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, ...
Sonia Deleo w/ Miranda Krogstad and Jacob Payne, Jan. 12 ...
When I first got the Facebook invite for a show called Sonia Deleo and Friends from Sonia herself, who is a fantastic local singer-songwriter, I knew it would be an exciting night. When I saw my good friend and exceptional ...
12 days of Christmas: Boreal – Dec. 8 at ...
Katherine Wheatley, Tannis Slimmon and Jude Vadala probably couldn’t have picked a better name for their annual winter touring project than Boreal. There is something decidedly northern about their sophisticated blend of winter-themed songs, which runs the gamut from holiday ...
The Barr Brothers – Nov. 30 at the Marquee Ballroom, ...
The Barr Brothers are a Montreal-based band with a funky, indie-folk feel. And last Friday, they performed at the Marquee Ballroom in Halifax, NS. Michael Feuerstack opened for them, playing a mix of newer music and old favourites from his ...
Ian Tamblyn with Anne Lindsay – Nov. 25 house concert ...
It was an evening of shatteringly poetic story songs from Ian Tamblyn with Anne Lindsay last Sunday night in Port Credit, Ont. The occasion was a house concert to introduce Adventure Canada‘s Ireland Circumnavigation and Scotland Slowly expedition cruises in ...
The Once – Nov. 21 at Mills Hardware, Hamilton (plus ...
You’d think a Wednesday night would be a hard sell for a folk music concert in Hamilton, Ont., but no. The Once was headlining the show. This trio from The Rock deservedly has a really strong following. For over ten ...
Alan Doyle at the Brockville Arts Centre
It was a lovely old soft seat theatre in eastern Ontario with a history stretching back to 1858 that was the venue for this superb concert by Newfoundland’s Alan Doyle. For 20 years, Alan was at the heart of the ...
The Bombadils in ‘condo-cert’ – a review of a special ...
The Bombadils, a Halifax-based folk duo, are ramping up their music career following a short hiatus to spend time with their new baby. Kicking off their activities this fall was a short Ontario tour, the highlight of which was a ...
Folk Music Ontario conference travelogue: Saturday, Sept. 29
Noon – My showcase-watching for the day kicks off at the Coax Records showcase, Coax being the record label belonging to Rae Spoon. Rae’s got an impressive roster of established acts, such as the boundary-pushing Geoff Berner and the award-winning ...