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

So last night I vis­ited Toronto’s newest venue, The Shop, located under­neath the restau­rant Parts & Labour in the heart of Park­dale. I remem­ber last fall when I started hear­ing peo­ple talk­ing about a new restau­rant, an off­shoot of Odd­fel­lows and The Social, open­ing up at Queen St. W. and Sorau­ren Ave. that was going to have a small “punk” venue in the base­ment. I’m always happy when bands have new places to play, but I was mostly excited to have a venue open­ing up so close to my apart­ment (Toronto’s west-end is severely lack­ing in rooms to see bands I like play). The venue now known as The Shop finally opened about a month or so ago and I meant to check it out sooner but I’m glad I waited until a show I really wanted to see popped up, as was the case on Sun­day night.

Will Kid­man opened the night with a quick set of songs that have yet to appear on any of his albums as Woolly Leaves (I’m still not sure if he’s play­ing under that name any­more). I cap­tured some video but I had a feel­ing, per­haps because he was still read­ing the lyrics off a sheet, that a lot of the songs were still being devel­oped and I don’t like to put stuff on the inter­net when it’s still being worked on. You know what I mean? Maybe it doesn’t mat­ter. Any­way, I thought all his songs were among the best he’s writ­ten, and his cover of Neil Young’s “Shots” (which he also cov­ered in the Con­stan­tines on their 2006 split 12″ with the Unin­tended) was par­tic­u­larly cool to hear.

Next up was Baby Eagle (Steve Lam­bke, also of the Con­stan­tines) who brought a full band with him, which I believed he dubbed “The Proud Moth­ers,” com­posed of three quar­ters of Attack in Black (Spencer Bur­ton on drums, Ian Kehoe on bass, and Daniel Romano on acoustic gee­tar). It was a fairly sim­i­lar set to the one I wit­nessed back in March at The Horse­shoe when he opened for Daniel, Fred & Julie, which was fine because it gave me a sec­ond chance to hear all his new songs. My ver­dict: I like ‘em! While not too much of a depar­ture from the rest of his mate­r­ial, with song titles like “Fish­er­man or Fish” and “River Bank Sit­ter,” mov­ing to the East-Coast def­i­nitely seems to have informed his lyrics, at the very least. He has a new record called Dog Weather com­ing out soon on You’ve Changed Records, but it was avail­able at the show last night! I lis­tened to it today!

Daniel Romano was last up, armed only with his trusty acoustic and Bruce Penin­sula’s Misha Bower singing in har­mony — the same for­ma­tion I saw just over a month ago at his album release show at The Dakota Tav­ern. It was nice to see a lot more peo­ple come out to Sunday’s show, the record seems to be pick­ing up steam and there were a lot of peo­ple up front lis­ten­ing atten­tively, but enough peo­ple towards the back of the room talk­ing loudly and play­ing foos­ball made for a worse expe­ri­ence than at The Dakota. That’s okay though, there a plenty of other venues in the city that are bet­ter geared towards folk music. I think The Shop will be a good place to see louder music, when a lit­tle bit of chat­ter isn’t such a distraction.

Now that I think about it, are there any good places to see quiet music in Toronto? I men­tioned The Dakota before, but even that place gets loud when there enough peo­ple there. I guess the only time you’re going to find a quiet room is if it’s a large venue and peo­ple have paid a lot of money to be there (Massey Hall for exam­ple). Any bar with a cheap enough cover is going to attract peo­ple who aren’t there for the music, and that’s okay. I feel for­tu­nate enough that I can even see musi­cians I like on a weekly basis play­ing rooms that I can afford. What are your thoughts on this subject?

Tags: Baby Eagle, Daniel Romano, Parts & Labour, Will Kidman · 2 Comments

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