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

This past Sun­day I went to my friend Emily, Liz, and Ken’s  house for a lit­tle going away party for For­est City Lovers who were head­ing to Europe the next day for a tour. They had a bunch of friends play some short sets and all of it was really sweet. I cap­tured some songs from The Wooden Sky’s Gavin Gar­diner and Kite Hill’s Ryan Car­ley, which can both seen right here. I’ve been to a lot of house shows lately, and I hope to go to a lot more this sum­mer! Food, music and friends, what could be better?

Tags: Gavin Gardiner, Kite Hill, Ryan Carley, The Wooden Sky · 4 Comments