The mys­te­ri­ous Coole & Downes on the final night of their Holy Oak res­i­dency in the spring of the year 2011. Here they are play­ing a song called “Rock­wood 1868.”

Tags: Chris Coole, Coole & Downes, Fiver, One Hundred Dollars, Simone Schmidt, The Holy Oak · Leave a comment

I don’t have a whole to say about these videos. I’ve shot a Hun­dred Bucks so many times over the years, but these are prob­a­bly the best of the bunch. It was a fan­tas­tic night, and even though there were some hic­cups, like my audio being pretty crummy, it was a learn­ing expe­ri­ence, as always. Many thanks to my new friend Adrian Vieni who has just moved to the city. I’ve long been a fan of his Wood & Wires video series, so it was awe­some get­ting to shoot along­side him. We’re all in this together so hope­fully we can do it more often!

I inter­viewed One Hun­dred Dol­lars’ lead singer and song­writer Simone Schmidt a few days after the show to dis­cuss their new album Songs of Man, amongst other things.

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Tags: One Hundred Dollars, Simone Schmidt, The Great Hall · Leave a comment

Toronto Thaw hap­pened this week­end. It’s a new 3-day fes­ti­val hap­pen­ing at the start of Spring put on by Teenanger and Tele­phone Explo­sion. If you didn’t see one of the awe­some posters around town then too bad because you missed out on a lot of fun. Granted, I was only able to go to the Fri­day show, but I passed by Wrong­bar on Thurs­day at around 1:30am and it was still bumpin’ and Metz were play­ing Sat­ur­day night and they rule, so I can only assume the entire week­end was an unequiv­o­cal suc­cess. I’m not afraid to make this sort of con­jec­ture, I just call it as I see it.

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Tags: Anagram, Duffy's Tavern, One Hundred Dollars, Toronto Thaw · Leave a comment

Well, here we are, final show at the Cana­dian Corps, the legion hall down at King and Nia­gra. I feel like I spent a lot more time there than I actu­ally did  - it has that ultra famil­iar feel­ing that I tend not to get at most places I spend min­i­mal amounts of time in. Nev­er­the­less, this show was my first time tap­ing a band there and it will be my last since the build­ing has been sold and it’s being con­verted into art studios.

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Tags: Canadian Corps, One Hundred Dollars · Leave a comment

Well, here’s some­thing dif­fer­ent. I’d never heard of this band before I shot this video, so don’t be sur­prised if they’re new to you too. I don’t think they have much recorded mate­r­ial, and speak­ing to them before their show they men­tioned it was their first time play­ing in over a year. Nev­er­the­less, I walked away thor­oughly impressed by their unique sound and cap­ti­vat­ing stage pres­ence. You may rec­og­nize a few of the mem­bers from other Toronto bands such as One Hun­dred Dol­lars, Trop­ics, and The Tor­rent, so it’s not really sur­pris­ing that they’ve got the chops.

I think this song is called ‘Chair­lift’ and it’s a song about lazy skiers. I’m glad I was able to cap­ture this show because who knows when’s the next time LSdou­bleD­cup will hit the stage. Also, Whip­per­snap­per is clos­ing down soon. What a drag.

Tags: LSDdoubleDcup, One Hundred Dollars, Whippersnapper Gallery · Leave a comment

One of the first bands I saw this year at Sap­pyFest was The Har­bour­coats, the still-sorta-new-because-they’re-relatively-unknown band led by Bry Webb from the Con­stan­tines. It was a really nice way to kick off the fes­ti­val and def­i­nitely had me hum­ming the songs to myself all week­end. This wasn’t my first time see­ing Bry play­ing away from his reg­u­lar gig — I remem­ber hear­ing at least one of these songs when he did a set at the Three Gut Records 5th anniver­sary party years and years ago at the Tran­zac, and I’ve sub­se­quently seen him play on a few other occa­sions lead­ing up to last Fri­day. Join­ing him this time ’round was Mike Feuer­stack (aka Snail­house) and my old pal Jonas Bon­netta (aka Evening Hymns). The songs were sub­tle and majes­tic, show­cas­ing Bry’s pow­er­ful voice in a whole new way. I’m super excited to hear their forth­com­ing record, too bad no one knows when it’s com­ing out. Maybe I should look into get­ting that Con­stan­tines acoustic EP they put out a few months back to hold me over. Which reminds me: if any­one from Arts & Crafts is read­ing this, can you please press it to 10″ vinyl and send me a copy? What’s with this digital-only foolishness?

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Tags: Attack in Black, Harbourcoats, Jon-Rae Fletcher, One Hundred Dollars, Sackville, SappyFest, Snowblink · 5 Comments