here’s The Magic play­ing their hit song “Down­town Line” in some weird sort of tomb off of Oss­ing­ton, at 4 AM, tech­ni­cally Sat­ur­day morning.

Tags: CMF, Diamond Rings, PS I Love You, Silver Dollar, SXSW, The Magic · 3 Comments

I made my way over to the Tran­zac last Fri­day to catch my friend Stuart’s monthly “Out of this Spark presents” con­cert. Stu’s been doing these shows for a while now and I’ve yet to miss one. They’re always nice, laid-back affairs, where you’re sure to see unique sets from both fresh tal­ent and more estab­lished acts. The lineup for the night was The Youngest, whose short, wist­ful set left me truly impressed, VIVIV, the lat­est project from Ken Reaume, and finally, Casey Mecija of Ohbi­jou. I’ll be hon­est, it was pretty late by the time Casey went on and I’d had a few drinks, so I col­lapsed into a seat right up front and tried film­ing to the best of my ine­bri­ated abil­i­ties. So please, watch this video of Casey play­ing a song that I’d never heard before – her sis­ter Jenny is singing back­ups and really nails it. Love ‘em.

Tags: Casey Mecija, Ohbijou, Tranzac · Leave a comment

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