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.

Con­tinue reading →

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

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

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