Year: 2003

For the Folk

Another Wednesday, another For the Folk. Allison Brown hosted tonight; after hearing three shows from each host, I think I can say I prefer her selections to Ian’s. (On an unrelated note, there will be no playlist next week; I’m going to the inaugural game of the Canadian Baseball League, featuring the London Monarchs and Montreal Royales.)

  • Set 1
    • Foxtail Bluegrass Band, If God Be For Us
    • Gillian Welch, Pass You By
    • Be Good Tanyas, Rowdy Blues
    • Iris Dement, Pretty Sorrow
    • Jennifer Noxen, Lay Your Burden Down
  • Set 2
    • Laura Smith, Gypsy Dream
    • Over the Rime, The Seahorse
    • Patty Griffin, Long Ride Home
    • Emmylou Harris, The Boy From Tupelo
  • Set 3
    • Dar Williams, As Cool As I Am
    • Lucy Kaplansky, When I Get to the Border
    • Richard Shindell, The Ballad of Mary Magdalene
    • Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, Richard Shindell, A Place in My Heart
  • Set 4
    • Ralph Blizzard and the New Southern Ramblers, Blackberry Blossom
    • Zubot and Dawson, The Wedding Song
  • Set 5
    • Foxtail, Cryin’ Shame
    • Fruit Bats, Seaweed
    • Fruit Bats, The Magic Hour
    • Tom Savage and Vanessa Longo, We All Make Mistakes
  • Set 6
    • Heartbreak Hill, Pack My Bags
    • David Francey, Broken Glass
    • Mark Reeves, If I Had You

Concerts:

Foxtail
May 21, Aeolian Hall, 8pm, $10
Tom Savage and Vanessa Longo
May 22, Central Library (upstairs), 7pm, free
Fruit Bats and Deers
May 16, Call the Office

The Front

I’ve been a Woody Allen fan for quite a while, probably since I sat down and actually watched Annie Hall instead of griping about how it won the Oscar for Best Picture over Star Wars. (For what it’s worth, and as may be evident, it’s an opinion I no longer hold.) I don’t like everything he’s done–I couldn’t get through Interiors, though I thought the idea was interesting, and Stardust Memories and Bananas don’t do much for me either–but they’re the rare exceptions.

There’s one Allen film, though, that I’ve wanted to get my hands on since I found out it existed a year ago. It’s not in local video rental stores, and according to the IMDb it’s not available on DVD. Interestingly, he made it the same year that Annie Hall (and that other movie) came out. (Oops. Annie Hall and Star Wars were released in 1977; The Front was released in 1976.) The movie is The Front, and thanks to MoviePix I’m finally going to get to see it on Wednesday night.

McCarthyism and the Hollywood blacklist are things I’ve had an interest in for some time–thanks in large part to Joe Straczynski and Babylon 5, in fact–though I’ve never investigated them in much depth. I know a little more than the basics thanks to JMS’ Usenet posts and the similar issues at the core of Tim Robbins’ Cradle Will Rock, but that’s about it. So when I heard that Allen had made a picture scripted by blacklisted writer Walter Bernstein (who, I just discovered, wrote the script for another favourite, the recent live broadcast of Fail Safe) I immediately put it on my must-see list.

Now I just have to find Wild Man Blues (also not available on DVD) and I’ll be happy… for a while, anyway.

For the Folk

Another playlist; tonight’s host was Ian Gifford. Ian doesn’t play extended sets of music, so it’s just a list.

  • Willie P. Bennett, What Am I Supposed To Do
  • Fred Eaglesmith, Rainy Day Blues
  • Fred Eaglesmith, Dancing on the Bar
  • JP Cormier, Now That The Work Is Done
  • Allison Brown, Pizza & Beer (ogg, mp3)
  • Allison Brown, Saving Daylight (ogg, mp3)
  • Trevor Mills, Military Governmental Contract
  • Eve Goldberg, Mama’s Opry
  • Tannis Slimmon, It’s Quite A Job
  • Suzie Vinnick, Something So Sweet
  • Marianne Girard, Maverick Boy
  • Ray Bonneville, July Son
  • Fred Eaglesmith, Harold Wilson
  • Tony Furtado Band, ?
  • Tom Russell, Crucifix and A Death Hand
  • Tom Russell, Carmelita
  • Tannis Slimmon, There’s A Lift

Ian only mentioned one concert not part of Allison’s list last week: a group called Wild Turkeys is playing at Suz Blues House tomorrow.

So far behind

I really need to get caught up on CSS; I didn’t even know that :last-child was in the CSS3 draft specification, let alone that it’s supported by Mozilla. (Er, Phoenix… um, make that Firebird… oh, no, wait, Mozilla Firebird… oh, let’s just say it’s supported by Gecko and get it over with.) An unrelated trail led me to this message on Daniel Glazman’s weblog, and trying to figure out how to duplicate :last-child by applying :nth-child() led to the spec.

Turning Cartwheels

Somehow, in the last several weeks, I’ve become Mr. Folk Music.

Friday night, May 2, I was back at The Ugly Mug Café to see the first performance of a new group, Cartwheels. Of the five performers, I’d seen three in other groups or situations: guitarist and singer Brenda McMorrow in solo performance and with ex-Julia Propeller-bandmate Samantha Wells at the former StudiOK location on Richmond Street; singer/guitarist Eric Uren (aka Eric James) playing Celtic music with a fiddler (whose name I can’t remember) at the now-vanished Dick O’Dow’s pub (coincidentally across the street from StudiOK); and ubiquitous keyboard player Dean Harrison just about everywhere else in the city. Rounding out the group were James Cummins on mandolin and Colin Couch on (believe it or not) washtub bass.

One of the nice things about the Ugly Mug is that it’s a very relaxed atmosphere, ideal for a casual show like this one. (Other nice things about the Mug: the staff, enthusiastic owner Peter Dennett, the Italian sodas and other beverages, and the desserts that I can’t savour long enough before they’re gone. I’m told they make mean coffees too, but that’s one addiction I don’t suffer from.) The first thing Eric did was to introduce the band… not only to the packed house but to each other as well! The group quickly got into full folk mode with familiar songs; Eric sang lead on something like eight in a row, then passed the baton to Brenda for quite a few of her own. Early standouts were Woody Guthrie and Billy Bragg’s Way Over Yonder In The Minor Key (words by Guthrie, music by Bragg), the Beatles’ Dear Prudence, and JJ Cale’s Old Blue.

Most of the later tunes I made notes on were those I want to get copies of: John Prine’s Spanish Pipedream/Blow Up Your TV, the traditional Dreadful Wind and Rain (famously recorded by The Grateful Dead), and Lucinda Williams‘/Randy Weeks’ Can’t Let Go, which Brenda’s performed for a while and gets better each time I hear it.

Before finishing up their second of two hour-long sets with Alfred Brumley’s I’ll Fly Away (Brenda and James’ version of which was played earlier in the week on For the Folk) the Cartwheels experimented a bit with a decidedly non-folky song: the Talking Heads‘ Road to Nowhere. I hope they keep it in the repertoire, even though it was a little rough, because it translates quite well to the different style; proves once again my theory that defining musical genres is meaningless.

Need it be said that I’m looking forward to hearing Cartwheels again? I just hope it won’t take until their Home County Folk Festival performance in July.

For the Folk

Tonight’s playlist, subject to my quick scribbling.

  • Opening set
  • All Penny Lang
    • Penny Lang, The Laundromat Song
    • Penny Lang, Howl Ye Winds
    • Penny Lang, Living with the Blues (live)
    • Penny Lang, Lost and Found
    • Penny Lang, Simple Simon
    • Penny Lang, Walkin’ Down the Line (live)
  • All Tannis Slimmon
    • Tannis Slimmon, Falling Together
    • Bird Sisters, Play All Your Aces
    • Louis Melville, My Body Moves
  • All local artists
    • Wortley Road, The Start of Something Good (Ghosts of the CPR)
    • Heartstoppers, I’ll Fly Away
    • Michael Pickett, The Blues is My Friend
    • Bob Burchill, Black Creek
    • The Beguiled, ?
    • Ian Gifford, Angel With A Pistol
  • Last set

Upcoming concerts, same disclaimer as above.

Cartwheels
May 2, Ugly Mug Cafe, 8pm
Michael Pickett
May 4, Ugly Mug Cafe, 2pm, tickets $15 advance/$20 door
J.P. Cormier
May 8, Cuckoo’s Nest
Wortley Road
May 9, Aeolian Hall, 8pm, $10/$12
Allison Brown, Erin Gignac, Shane Cook opening
Fred Eaglesmith
May 9, Wolf Performance Hall
Tannis Slimmon and Mosaic
May 10, Aeolian Hall, 8pm
Penny Lang
July, Home County Folk Festival

Sirens on CD

It occurred this evening that I haven’t written nearly as much about Sirens as they deserve. The last two nights they’ve performed sold-out concerts at The Ugly Mug Cafe that were recorded for release in a few weeks. I’ve been privileged to attend both nights with friends (Donna, Jessie and Scott) and family (my parents), and I think (rather modestly) I may have made new Sirens fans of all of them. (Like I had anything to do with it other than picking up their tickets.)

This week has seen a blitz of promotion, more than I’ve seen for a London act in a long time–if ever. For the Folk, a program on the University of Western Ontario’s radio station CHRW 94.7, featured them live for better than 45 minutes on Wednesday night; alternate-week host Ian Gifford even allowed them to play out the last 20 minutes of the show without comment or interruption. The other host, Allison Brown, played a song from an earlier CD last week and announced this weekend’s concerts. (I’ve seen both Brown and Gifford at recent concerts, and Allison in concert based on a recommendation from Sirens… it goes both ways.) They got mention in James Reaney‘s column in the London Free Press, and performed on The New PL Friday morning. Getting that kind of exposure from London media is incredible.

Can’t say enough about the concerts themselves, so I won’t try–so much for writing more about them! See them live, check out their website, buy a CD or four, and judge for yourself.