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

I didn’t get off work until mid­night last night, mean­ing I missed Taylor’s big gig, but I still made it to the Tran­zac after­wards for the lat­est OOTS pre­sen­ta­tion. Luck­ily that seemed to be where most peo­ple ended up after the Tim­ber Tim­bre show so I was still able to see some friends, which is key. I missed the first few acts (Chris Yang and Gavin Gar­diner) but got there just in time to see Guelph’s Richard Lavi­o­lette, whose quiet mas­ter­piece A Lit­tle Less Like a Rock, a Lit­tle More Like a Home was a favourite of mine a few years back, and who I last saw at Sap­pyFest about a year ago. How­ever, in stark con­trast to that show, yes­ter­day Richard was backed up by his new-ish band (well, it was the first time I’ve seen them) the Hol­low Hooves, who brought some wel­come mus­cle to his frag­ile sound­ing songs. It was a very dif­fer­ent per­for­mance than I’m used to him putting on, but I liked it all the same.

I ducked out after a few tunes to catch up with some friends out­side, but hope­fully it’s not another year before I see Richard again.

Tags: Out of this Spark, Richard Laviolette, Tranzac · 5 Comments