Folk Alliance: how Twin Flames’ video and Tanya Tagaq’s ...
The cultural media is focusing attention this year on the arrival of what Jeremy Dutcher called the “Indigenous Renaissance” during his acceptance speech at the Polaris Music Prize, a polar vortex of critical and creative affirmation from the maligned hearts ...
Folk Alliance: Corby contemplates its circus-like atmosphere
Picture something between a circus and a tornado. But with banjos. Merrily it coalesced. The Friday night Folk Alliance was in town. Instead of jugglers, lanky lads and lasses in po’boy caps, vests and loud pants hung with fretted instruments ...
Folk Alliance: The revolution will not be translated; Corby ...
Gather round folkish hearts. A freedom fire is burning in mid Montreal. As Haiti exercised its right to riot and R. Kelly’s and Ryan Adam’s ears caught fire in a blaze of sexual scandal, the folk guard refreshed the law ...
Folk Alliance: Dispatches from the Wednesday night showcases
401 white-outs and grounded flights be damned, the Folk Alliance conference kicked off Wednesday with a few absent friends, but evidently no frost on the festive folks who had made it into the 2019 host venue, Montreal’s famous Fairmont Hotel. ...
The Maple Blues Awards, Feb. 4 at Koerner Hall, Toronto
The blues takes its time. It will tell you things twice to make sure you feel them. Then it will send a soul tremor straight to your heart. Blue hours spent are, for better or worse, true hours, even though, ...
Sympathetic Resonances: The Al Purdy Songbook and Doug Paisley’s Starter ...
From Dante Alighieri to William Carlos Williams, any time that the casual vernacular of a country’s people has invaded its national poetic tradition under the banner of a singular revolutionary and relevant artist, a liberation of language takes place, the ...
Paul Corby reports on the Folk Alliance conference orientation in ...
For 30 years, Folk Alliance International has provided a chain to connect the widespread practitioners of folk and roots music and dance. Every year, the community of performers, presenters, and exponents of traditionally-based songcraft recharges its solidarity with a meeting ...
Garry Lowe: Foundation bass player mourned at spectacular Toronto ...
The late Toronto bass player Garry Lowe, taken by cancer earlier in the year, was honoured with a concert at the Danforth Music Hall on the last Friday night of 2018, on what would have been his 65th birthday. The ...
Favourite things Paul Corby heard in 2018
You can find Paul Corby’s full list of his Top 50 albums of the year – in all genres – by clicking HERE. His favourite new songs of the year are HERE. Ever notice that after the morning coffee and ...
Dave McEathron: Counting for something that can’t be counted
Almost ten years ago, David McEathron was an alt-roots champ, fronting the acclaimed Toronto-based combo The Warped 45s. With their live and media presence on the rise, a sudden ending sent him into a lengthy personal re-assessment that gave him ...