Gig: Jim Guthrie

Jim Guthrie (Minotaurs / Tusks / Steven McKay)

The Horseshoe. Friday, June 26, 2010.

It was back in a more innocent time. The night before the start of the ill-conceived G8 summit in Toronto, and downtown was a ghost town, which just felt strange. Walking down to the Horseshoe there were private security guards standing outside shuttered banks and stores and the restaurants along Queen were open but almost empty. So too inside the 'Shoe, where I stepped into a very quiet room not too long before showtime. For what should have been a slam-dunk billing, it felt strange.

With four bands on the bill, it was a night of overlapping membership, with lots of performers doing double duty. In case my descriptions below get confusing, I've done a sort of poor man's Mark Lombardi-esque diagram mapping this night out — hopefully I didn't miss anyone.

First up was Steven McKay, a native of Hamilton and perhaps best-known as the drummer for Bruce Peninsula. Playing guitar and singing his own songs, he gave the impression that being stuck behind the kit had left him with a lot to say all bottled up inside. He was rather genial, and all of his songs were all accompanied by bantering introductions with lots of amiably goofy touches — for example, he'd decided that all the songs should come with big Bruce Springsteen-style count-ins.

The music, too, had a bouncy whimsicality, like a romantic soul not quite ready to lay everything out directly and hiding behind a front of enforced gusto. He was backed by a three-piece band which included Allie Hughes¹ on keybs and backing vox and Bram Gielen on bass.² The slightly-ramshackle edge to the songs was the piece of grit that kept things from leaning too far towards goofy/whimsical, and the songs — mostly from a now-released full-length — were modestly pleasant. A light-hearted bit of fun to start the night.³

Listen to a track from this set here.

McKay would move behind the kit as Tusks took over. A vehicle for local songwriter Samir Khan, I'd never seen the band proper before, though I had heard some of these songs in Khan's one-man-and-a-bass sets. The band traffics in an agreeable sort of sophisticated pop — call it a grown-up sort of mellow new wave, powered by Khan's smooth vocal delivery. Some of the material, like the catchy "Mothers vs. Sons", has been around for a couple years (the band released an EP in '08), but there was also a healthy helping of newer stuff, powered by recent additions McKay and Jordan Howard (guit, also of The Magic and many other bands) joining Khan and Shaw-Han Liem (keybs, also of I Am Robot and Proud).

Khan was also engaging on stage, albeit in a more deadpan sort of manner — of the G20, he asked, "has anyone taken a side yet? I'm on the fence." Sadly, McKay missed his chance to punctuate that with a rimshot. One song that I remembered hearing in a solo set last summer — and that's one sign of a good song right there — was the Elvis Costello-ish "Little Pirouettes", quite enjoyable in its full band arrangement, with a nice keyboard part from Liem driving the slow-burning number. It's sometimes hard to complement restrained, melodic stuff like this without sounding like one is damning it with faint praise, but there's definite smarts to Khan's well-crafted songs, and the band is well-worth checking out.

Listen to a track from this set here.

And then the big surprise of the night. I thought I knew what to expect from Nathan Lawr, once the original drummer for the seminal Royal City, who on his own had crafted three albums of likable, well-written rootsy pop-rock. I'd enjoyed them (and knew that his work as a songwriter is appreciated by his peers) but none of that prepared me for something miles away from what I'd associated with him.

It's one of those telling little things that the band is no longer "Nathan Lawr and the Minotaurs", but just Minotaurs. Not just a vehicle to present some well-hewn songs, Minotaurs are now suddenly a fearsome groove machine. From the first strains of "Caught in the Light", with Kevin Lynn's percolating bassline and the horn section punching through, I was confused — could this be... afrobeat?

That song cooked for five minutes, the last half of which mostly just sat in a groove and rolled along, a jaw-dropping start for the band. "Get Down" had a bit of a reggae vibe, with the dual-guitar attack of brothers Dan and Ryan Levecque and, again, those horns — courtesy of Jeremy Strachan, Nick Buligan and Steve Ward — which utterly made this. The band was rounded out with Don Kerr on drums and extra percussion by Michael Armstrong.⁴

After the surprising start with the first couple songs, it just got better with "Pink Floyd"⁵ which was toweringly good — catchy and full of energy throughout, and stretching out enough for Lawr to get a little extra rhythm in from the drum beside his keyboard. He even managed a quick revision to the song's lyrics, slipping in a topical "police state" reference.

But it's worth noting that Lawr isn't just undertaking some sort of stylish Fela copying so much as employing the tools of the genre to serve his songs. After that initial blast, we got some different takes on the equilibrium between groove and songcraft. "Runaway Lane" was the first song that felt like it could, with a different arrangement, fit in on one of Lawr's earlier albums, and that also applied to "Lazy Eye", which could, in different clothes, be a 70's singer/songwriter Dylan rip. With those songs stretching out the stylistic palette a bit, a punchy version of "Footsteps" (from 2007's A Sea of Tiny Lights) also fit in well.

A powerful set, not just because this was not what I was expecting, but more that it's just plain damn good stuff. Most of these songs are on his now-released album The Thing, which is definitely recommended — but if you get a chance to hear this band playing them live, do not hesitate.

Listen to a track from this set here.

After Minotaurs, I thought anything else might be an afterthought — and Jim Guthrie, who'd taken that set in from right in front of the stage, echoed those sentiments, commenting, "we're the encore to that." But this certainly held its own. I suppose there was less of a sense of where-you-been? occasion than the last time I saw Guthrie play, but this set featured a more confident band than that last time. I note that this agglomeration now carries a moniker, too: "Jim Guthrie and his Litter" — and again, there was a sense that the players were a little tighter and more simpatico with the material. From the carefully arranged slowly building start of "Broken Chair", the seven backing players — only violinist Randy Lee had not already been on the stage on the night — this was a full, lush sounding set.⁶

With the 'Shoe semi-full, there was a very nice vibe in the air, and it seemed like the people who showed up were actually here for the show and not to chatter away — definitely the right sort of environment for something like this. Early on, there was a particularly enjoyable run through "Trouble" (from '02's Morning Noon Night), and about a half-hour into the set things were really cooking with the new, as-yet-unreleased subjunctive rocker "I Wish I Were You", the older "Virtue", and "Evil Thoughts", which featured a fiery solo from Jordan Howard. And as the band moved along, they began to stretch the songs out more, "Time is a Force" and "Turn Musician" getting unrushed versions, including an extended introduce-the-band segment in the latter. Following one more new one ("Difference a Day Makes") the set eased back down to earth to end with the existential, lullaby-ish "You Are Far (Do You Exist?)".

A one song encore (the instrumental "Now, More Than Ever") brought the whole set just shy of seventy-five minutes. Top notch throughout, and a nice capper to a very solid night.⁷ Twenty-four hours later, the city would be in chaos — a police car would be burning nor far from the Horseshoe's front door and the authorities would be undertaking a notorious, civil-liberty-destroying over-reaction that stains us still — but on this last innocent evening, things felt about right.

Listen to a track from this set here.

---

¹ "There's a lot of man-feelings up here," Jim Guthrie would later comment during his set, and, indeed, Hughes would be the only non-dude performing all evening.

² In another series of interlocking band relationships, Gielen plays in Hughes' live band, and both perform with Thomas Gill, absent this night, but also a collaborator with McKay.

³ McKay is listing a couple upcoming local dates on his myspace, both in friendly, cozy confines: November 4 at the Imperial Pub and November 23 at Soundscapes.

⁴ Armstrong and Lynn are known for their work in ahead-of-their-time polyrockers King Cobb Steelie, with whom Lawr has played with in the past. Consideration of their musical stew may be helpful in thinking out what led Lawr to this new sound.

⁵ "It's not about Pink Floyd," Lawr helpfully explained afterward.

⁶ The lineup is the same as it was at the New Year's show:

Jordan Howard - guit

Samir Khan - bass

Shaw-Han Liem - keyb

Nathan Lawr - drums

Randy Lee - violin

Jeremy Strachan - reeds

Nick Buligan - brass

⁷ Following the logical progression of the evening, there should perhaps have been some subsequent act wherein Guthrie moved behind the drum kit, but I guess that would have led to some sort of infinite loop.