After being away from the city for six weeks, it felt really good to be back at The Tran­zac for this spe­cial trib­ute night to the great Michael Hur­ley. I’ve really only heard his 2009 album Ida Con Snock and the odd tune here or there, but with a lineup that included long-time favourites like Bry Webb, Evening Hymns, and The Weather Sta­tion, as well as folks I’ve wanted to see play for a while such as Gabe Levine (singing Tia Marie in the video above) and Lisa Bozikovic, I made sure to mark the night down as a “can’t miss event” on my Google Calendar.

Con­tinue reading →

Tags: Evening Hymns, Gave Levine, Harbourcoats, Lisa Bozikovic, Matt Dunn, Sandro Perri, Steamboat, The Weather Station, Tradition, Tranzac · 1 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.

Con­tinue reading →

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

I just uncov­ered this gem that I shot last month dur­ing NXNE.  I wasn’t able to take in too many shows that week due to my work sched­ule, but Casey and Jonas we’re play­ing right across the street at Whip­per­snap­per so I ducked out and caught a few tunes, includ­ing this one — a bois­ter­ous take of the track “Thun­derlove” from Ohbijou’s new album Bea­cons. It was a lot of fun see­ing them play together, they should do it more often. Evening Hymns have an album called Spirit Guides pretty much in the can, so hope­fully we’ll have it in our hands by the end of the year. I’ve heard a bit of it, sounds pretty epic.

Tags: Evening Hymns, NXNE, Ohbijou, Whippersnapper Gallery · 1 Comment

This is a very intense new song from Peterborough’s Evening Hymns, shot last night at Sneaky Dee’s where he was play­ing for Wave­length 452. I wasn’t sure if I was even going to put it online because I wasn’t sure if the video really cap­tures the inten­sity of the song. My room­mate John was actu­ally ask­ing me how Evening Hymns was, and I said, “He was great! I shot one song and I might put it on YouTube, but it’s a really intense song, so I don’t know if I should.”  John said, “Is it that song Dead Deer?!” and I was like, “Yeah, that’s the one!”  And then he said, “I’ve heard that song before! That’s my favourite new song of his, it is really intense! Can you show me the video?” So I showed John the video and we both agreed that it was a good video so here it is, on my blog for all to see.

Tags: Evening Hymns, Sneaky Dee's, Wavelength · 1 Comment