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

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

When I was chat­ting with Kehoe before the show I said that the first time I saw Attack in Black back­ing up Jim­mie was at an in-store at Crim­i­nal Records about a year ago. I didn’t real­ize it until he told me, but that was their first show together! Since then they’ve become quite the tight lit­tle rock unit, surely due to their non-stop tour­ing sched­ule. They’ve  also started a label together and each released fan­tas­tic new records, so it was good to have them back in Toronto. The first video here is a song called Province to Province, which is an older tune they re-recorded for Still Jim­mie, and per­formed here flaw­lessly. The sec­ond video is actu­ally of two songs, Leav­ing Your Death in a Flowerbed and I’m a Rock, both off of AIB’s new album Years (by one thou­sand fin­ger­tips). I’ve also got a video of the open­ing band Hunters & Anglers, as well as more Attack in Black and Shot­gun Jim­mie videos up on my YouTube page.

Tags: Attack in Black, Horseshoe Tavern, Shotgun Jimmie, You've Changed Records · 1 Comment

Here’s a video of an impromptu per­for­mance of Nei Young’s song “Look Out for My Love” done by Rick White and Julie Doiron at the Horse­hoe Tav­ern back in March. There are some miss­ing lyrics in the cho­rus sure, but it’s still a damn fine cover. Julie’s voice is really beau­ti­ful here…

Tags: Eric's Trip, Horseshoe Tavern, Julie Doiron, Neil Young, Rick White · Leave a comment