Photograph by Colin Medley
Barry Miles plays River and Sky Festival Thurs., July 14; a video review in two parts
Beach Fossils play River and Sky Festival Sat. July 16, a video review in two parts
Photography by Rebecca Blissett
BC The Pack AD turn off their minds, relax, float downstream
Two piece The Pack AD dig deep for "Fair Enough" from their due in August album Positive Thinking on Cadence Music. The track is a psychedelic garage rock trip that picks up where Tomorrow ends. Saw the duo at Lee's Palace in Toronto a couple of weeks back with PS I Love You and Greylands. Have to say I wasn't a fan of The Pack AD when I have seen them in the past but their long winding jams and furious rock drum riffs were stunning as was their epic encore that showed no sign of letting up. Sign me up if they are ever in town again.
This is now and That Was The Summer says Sam Cash, plays NXNE June 18
Sam Cash & The Romantic Dogs has released the nostalgia tinged video for "That Was The Summer" from their Cameron Records release, Tongue-In-Cheek. The band are also touring with a slew of dates coming up including sharing stages with The Arkells, Sam Roberts and Zeus. June 18 2016 Sam and Co. play Toronto's NXNE at Dundas Sq., and on July 15 play at the Legendary Horseshoe Tavern with Modern Space and Ferraro.
Stadium Pow Wow with A Tribe Called Red, at WayHome July 23
New tune from ATCR, bringing in Black Bear on the beats, expanding the tribe and adding some great sexy sideway slides to the groove. Bet these dudes bring one heck of a party vibe. Live dates below.
June 25 Aboriginal Day Live - The Forks, Winnipeg, MB
June 26 Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival, Ottawa, ON
July 9 Phillips Backyard Weekender, Victoria, BC
July 15 Folk on the Rocks Music Festival, Yellowknife, NWT
July 23 Way Home Festival, Oro-Medonte, ON
July 31 The Banff Centre – Shaw Amphitheatre, Banff, AB
Aug 15 Festival Acadie Rock – Riverfront Park | Moncton, NB
Aug 18 Boyce Farmers Market, Fredericton, NB
Aug 19 The Marquee Ballroom, Halifax, NS
Aug 20 2016 Nova Scotia Mi’kmaw Summer Games | Membertou, NS
Aug 31 Pacific National Exhibition, Vancouver, BC
Photography by Colin Medley
Andy Shauf releases video for The Worst in You, playing Hillside Festival, new album The Party out on Arts and Crafts
Move over Ron Sexsmith, here comes Andy Shauf.
NYTheSpirit.com adds Allnite Andre to their online lineup
Fans of the iconic new music radio broadcaster CFNY can tune in to NYTheSpirit.com to hear some familiar voices. The latest to be added is Allnite Andre and his new show Live Enzymes which will be a feature on the streaming music site along with shows by Ivar Hamilton and the inimitable David Marsden plus others. Andre spent six years at CFNY figuring large in the evolution of new music. Expect more of the same but more of the not same.
And now a word from Elvis . . .
Alex G's muddy Spring, opens for Built To Spill in the Fall at Toronto's Danforth Music Hall
Photography by Vanessa Heins
TO punks PUP on tour, play Hillside Festival July 22
TO punk pranksters PUP are touring in support of their recent released The Dream Is Over. They are playing at the Ottawa Blues not so much Festival July 14 and at the wonderous Hillside Fest July 22. They are their only Ontario dates until October, the kids are riding the wave of their “pup”ularity to the States, UK and on under to Australia. The album is on Royal Mountain Records, dig it.
Jadea Kelly takes one last look at betrayal and moves on with Love And Lust
Jadea Kelly has a voice as clean and clear as shaved ice yet she will melt even the coldest heart with her tales of betrayal on her new album, Love And Lust. This is Kelly’s third record and is due June 4 2016 on Cadence. The one-time collaborator with prog-metal Protest The Hero has built a career on folk but Love & Lust defies category. There are elements of folk, elements of country, pop, electronica but is none of them. File it under Heartache.
There is the plaintiveness of Sarah McLaughlin and the inventiveness of Feist layered on the pedal steel streams of Daniel Lanois but this all Jadea. This one is personal. This one's for the ones broken by broken promises, laid low by lies, destroyed by deceit.
“It is a break-up record," says Kelly, “It’s pretty heavy, it’s uncensored and its honest and it's based off something that personally happened to me three years ago, discovering a two year affair. It's about infidelity and human frailty and it’s about forgiveness and love and it's about lust. It's my journey through that.”
Love and Lust is not as confrontational a rip as Alanis Morrisette’s Jagged Little Pill, Kelly is too smooth for that. It is not loaded with titillating details of theatre delicacies either. She is not revealing for revenge but for restoration of self, of soul, of respect and of dignity. She says she didn’t want to release the album or even record it because of the pain involved. But the only way out of such darkness for Kelly who also goes by the nickname Darth Jadea, was to write herself out of that darker side of life.
“I knew that it would help a lot of other people that have been in the same situation. It's happened to a lot of people,” she says.
Photograph by Jen Squires
Other artists have used music as catharsis, to deal with loss and pain in their lives. Both Evening Hymns and Kalle Mattson dealt with the loss of a parent by making a record and Luke Doucet wrote the brilliant Broken (and Other Rogue States) as his break-up record, one that runs along the lines of Dylan’s Blood On The Track. The concern is taking such an album on the road and dealing with in Dylan’s words the “idiot wind” travelling alongside you every night.
“I am apprehensive and nervous about (revisiting), I have moved on from it,” says Kelly, “The times when we have performed the songs in the past I do find it very therapeutic and just watching people’s reactions is also therapeutic. But I worry now, in particular the song “Mariah” is a tough one to perform because it was a friend. But it also has built such confidence in me when I am performing it with the band. Its very emotional but recording it was the painful part, performing it is the healing.”
While Kelly’s languid lilting voice and lyrics are front and centre on the album, they ooze crystallized cool on to the music underneath. She gave free reign to her band to build whatever they wanted around her and their sounds ripple out in all directions, emanating from her words, amplifying the emotions, giving her both space and support.
Longtime music associate Tom Juhas provided the security for Kelly to record live off the floor with co-producer Stew Crookes. He worked with Kelly on her previous album, Clover. Jason Sniderman, another longtime collaborator, was also involved and it was within that safe place where Kelly fully expressed the pain and heartache. Her musicians interpreted the emotions and the record is as much about the nobility of friendships, and the solidarity and intimacy within a band as it is about the harshness of love and relationships.
“The people Stew and I chose to play on the record are kinda weirdos. Tom and Jason especially and sometimes it's hard for us to say who played what because they kinda meld into each other and the stuff they listen to is stuff you’ve never heard off. You can catch Tom at the Orbit Room (Toronto) every Saturday night with Eye of The Tiger, He can play anything. He’s really quite wacky and the same with Jason. Perhaps that’s why the record sounds the way it does is because I give them complete freedom to play whatever the heck they want. I say colour it with all your weird and whacky stuff and I think that’s why they appreciate playing with me because they don’t usually get the freedom with other projects they get hired for. But with me it's like be a weirdo,” says Kelly.
Visual artist Gaelle Legrand is another member of Kelly’s team who has been granted creative freedom. The two bonded and became over the course of a Thelma and Louise like road trip. The resulting collaboration includes stage projections but also video work. The first single "Love And Lust" features a visualization by Legrande of Kelly’s soul baring. In the video it is her body that is bared.
The nakedness, the rawness, the vulnerability is turned into strength, into power. At one point Kelly may have felt invisible but she all visible now. Once she was made to feel small but she stands tall as a Colossus now. She may have hit rock bottom but with Love and Lust she comes out on top.
Photograph by Iwona Dufaj
Launch of THIS BEING by poet Ingrid Ruthig at Whitby's Station Gallery May 26
Canadian writer, poet, literary editor, artist and (retired) architect Ingrid Ruthig will read at the launch of her new collection of poetry, THIS BEING, at the Station Gallery in Whitby Thursday May 26 2016. A book signing will follow and there will be CAKE!!!!
Slowcity.ca took the opportunity to ask a few questions of this remarkable artist.
Slowcity.ca: You use ordinary language to express extraordinary experiences. Some poets such as Christian Bök are very much into words as things in themselves, but you seem to view them as media to express. There are many words to choose from and words with many meanings. Why do you choose the words you do? It may be best to pick one poem in particular, so let’s start with that great opening one, “Ten Mile Point”?
Ingrid Ruthig: "While words can be interesting in and of themselves – with their singular shapes and sounds, and the way they look on the page in different sizes and type faces – it’s their potential to communicate a mood, image, experience, or idea, that I’m most drawn to. Words harbour weight, and when they’re strung together, there’s a type of potential energy sitting there, waiting for the reader.
"This affects word choice and how one might order them. I consider how much potential – for different interpretations, meaning, ‘punch’ – there is in one word as opposed to another. And what does that word add in terms of sound, music, and pace for the rest of the line, then for the poem as a whole? Each one has to earn its place, and if it doesn’t, it gets the boot.
"In the case of “Ten Mile Point”, whose characters “throw the car doors wide and tumble out”, the first part of the poem spilled fast onto paper when I began to draft it out. To me, it signalled the words were already hovering in my subconscious, and it was time for them to surface. Make no mistake, a hell of a lot of rethinking, trial, error, and fine-tuning took place on the way to the version that now appears in the book. But specific words and images were there from the get-go and have never changed:
“ . . . – our breath arrested
by a full-stop sky, the drop to treetops,
the humpback La Cloche breaching horizon
to the north, and water far as you can see.”
Think of the possible associations in a single word like “arrested”, and listen to the beat of “full-stop sky”, how it then extends itself as an echo in “drop to treetops”, “La Cloche”, and “horizon”. What do you see when you picture “humpback La Cloche breaching horizon”? (It’s a reference to those ancient rounded mountains of Killarney Provincial Park.) What if the words had merely been “we thought the view was really cool”? I hope the poem offers far more than that."
Slowcity.ca: I see artists as scouts of the present bringing back news to those of us still preoccupied with the past. Most, it seems, are living inside the virtual world of their tech devices. It leaves the artist an unpopulated physical realm to explore. You have a poem, “What You Find” (love the line “is the coming on slow”, for obvious reasons) – the physical world, the landscape is very important to you. We spoke about it before, but as a scout of the present what are you finding out there? What do you see? What is the state of the world at large?
Ingrid Ruthig: "I don’t know if people are preoccupied with the past, necessarily, or merely too keen to get to somewhere else – the next text message, the next mile of highway, the next long weekend. But I like the notion that artists have an “unpopulated physical realm to explore”. It’s true – a lot of people aren’t ‘here’. No matter the era, no matter what clamours for our attention, we remain creatures of habit, and routine soon makes things invisible to us.
"In Viktor Shklovsky’s book Literature and Cinematography, he excerpts from Tolstoy’s diary: “I dusted the sofa, and then couldn’t remember whether I had already dusted it… Therefore if I did dust it, I did it unconsciously… And our entire life, if spent unconsciously, is as if it had never been.” It’s bound to happen, and it’s even more likely if you’re also glued to a screen – you disconnect from the physical world around you, losing track of what you’ve done, where you’ve been, who was with you. These days, instead of being present, people file endless selfies, as if to prove to themselves and the rest of the world that life happened. That’s messed up.
“Existence is a state of constant rebalancing. Even when we walk, we’re falling forward till a foot connects again with the ground.”
"I think creative people, by temperament, are less able to unhook from their surroundings, whether it’s the usual, the weird, or the wonderful. We don’t easily filter stuff out – everything comes in, and if we don’t process it and send it back out, our circuitry overloads. At least that’s how it seems. The work that comes of it is a way of saying, “Hey, look at this! Pay attention!”
"Sure, we all run on autopilot sometimes. We have to. How much can any person possibly take in, anyway? Even a writer can lose clarity in the everyday blur. But we are OF the world, not separate from it.
“What You Find” documents how awareness is often a slow, unexpected unfolding, a moment of quiet that catches you, where time seems to become elastic till you sense yourself clearly within the bigger picture. That’s a more rewarding, settling kind of connectedness to pursue – not the trendy ‘mindfulness’, not the virtual world of fibre optics (even though it is useful).
"Landscape and context affect us in ways we’re not even aware of. This is partly my architect self speaking, as well as my ancestral self, which is directly linked to the land. In the New World, ancestors had to work with it to survive. Wherever I am, the place reminds me of what I am and stirs a response that’s more than “oh, what a great view”. How can we so easily dismiss it, or be so forgetful of the fact that, without landscape, we are nothing?
"The land is in flux, as is everything. We ourselves are never the same person from one moment to the next. Existence is a state of constant rebalancing. Even when we walk, we’re falling forward till a foot connects again with the ground. Once in a while, though, we don’t quite manage it, do we? We’re forever caught in the process of change. And there’s the crux of it, the contradiction of it all – humans don’t necessarily like change, yet the challenge it provides is key to making us who we are."
Story edited from original at 11:05 pm May 25 2016
Autumn Hill play a sort of homecoming at the Oshawa GM Centre May 24, on tour with Gord Bamford and Joel Nichols, SlowCity.ca chats with the Country duo
Country duo, Autumn Hill, are the special guests for the Gord Bamford/Joel Nichols tour making a stop at the General Motors Centre in Oshawa Tuesday, May 24 2016. Autumn Hill is Mike Robins from the Greater Toronto Area and Tareya Green from Calgary. They released Anchors in 2015 earning a Juno nod for Country Album of the Year. The two crisscrossed the country in a Ford Fiesta getting to know each after they were introduced at a music industry party. The result can be heard on radio, online and on stage as Autumn HIll gain ground in both pop and country territory.
Slowcity.ca had a chance to chat with Mike.
Q: Welcome back to Oshawa, what are your roots in the city?
Mike: "Well living so close by, I’ve been to Oshawa many times. I’ve Seen a bunch of concerts here, its always a great place to see live music. I’m so excited to have the opportunity to play the GM Centre, it’s been a dream of mine. It’s gonna be pretty crazy. Oshawa has been so incredible, and supportive of Autumn Hill. KX 96 has had our backs since we started, it’s really amazing and means the world to us. I love getting the chance to come back and play here, it always feels like home."
Q: Since the time you have written "It Don't Get Better Than This", has it? How?
Mike: "That is an amazing question! This whole experience has been a wild ride, we really are living our dreams, getting to create music and then share it with everyone is incredible. Since we wrote “It Don’t Get Better Than This” for the Anchor album, life has gotten crazier. We released “Blame” as our first single, and the reception of that song and this record has just been amazing. We even received a Juno nomination for country album of the year. It's a little insane, but we are so grateful to be in this position. The country community is amazing and have been so supportive of us. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it. So, life is pretty good these days, and we can’t wait to rock this tour with Gord Bamford and Joe Nichols, its gonna be a blast!"
Q: Why do you think the East GTA is producing such great country acts like Meghan Patrick, Stellas, JJ Shiplett, Cadence Grace, Jadea Kelly, yourself - something in the water?
Mike: "I am so proud to be from here. I think some of the best country music is coming out of Ontario right now. I’m a fan of so many artists from this area. I can’t wait for the CMAO’s awards, that night showcases the incredible talent from Ontario, its gonna be amazing. There must really be something in the water. It’s incredible to watch the whole country really enjoying all this music from our home town."
Q: Mixtape tells me that country music acts draw from all music genres and not just traditional country music? With all the influences and choices what is about country music that drew you in and became the music you like to make?
Mike: "I would say its two main things. First I love writing songs, and to me one of the most important parts of a song is always the lyrics. The stories are and have always been so compelling and honest in country music, that I was drawn in by them and loved so much of this music. The other thing was, I also am a little guitar obsessed and how could any player not love this genre. I mean some of the best pickers in the world are in Country. Vince Gill, Brent Mason, of course Brad Paisley and Keith Urban, are all heroes of mine. It’s just an amazing type of music that grabs you and doesn’t let go."
Q: Are you still touring in a Ford Fiesta, I doubt you are but how do you hold on to that relationship and mutual experiences that drove so much of your songwriting? As you get bigger and bigger do you trade something of that songwriting intimacy for the popularity?
Mike: "HAHA oh man that car…What a trip that was, I think that trip enhanced our bond incredibly we loved that tour! At the end of the day going through this journey with a great friend is what drives the magic. A song like “Good Night For Going Nowhere” our brand new single features life experiences we shared as well as pieces of us individually. As long as you bring those things to the table and are honest you can write anything. It’s not about what your traveling in, its always about just writing the best music you can."