DevO

Yeah! I'll finally get to see this duder play.

Thanks for the blog post - so far so good! No way! When are you guys going? I've been reading up as much as possible and am having a hard time choosing a route for my 2 weeks there. So much to see! I recommend getting a copy of the Bradt guide ahead of time and start reading. Also if you haven't yet, download the new 3-part BBC series on Madagascar. I work for CPAR - www.cpar.ca .

I heard this while stuck in downtown traffic, made the drive MUCH more bearable! The Barr Brothers have a little article in NOW mag this week too. Great to see them getting some of the spotlight this Fall.

Well a friend of mine is a bouncer at the Horseshoe, where Mudhoney did a surprise gig last Saturday. He was hanging out with them most of the night, then got tickets and backstage passes to the PJ show on Monday. Backstage at the PJ show my friend and a guy from Mudhoney were chatting it up about Hamilton, what makes it tick and what makes it rock, and my friend suggested he belt out a classic "Argos Suck!" to get the crowd riled up. The guy said he would!

Nice! Did any of you see Mudhoney? They were maybe going to mention that the Argos suck.. Just wondering if that came to be or not.

Wednesday, 09/14/2011 Champlain Valley Exposition, Essex Junction, VT Soundcheck: Jam, Midnight Confessions, Ginseng Sullivan, Silent Night (on Theremin), Too Much Fried Dough At The Fair, Peaches en Regalia, Cannonball tease, Jam [unconfirmed and Incomplete] Set 1: Chalk Dust Torture, The Moma Dance > NICU, Funky Bitch, Sample in a Jar, Cavern, Bathtub Gin, Alaska > Possum, Wolfman's Brother > Julius Set 2: Carini[1] > Down with Disease[1] > Slave to the Traffic Light > Rock and Roll > Twist > Backwards Down the Number Line, Theme From the Bottom > Suzy Greenberg > Character Zero Encore: Loving Cup [1] Unfinished. Notes: This special performance was a benefit for flood relief efforts in Vermont the wake of Hurricane Irene. The show was preceded by an announcement from Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin, who thanked the crowd for their support and spoke about additional ways people could get involved in the flood relief effort. Carini was dedicated to Pete and Tara Carini. Carini and Disease were unfinished.

Wow, impressive to see that the fundraising goal was met less than 1 hour after campaign launch!

No complaints here flipzo.. It's still working without a hitch! When I got it installed I do recall something coming up where there was a possible scenario that would have me forking over an extra $100+ to Rogers for something or other, in order for me to be able to enable TekSavvy's services. And TekSavvy could not give me a definite yes or no as to whether this would happen or not. I found that annoying. Luckily though, I didn't have to pay this extra bit.

I can second what Velvet said - indeed it doesn't matter, your ladyfriend should be able to get her visa in Ottawa.

Awesome. Any sit ins from night #2? For anyone going to the Hamilton show: could you let me know if Mudhoney makes any "argos suck" type banter from the stage? Rumour has it this may happen. Which would rule.

There's a bit of a buzz going on about this in the Hammer.. Still dunno who it is though personally. And I can't make it. Looking forward to tomorrow though! You in Taylor??

Thanks mon. Looking forward to checking it out, and to the Massey show on the Friday!

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/buffalo-springfield-postpone-reunion-tour-again-20110902 By Andy Greene September 2, 2011 12:30 PM ET In news that should be no surprise to longtime Neil Young fans, Buffalo Springfield have postponed their reunion tour. Again. The band had originally planned on launching a 30-date American tour this fall, and then they bumped their plans back to January/February 2012. They now hope to tour sometime later in 2012. "This delay happened for a multitude of reasons," Richie Furay's manager David Spero tells Rolling Stone. "The plan is still to tour next year. There's not a timeline at this point. Buffalo Springfield is at the top of Neil's list of priorities. It's just a matter of finding a time that works for everybody." Buffalo Springfield – which features original members Neil Young, Stephen Stills and Richie Furay – played their first concert in 42 years at the 2010 Bridge School Benefit. Last summer, they played six California theater dates and Bonnaroo. When we spoke to Furay in June, he told us that the band planned on playing mainly theaters on their tour. "We want to keep it a little more intimate," he said. "There have been people from Florida, Chicago and Texas saying to me, 'Hey, you gonna come my way?' I have to say that with 30 shows, we're gonna hit those cities." Young quit Buffalo Springfield two separate times during the band's brief existence in the mid-1960s, so let's hope this new postponement doesn't turn into a cancellation.

Thought some of you might be interested in checking out one of these shows: Sept 10 - Guelph Jazz Festival Sept 11 - Music Gallery, Toronto (6pm) Esmerine was co-founded ten years ago by percussionist Bruce Cawdron (Godpseed You! Black Emperor) and cellist Rebecca Foon (Thee Silver Mt. Zion) soon after the duo met while recording the first Set Fire To Flames record, Sings Reign Rebuilder (2001) at the old brothel at 10 rue Ontario Est in Montreal. Esmerine has since released two critically-acclaimed albums of modern chamber music, If Only a Sweet Surrender to the Nights to Come Be True (2003) and Aurora (2005) that have one foot in the new music/experimental terrain of contemporaries like Rachel's or Town And Country and the other in the more visceral and lyrical landscape populated by the likes of Dirty Three (and GY!BE themselves). Beckie and Bruce continued stoking the fires of Esmerine, exploring a world of melodic percussion and cello, with occasional live performances and special events in their Montreal home town over the past few years often including invitations to guest musicians to collaborate with the group on one show or another. While Esmerine had made deft but sparing use of guest players on previous records, their collaborations and performances over the past two years opened the band up to two new players in particular who were invited to join as full members: harp-player Sarah Page (Lhasa de Sela, The Barr Brothers) and multi-instrumentalist Andrew Barr (Lhasa de Sela, The Slip, Land of Talk, The Barr Brothers). They were all introduced through their dear friend Lhasa de Sela while Lhasa was working on her third and final record in Montreal. With this expanded four-piece line-up, Esmerine recorded its third album La Lechuza in 2010. The record was predominantly tracked by Patrick Watson at his Montreal loft, and Watson sings on three of the album's songs. Mark Lawson (Arcade Fire, Unicorns) mixed the bulk of the album's tracks. La Lechuza is dedicated to Lhasa de Sela, who died of breast cancer on New Year's Day 2010 at the age of 37. The album closes with a previously unreleased version of the Lhasa song "Fish On Land" that was recorded with Bruce and Beckie in 2008 during the Lhasa sessions. http://www.esmerine.com/

Sucks that the primary live music venue on James St North (This Aint Hollywood), which has always been a part of art crawls hosting 'after party' shows, will seemingly be closed for a private event on the community's biggest night ever. Wonder who is playing at the Paquin Entertainment Group shin dig though.

http://www.thespec.com/feature/article/588932--it-might-get-loud It might get loud… As many as 40,000 will flock to the core next Saturday for three major festivals, boosting the city’s economy and local arts scene An extraordinary triple musical convergence will take over Hamilton’s core next Saturday as Supercrawl, the Locke Street Festival and Country Music Week all rub elbows. Any one of these three events would be a biggie for the city core. Last year, organizers estimated some 15,000 people attended the Locke Street Festival alone. Another 20,000 poured onto James St. North for Supercrawl. And that was when both festivals were held on different September weekends. This year the two daylong annual festivals — each featuring an outstanding musical lineup — will take place on the same day, Saturday, Sept. 10. Added to the excitement is the Canadian Country Music Association’s annual FanFest, the centrepiece of Country Music Week, which is taking place in Hamilton for the first time in 11 years. On Saturday, Sept. 10, between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., Canada’s top country music stars will perform on the Jackson Square rooftop plaza. FanFest will draw country music enthusiasts from across the country. Organizers are expecting up to 5,000 people. All three events are within walking distance and all three are free. It has the makings of a huge downtown party — part country hoedown, part art crawl, part indie rock concert, part blues festival, part shopping spree and part grazing expedition. Imagine Stetsons rubbing brims with black berets and Rasta caps, cowboy boots going toe-to-toe with Birkenstock sandals, beer sharing tables with cappuccino, symphony cellists trading licks with indie kids and belly dancers bouncing hips with line dancers and hip hop DJs. There could be 40,000 people in the core for the combined “Super Saturday†events. According to Tourism Hamilton, all of the city’s approximately 1,100 hotel rooms are booked for Super Saturday, with Supercrawl and tourism officials now sending the overflow to Burlington and beyond for lodging. The estimated economic impact of Country Music Week alone could be as high as $7 million (based on an estimated 10,000 participants), says Dana Borcea, marketing and media relations co-ordinator for Tourism Hamilton. Super Saturday also gives the city a chance to show off a new side of itself to an influential and captive audience. “Art is the new steel,†as members of the James St. gallery community say. The Canadian Country Music Association is holding its annual general meeting at the Hamilton Convention Centre next weekend as part of Country Music Week. The CCMA has some 1,600 members. Hundreds will be coming from out of town — Edmonton, Calgary, Halifax and Vancouver. They represent record labels, booking agencies, concert promoters and management companies. “There will also be a strong representation of people from the music industry attending Country Music Week that day,†says Tim Potocic, co-owner of Hamilton’s Sonic Unyon record label and one of the organizers of Supercrawl. “It will be excellent exposure for the city of Hamilton.†In particular, it will be great exposure for Hamilton’s thriving music scene. All the performers on stage at the Locke Street Festival are local and, although the big name at Supercrawl is Toronto’s Broken Social Scene, a good percentage of the performers on the three stages of James St. North are from Hamilton, including Young Rival, the Dinner Belles, Monster Truck, The Rest and the Junior Boys. Even the Hamilton Philharmonic is joining forces with folksinger Basia Bulat for a concert on the street. It also spells good news for the city’s night clubs as out-of-town industry folk take over downtown venues for private parties and showcases. The Casbah is hosting a Sony Music Canada party, while the Paquin Entertainment Group holds court in This Ain’t Hollywood and Royalty Records sets up shop at Waltz in Jackson Square. The Artword Artbar Café (Colbourne at James N.) is featuring an afternoon Ladies of Country showcase, a public show presented by a coalition of four entertainment companies. The amazing thing about this Super Saturday is that it wasn’t really a planned thing. Organizers for all three events picked their dates without being aware of the others. “It was just a coincidence,†says Potocic. “We picked this date about a year ago with a lot of consultation with people on the street. Then we learned about the CCMA and Country Music Week. We gave then a call and co-ordinated things with their FanFest. And they directed us to a couple of acts — the Heartbroken and Ridley Bent — for the Supercrawl stages.†The city has gotten aboard, adding increased policing to both the Supercrawl (29 officers, up from four last year) and FanFest events (another four officers), as well as providing a free shuttle bus linking Supercrawl to Locke Street. The shuttle (it’s the faux cable car you see running downtown) will move in 30-minute intervals starting at 10 a.m. at Main and Locke — moving to stops at John and Wilson, Pier VIII Marine Discovery Centre, James and Strachan, James and York/Wilson before returning to Main and Locke — to 10 p.m. grockingham@thespec.com

Noice! When does the show start?

Found this review here: http://radiofreecanuckistan.blogspot.com/ Daniel Lanois’s Harvest Picnic August 27 Christie Lake, Dundas, Ontario Just as I wasn’t expecting Emmylou Harris’s set to comprise almost entirely of her 1995 classic Wrecking Ball—which was produced by Daniel Lanois, who invited her to play the inaugural incarnation of what he hopes will be an annual festival just outside his hometown of Hamilton—I’m positive Harris didn’t think that material would have such resonance on a day of national mourning and a state funeral. “I can’t remember if we said goodbye.†“See what you lost when you left this world, this sweet old world.†“Where will I be when that trumpet sounds?†“It don’t matter where they bury me. I’ll be home and I’ll be free.†She even apologized at one point—how unnecessarily Canadian of her!—before introducing her elegy for the late Kate McGarrigle: “I’m sorry so many of my songs are about death.†Morbid historical context aside, it was an absolute joy to hear Harris play this material, segueing seamlessly out of Lanois’s own solo set and featuring him and his band (though arguably the biggest name on the bill, Lanois slotted himself third down the bill). She’s done plenty of fine work since Wrecking Ball emancipated her from the confines of country music, but listening to it with fresh ears was a reminder that nothing else in her discography has touched that towering achievement. Its success owes as much to the choice of material (Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, Steve Earle, Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Anna McGarrigle) as it does to Harris and Lanois. The set capped a perfect day that bode well for the future of this festival. The weather was perfect; Christie Lake is an easily accessible, lush and large space for a family-friendly concert; the emphasis on local organic food was a big plus; and the beer and bathroom lines were perfectly manageable. One of my only quibbles is that set times were not posted; my family arrived at 4.30 p.m. to find Sarah Harmer more than halfway through her set. Which is a shame; after over a year of performing her album Oh Little Fire, her band easily locks into a groove and breathes more life into the material than can be heard on the album. Harmer was followed by her old friend Gord Downie, with his Country of Miracles band. I’ve seen Downie twice before in the last 12 months; once was a rousing performance at the Hillside Festival, the other a sublime set at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, which found him creating evocative water paintings on stage with an overhead projector. Here, he was a bit off his game, seeming like he was jumping on stage right after a summer vacation; he wasn’t his usual compelling self—at times uncharacteristically at a loss for words between songs—and Tragically Hip drummer Johnny Fay was filling in for an absent Dave Clark. It was the more laid-back material (“Trick Rider,†“Chancellor,†“Yellow Daysâ€) that resonated the most in this relaxed atmosphere; no one there was particularly ready to rock, with lawn chairs taking up almost all the space in front of the stage. Lanois appeared with a new rhythm section unconnected to his current Black Dub project; they covered that band’s “Ring the Alarm,†but otherwise dipped deep into Lanois’s discography, the only “hits†being “The Messenger†and “The Maker.†The trio was in full-on psychedelic blues jam mode—though displaying considerably more subtlety than that descriptor would suggest—with Lanois’s guitar sounding a lot like that of Neil Young’s on the album they made together (2010’s Le Noise). The only misstep was the Brazilian carnival dancers brought onstage to writhe in the least sensuous manner imaginable. There was nothing alluring nor even interesting about the presentation; it was simply tacky. After Harris’s set, Ray LaMontagne shuffled on stage to close the evening. Never having heard a note of his music before this show, his popularity is a complete mystery to me. There’s dull music that I find easy to ignore, and then there’s dull music that I find offensive; LaMontagne’s limp folk rock is certainly the latter, sounding like little more than third-rate Neil Young leftovers sung in an aching, earnest voice for aging Pearl Jam fans. Harsh? Hey, some of my best friends are rapturous fans of his. But the best thing I can say about his buzzkill set is that it allowed us to skip out early and beat the parking lot rush. Which I’m going to consider an unconscious gift on the part of the organizers, just another small detail they got right in planning what will hopefully be a new Southern Ontario summer tradition. Lord knows that Lanois has an address book full of people he could haul to his neck of the woods for a good party.

I have an upcoming work trip to Uganda and Malawi, and am planning to tack on a 2-week vacation at the end of it. Destination: MADAGASCAR! This would be roughly Nov 4-18. Anyone wanna meet up?

I visited SA when I was 15.. Quite a while back but from what I recall, Stellenbosch is a quaint university town, my memory of it is like what I picture an ivy league uni town to be like with well manicured gardens, etc. Cape Town is beautiful, be sure to take a week or more to drive along the Sunshine Coast out to Surfers Paradise. Driving down to the Cape of GOod Hope is really beautiful too, where the Atlantic and Indian oceans meet (just like on the Two Oceans wine label). Lots of surfing opportunities in SA including Cape Town (sometimes), just watch out for sharks! Enjoy it is a beautiful place!

I hear ya Fluff -- I just can't seem to get into Ray LaMontagne's voice. He's a good musician with a good band and all.. Just not my bag. Glad that it wasn't Blade that I missed.

It was indeed a very well run event, everyone I have talked to was impressed with how well it came together (particularly for a first time around). Beautiful location, space to throw a frisbee, great sound, pretty good food and $5 cans of Steamwhistle. We loved the freedom of no beer tents as well. It was verrrry mellow where we were, 3/4 of the way back on the grass - very quiet, nothing more than whispers really. Between sets on the main stage, there was live music being played from inside the soundboard tent. I didn't get close up to see at all, but I was told that this was Brian Blade, maybe Daniel Lanois (sometimes?), and maybe others. It sure sounded like those sonic Lanois/Blade jams to me. There is a CD that Lanois released specially for this show, called Harvest Festival 2011 or soemthing like that. I didn't get a copy... But want one now! Can anyone help me out? All in all it was better than I might have expected, I hope they do it again next year!

Just doing my quarterly check to see if Chris Brown / Kate Fenner are up to anything (spurred on by the knowledge that they played at Ottawa Folk Festival -- anyone see them?), and glad to see a string of Openhearts Society dates including every Sunday in September in Toronto at The Piston. With schweet openers. I'm not too familiar with this band, but have great faith in Chris Brown to deliver a strong live show. http://www.openheartssociety.com/gigs/ Sunday, September 4th 2011 Venue: The Piston Address: 937 Bloor St. W, Toronto, Ontario M6H-1L5 Admission: 10.00 Venue phone: 416-539-3989 Notes: Featuring Memebers of The Bourbon Tabernacle Choir as special guests Saturday, September 10th 2011 Venue: The Black Sheep Inn Address: 753 Riverside Dr., Wakefield, Quebec J0X 3G0 Time: 8:00pm Venue phone: (819) 459-3228 Notes: Special Guests of Oh Susanna (who’s new album features CB on organ), OHS will open the night with a special acoustic trio set. Come early or buy in advance to assure seating. Sunday, September 11th 2011 Venue: The Piston Address: 937 Bloor St. W, Toronto, Ontario M6H-1L5 Admission: 10.00 Venue phone: 416-539-3989 Notes: Featuring special guests Thursday, September 15th 2011 Venue: The Mansion Address: 506 Princess St., Kingston, Ontario K7L 1C5 Time: 9:30pm Admission: 10.00 Venue phone: (613) 531-0003 Notes: Official Album Release Party for ‘Love In Time’ at the Mansion- home of the first OHS shows… Friday, September 16th 2011 Venue: The Acoustic Grill Address: 172 Main St., Picton Ontario K0K-2T0 Time: 8:30pm Admission: 15.00 Venue phone: 613-476-2887 Notes: One of Canada’s greatest music venues. Incredibly intimate atmosphere, wonderful acoustics and great food. Sunday, September 18th 2011 Venue: The Piston Address: 937 Bloor St. W, Toronto, Ontario M6H-1L5 Admission: 10.00 Venue phone: 416-539-3989 Notes: Featuring special guests Jerome Godbout and Luther Wright & The Wrongs Sunday, September 25th 2011 Venue: The Piston Address: 937 Bloor St. W, Toronto, Ontario M6H-1L5 Admission: 10.00 Venue phone: 416-539-3989 Notes: Featuring special guests from NYC, The Mermaids

Had an amazing time on Friday night! I can't deliver on the setlist as I'm new to the band aside from two songs - but they put on a solid show and good times were had. Nice to see some of youz there.

Yeahhh - looking forward to this show!