This past Sunday I went to my friend Emily, Liz, and Ken’s (ELK) house for a little going away party for Forest City Lovers (FCL) 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 a song from The Wooden Sky’s Gavin Gardiner, which can be 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?
I met up with Sebastien Grainger at the Toronto waterfront on a blisteringly cold day back in February for the latest episode of Soundcheck. It probably wasn’t the best idea – both our hands were frozen by the end of his performance – but we moved things inside for the interview. It was really fun doing this video because I’ve been a fan of everything Sebastien has done for a really long time, and it was great that he was so keen on trying out different ideas. I totally didn’t get the feeling that he was in a rush to be somewhere else which is always nice. I think the performance is one of the best we’ve got, since it’s a pretty unique acoustic take on one of the songs off his album. Listen to him howl! Mercy!
I took a trip to Sarnia earlier this week with some friends. Some of them play in the band Forest City Lovers, who were in town to play a couple shows. My friend Liz is originally from Sarnia, so we all got to stay at her old house where we played pool, drank Żywiec, hung with her dog Sophie and sampled unusual potato chips. In the morning we had a giant waffle breakfast. Awesome.
I totally forgot to post this on Tuesday. Oops. I saw the Great Bloomers for the first time in June ‘07 in Guelph and thought they were good. I bought their EP and I remember listening to it quite a bit driving around Oshawa in my parent’s red Neon with my iPod plugged into the cassette deck. That was ages ago in music years, so I was happy when word came to me that the Bloomers had finally gotten around to making an album. I jumped at the chance to interview the boys when they played here in town a few months back. We set up a makeshift campfire on the patio of the Drake Hotel because… it just felt right.
Sunday night was Heavy Vessel, which is a new music series here in Toronto. I’m not sure how often it’s happening, but the basic premise is to get a few bands to play unamplified in a ship in the middle of a sandbox in park. I was really looking forward to seeing just that on Sunday, but the temperature dropped so the show got moved inside. Nevertheless, we were still treated to a wonderfully intimate show with great sets from Diamond Rings, Rolf Klausener and Bruce Peninsula. All the money from the event goes towards Friends in Bellwoods, which in turn gets donated to the Daily Bread Food Bank, so don’t miss the next show. I shot some video, of course, which is now on YouTube. I got Diamond Rings and Rolf. Check out Aviva’s blog to get your BP fix.
My boys Shotgun Jimmie and Attack in Black are doing another tour together, and once again they’re posting daily video weblogs on YouTube. Here’s the latest video they made after I demanded to see some choreographed swimming. I’ll be seeing them when they roll into town on May 9th. It’s probably the greatest show on earth (probably).
Geoff Berner plays klezmer music (which I learned is the folk music of eastern European Jews) so we decided to shoot this video at Caplansky’s, a fantastic deli famous for their smoked meat sandwiches. After being treated to a delicious meal courtesy of the owner Zane, and a quick interview conducted by my comrade Ben Kaplan, Geoff and his band set up in the corner and played a three song set just for us. Well, it was meant to be just for us, but of course when you’re playing in a busy restaurant, people soon caught on to what was happening. After the first song there were a few scattered claps, but by the end of it the whole room was clapping along. It was one of the best Soundcheck shoots I’ve ever done, and I think you’ll really enjoy this video.
For the latest Soundcheck, Brad interviewed Jenn Grant and her violinist Kinley Dowling at Epicure Café on Queen St. They were fun to work with, as you can tell from the video they’re both pretty funny. I think they’d already done a lot of press that day, but I think they were happy to sit back with some drinks in a more relaxed environment. Jenn had some pretty funny stories about recording her new album on a spooky farm. Dig it!
