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Dave Lauzon solo.looping Sept. 28 Collingwood

Pablo Sanchez

By Pablo Sanchez
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  • 3 weeks later...
allison Newbie

allison

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It has indeed been fucking awesome each and every time!!

Jay Robinson will be opening again(jayr to y'all).

Poster will be up soon...a "real" graphic designer offered to do it this time to replace my amateur efforts!!

nibbler,tree troll,butta,Alexis, Vanagon Scott ...hope you guys all make it again.Same deal at my house as always.

ctowns if you in town again hope to meet you this time.

Large Marge, New Rider, Cully....get your asses to the Wood this time!!

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allison Newbie

allison

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Schwa that's awesome!! Bring your guitar and you are more than welcome here.I'll send you directions closer to the time if you need them.

Still waiting on the real poster but I'll put my version up anyway....

daveseptposterfinalws4.jpg

Might as well post this here too....

I was asked to write about Dave for an internal publication where I work( because I had Dave come in to give a presentation).Here it is for those of you interested..it's kind of long and I'm by no means a journalist...let alone a music one.More of a personal essay that wavers between tongue in cheek and slavish devotion.

Considering Dave Lauzon.

Contemporary music journalism seems to dictate that to describe any particular artist one should designate a triad of other performers whose better known sounds (unless of course, you are aiming at “indie†credibility, in which case the artists chosen should be suitably obscure) will confer some rough idea upon the reader of what the artist in question sounds like. This often works, given of course that the reader is familiar with the other artists and, even further, that the journalist is correct in their references. Musician Dave Lauzon’s work has elsewhere, and with frequency, been described by the trinity of Orbital, Kaki King and Nero. See? That explains everything.

It leaves out of course, the fact that outside the very narrow genres that those performers fall into, very few people know them. I could as much describe Dave’s music as being a blend of the classical(structured, complex, instrumental),Abba(dancea ble, melodious)and Pink Floyd(weird, lush)records that were the first I sneaked off my parents to play on my Mickey Mouse record player.

Dave Lauzon does create music in the ambient electronica tradition (this is the Orbital reference, though it could just as easily referenced from anyone from Aphex Twin to Boards of Canada) to be sure. The relentless, danceable backbone of this genre along with the technological gadgetry is a fundamental part of the Lauzon sound. That Dave plays an acoustic guitar that forms both the central voice and percussive backbeat of his music adds an organic influence that allows his music to avoid the sometimes inhuman and cold aspects of the electronic medium. Kaki King is known for her use of the guitar as a percussive instrument as well as using looping(the practice of sampling a sound and looping it back through the music) though by no means does the practice originate with her....both practices are also central to Dave’s sound.

The reference to nero is to an instrumental band that Dave, with fellow musicians Jay McConnery (drums) and Chris Buote (bass) successfully (within the context of the jamband world) toured across Canada and the US. Nominated for best New Groove Award at the Jammy’s in 2004, nero’s popularity was built and vindicated on the dance floor, on its phenomenal power to perform a seamless and high energy live show. A nero show was an eruption of joy best expressed by moving your body. One of my fondest memories is of a friend, a quite large friend, ecstatically doing a jumping jack and jogging in place dance routine through the entirety of a nero show. Show me a band that can incite a man to callisthenics as joyful musical interpretation and I‘ll show you one with a solid handle on the groove.

The band ended, not with acrimony or loss of interest, but with age, the vagaries of the touring lifestyle being unmanageable to growing up, settling down and having families. The nero fan base still remains however…vehemently so. In some respects, that fan base is almost an impediment to Dave Lauzon’s solo project.

In a band (and here I am referring to those bands that have “itâ€, that indefinable connection) the sum is greater than the parts. There are some who have argued that Dave himself was the greatest part of the nero sum, which in turn infers that his bandmates McConnery and Duote were a Dave Lauzon back up band. That is patently untrue. But when the sum is again reverted to parts, as it is now as Dave pursues his solo project, the parts should not be lessened by what once was.

Unfortunately there is many a nero fan that does just that. While it cannot be argued that the nero esteem is what may largely draw the audience at a Dave Lauzon show, this is not nero, nor is it the lesser for it. This is new and wonderful, powerful emotional and downright danceable in its own right. The sounds of Dave in nero are familiar here because it is after all Dave. But the absence of McConnery and Duote here should not be viewed as a lack, in fact it shouldn’t even be thought of. This is a new animal.

I do not have the entire pantheon of musical history in my head ready to spring forth with comparisons and lineages to validate to you that I like this music. I know what I like, I love what I like and will stand behind the fact that it’s good. I love Dave Lauzon’s music. It is ambiently listenable, sonically lush and complex, with a tight, technical structure that allows the fun, growling danceable underbelly to leap wildly without toppling the music to self reverential tricksmanship. Of course, I can say that and it might still be crap.But it isn’t.

I’ve had the pleasure of appreciating Dave’s music in two radically different venues then the dance floor, at an adult lecture in the Arts Centre and in the classroom with kids aged 6 through 13.

At the lecture, as the chairs filled, and the crowd knowingly glanced at the array of technical equipment dwarfing this baby faced kid(Dave has the visage of the boy up the lane under the apple orchards), you could almost hear them saying to themselves, "Ha.Some kid with fancy equipment and no real backboneâ€. Until he played. They stopped and they listened. I for one appreciated this more than anything...to see strangers to this music, this genre,stop and actively let this music fill them and give it credence.

Dave was given his benediction near the end of this presentation. While discussing his music training, his interest in jazz and self professed inability to even speak the jazz language let alone play it competently, one man commented.â€Oh, I think you can. I think you just did." For this man, as for many others, the ability to ride the horse that is often viewed as contemporary music’s most demanding, most intractable horse, jazz, is the highest compliment to be conveyed upon a musician. In the eyes, ears and hearts of this audience, Dave had earned it.

Dave and I have together taught a music visualization workshop for children where he creates music with them and carefully illustrates the elements of his musical language. The kids get it. During our first workshop, a six year old snuggled up to me in the back of the room, calmed by the music, mesmerized by the power of it all. In a small basement room, with a one man band, and a group of children fixated on what was being created around them, with them, through them, I was overwhelmed. What music is to me, why I teach in the first place came together in one valuable moment.

The snuggler wrote Dave a note which she shyly asked to give him. When opened it said;†Dear Dave. Thank you. I liked it so.â€

Me too, kiddo, me too.

Dave Lauzon performs in Collingwood September 28, 2007 at The Huron House, with guest Jay Robinson, hosted by Devin and Jenni Cook. This performance will be recorded for future release as a live album.

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