After being away from the city for six weeks, it felt really good to be back at The Tran­zac for this spe­cial trib­ute night to the great Michael Hur­ley. I’ve really only heard his 2009 album Ida Con Snock and the odd tune here or there, but with a lineup that included long-time favourites like Bry Webb, Evening Hymns, and The Weather Sta­tion, as well as folks I’ve wanted to see play for a while such as Gabe Levine (singing Tia Marie in the video above) and Lisa Bozikovic, I made sure to mark the night down as a “can’t miss event” on my Google Calendar.

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Tags: Evening Hymns, Gave Levine, Harbourcoats, Lisa Bozikovic, Matt Dunn, Sandro Perri, Steamboat, The Weather Station, Tradition, Tranzac · 1 Comment

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.

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Tags: Evening Hymns, Jenny Omnichord, Kite Hill, OOTS Family Band, Out of this Spark, Richard Laviolette, The Pale Mornings, The Phonemes, Tranzac · 1 Comment

To cel­e­brate and offi­cially wel­come their new 7″ sin­gle, last week Tasseo­mancy played a rare Toronto head­lin­ing show at The Tran­zac. I first encoun­tered the twins Sari and Romy Light­man when I moved to Toronto in 2008. They were actu­ally the first group I inter­viewed (when they were known as Ghost Bees) for the National Post, and their album Tasseo­mancy was one of my favourites from that year. In the two years since then their music has evolved to have a much darker and atmos­pheric sound, per­fectly suited for their macabre lyrics and style. The addi­tion of keys and drums and switch to elec­tric gui­tar should help turn a few more heads, espe­cially those who had them painted as just another folk band with nice harmonies.

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Tags: Castlemusic, Tasseomancy, Tranzac · Leave a comment

I made my way over to the Tran­zac last Fri­day to catch my friend Stuart’s monthly “Out of this Spark presents” con­cert. Stu’s been doing these shows for a while now and I’ve yet to miss one. They’re always nice, laid-back affairs, where you’re sure to see unique sets from both fresh tal­ent and more estab­lished acts. The lineup for the night was The Youngest, whose short, wist­ful set left me truly impressed, VIVIV, the lat­est project from Ken Reaume, and finally, Casey Mecija of Ohbi­jou. I’ll be hon­est, it was pretty late by the time Casey went on and I’d had a few drinks, so I col­lapsed into a seat right up front and tried film­ing to the best of my ine­bri­ated abil­i­ties. So please, watch this video of Casey play­ing a song that I’d never heard before – her sis­ter Jenny is singing back­ups and really nails it. Love ‘em.

Tags: Casey Mecija, Ohbijou, Tranzac · Leave a comment

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

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