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

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