CMW 2011* (Saturday) (feat. Fred Penner / Mockingbird Wish Me Luck / The Pack a.d. / Heavy Cream / Ty Segall / Teenanger / White Wires)
Friday, March 11, 2011.
This is an expansion of my initial notes from the festival, which can be found here.
8:30 P.M.: Fred Penner @ The Drake Underground
Well, this was a bit of an outlier on the schedule, venue-wise but even moreso in terms of sentiment. When I first saw the name "Fred Penner" on the schedule I laughed, and then I double-checked that it wasn't an ironically-named pop-punk band, then I marked it in my maybe pile.
And then I showed up to see him. Fred Penner and I have a history, though perhaps not the one that you'd expect. I am, in fact, just a titch past the age to have been mesmerized by the original run of Fred Penner's Place on the CBC. I remember it being on, but with typical kid acumen I dismissed anything I was too grown up for. However, years later, on the day I matriculated from university, Penner was the recipient of an honourary degree — so I've always felt a special affinity for him as a fellow member of my graduating class.1
And it looked like the bulk of the crowd at The Drake also had some long-standing ties to Penner. If you do the math, you'll note that a wide swath of today's hipsters, bloggers and music writers probably did grow up with Fred Penner, so when that familiar theme music chimed out of the speakers there were a lot of smiles about.
"Imagine a log that I just crawled through," said Fred Penner as he stepped on to the stage at the song's end. Wearing a wireless hands-free mic, he told the crowd to stand up straight, clear their throats and sing along. And as he launched into "What a Day", they did without reserve — some things can just cut right past the scaly growths of irony.
Penner was backed by guitarist Paul O'Neill and two backup singers, who would turn out to be his daughters Haley and Kendra. Penner had his acoustic guitar, but mostly relied on his guileless charm. "It's a little different atmosphere than the usual Fred Penner concert," he said, looking out into the crowd in the darkened basement bar. "But the energy is the same and the joy... is the same." There were some slight nods to the grown-up crowd: inspired by Del Barber, who had played before him, Penner declared he wanted to get back to his folkie roots and announced a Pete Seeger song, pausing to chastise the crowd when they didn't cheer in recognition at the name. The topical "Garbage" was followed by another period piece, as "Happy Feet" (presented complete with kazoos) is well-known as a Fred Penner song but in fact comes from the 1930 flick King of Jazz.
After that he paused for storytime, telling the tale of daughter Haley's first bike ride, pantomiming it while guitarist O'Neill added sound effects. The audience was duly prevailed upon to raise their hands and pledge they'd never ride their bikes with their eyes closed. And as that became the lead-in to "Proud", I looked around at the people clapping along, thinking to myself, "yeah, this is shtick-y as all git-out, but so what?" Even I felt some of the emotional resonance at this stuff.
Speaking of shtick, "Company Coming" paused for some shenanigans from O'Neill, trying to work in the intro to "Stairway to Heaven" to impress any industry types in the crowd before the big finale. For "Sandwiches" ("our all-time second most requested song"), Penner pulled up a couple young women from the audience to sing along and play tambourine — they looked somewhere beyond delighted. And then it was no surprise as the set closed with "The Cat Came Back" and an overpowering wave of unabashedly giddy joy in the room as Penner segued into a mini-medley of "Hit the Road Jack" and "Crabbuckit", complete with cat-appropriate lyrics. As I made my way out, there was already a queue forming at his merch table with people looking eager to take Penner up on his offer of saying hello or getting a picture. This is the stuff that memories are made of.
Listen to a track from this set here.
9:30 P.M.: Mockingbird Wish Me Luck @ Wrongbar
I have much less to say about Kitchener quartet Mockingbird Wish Me Luck. To be honest, I wasn't expecting to catch 'em at all, but Wrongbar was running its sets on the half hour, and as I strolled in they were taking the stage. My pre-festival homework had told me that this wasn't particularly my thing, too, but I knew I was going to be camping out for the night at Wrongbar, and I knew it was going to get busy, so I reckoned to beat the rush.
Featuring an amped-up version of a Heartland college-rock sound, the most distinctive thing here was the fact that the band had not one, but two hoarse-voiced singers. That's a "punk" signifier that doesn't do much for me — in fact, my notes describes their vocal stylings as "Hrarrarrar Huurgh!". That aside, the sort of songs the band were playing reminded more of, say, Buffalo Tom more than anything. Which is a good starting point. But I just couldn't get past the vocal style.
The band's efforts weren't helped when a kick drum pedal died on them and the set kinda skidded to a halt for a couple minutes. I'd been taking this in from up in front of the stage, but after that I went and found a place to sit down and kinda tuned the rest out.
10:30 P.M.: The Pack a.d. @ Wrongbar
The room was filling nicely as this Vancouver duo — Drummer Maya Miller and guitarist/vocalist Becky Black — took the stage. Launching what would be a recurring feature through the night, there were some feedback issues and monitor trouble as the set started. Despite having trouble hearing each other, the pair generated some convincing scuzz-blooze.
Black is a howler and Miller drums with hair-flinging intensity. She was also an engaging ham and a charming banterer between songs. In a between-album phase, the pair were no longer entirely focused on 2010's we kill computers, but were only mixing in a handful from what would become their highly-praised Unpersons, though a few like "Hear Me Out" got an airing. The music is mostly a straight-ahead garage-punk version of the blues, but they did take the foot off the gas pedal a bit after a few songs, for relatively more sedate stuff like "Oh Be Joyful".
Being associated with the blues idiom can be a bit of a stylistic trap, and being a guitar-drums duo can certainly make for certain easy comparisons, but it didn't feel like the band was unduly limiting themselves. The bluesy-ness was more pronounced on some of the older stuff like "Don't Have To Like You", with Black forcefully mumbling the lyrics, but for the newer stuff, it's too reductive to play the White Stripes card — at least live, the band's vibe is more garage-punk splatter, with definite pop potential on songs like "Deer" and especially "Crazy".
They certainly had an evil-invokin' rock'n'roll hoodoo thang going on — especially for one woman in the crowd, who danced in front of the stage for most of the set, then suddenly took to kicking one of the barstools a few times. And during the last song, she picked it up, hurling it across the dancefloor. Good fun 'til somebody loses an eye.
Listen to a track from this set here.
11:40 P.M.: Heavy Cream @ Wrongbar
The sound issues that had plagued the last band were multiplied for Heavy Cream. After a dragged-out turnover, the Nashville four-piece welcomed the crowd with a steady loud hum behind them and had to pause following their first song for a secondary line check. After that, the momentum was never quite there, and the sound was never quite right — for most of the set it was stuck as a dull loud roar punctuated by feedback yelps.
Despite that, the band plunged through and it did get a little better as the set went along. One gets the impression that they've probably played their fair share of basements and dive bars, given their inclination to just make do and plunge onward. It took a little effort to extrapolate, but what was going on underneath the sound problems was definitely good stuff. Catchy poppy punx with a dynamic frontwoman in Jessica McFarland, even with a truncated set stopping short of twenty minutes — three of them spent adjusting things — the band managed to tear off nine songs. No fault of their own that this didn't feel entirely satisfyin', and I marked the band down as one to revisit.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
12:20 A.M.: Ty Segall @ Wrongbar
The joint was now at maximum crammage, that state where it's almost impossible to move or breathe when you're anywhere close to the stage. I was here mostly out of curiousity, but there was obviously a rabid local fanbase for Ty Segall. The prolific Bay Area rocker took the stage, looking every inch like an All-American, a fair-haired cornfed surfer golden boy who could muster a plucky grin in the face of adversity. Which is to say, he didn't look entirely the part of an up-from-the-underground rocker.
His music, too, was apparently not what it seemed to be. Sounding, to my ears, like scrappy DIY rock jams, it was received by the crowd as pure, unadulterated punk. I never really understand how people collectively decide that some artists are meant to be moshed to, so even if Segall's music doesn't immediately register as, y'know, especially mosh-y, the crowd was quickly roiling along. I guess it's some combination of the fact that he plays rough'n'ready rock, delivered with punk-ish intensity and that a certain audience has adopted him. Whatever the recipe, the outcome was barely-controlled chaos, both on the stage and in the crowd.
Playing in a quartet, Segall was backed by second guit, plus bass and drums. With a pretty hefty catalogue of songs to pick from, Segall careened through a dozen or so songs in his thirty-five minutes. Thank goodness that mid-set he had to cadge a spare guitar, allowing a moment's respite. I'm normally one to hold my position, and while I wasn't even in the thick of things, the crowd was so tightly packed, pulsating around me, that eventually I had to bail and find a bit of personal space. Even if it was a good-humoured and amiable crowd — I got a friendly "sorry" from a guy whose arm had bounced off me — it really was more than I liked. Working my way around, I eventually ended up facing perpendicular to the stage, where it was a little calmer.
On the whole, it was good stuff, albeit more of an experience than musically excellent. And like life, I suppose, you can celebrate that you endured it.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1:30 A.M.: Teenanger @ Wrongbar
With a lot of people heading out after Ty Segall, there was a much more manageable crowd left over, though there were some shove-y people pushing their way to the front as Teenanger started. By this point of the night, I was well content to stand behind them. Interestingly, in my mind, Teenager's sound — which can be summarized as "throbbing bad vibes" — was well-suited to the late hour and was exactly the sort of thing that should merit the sort of crowd action Ty Segall received. It's strange to me that people come out for the out-of-town hype and split before the local band that's working at just as high a level.
For their set, the band was focusing on their newer (and then-unreleased) material, some of which will just now be seeing the light of say on their Frights LP3. There's some fabulous songs there, like "S.L.W.". The set included an anti-shout-out to Rob Ford, and some songs (like "Tired of You") burst by in whitehot minute-long flashes while a couple further on in the set stretched things out — including the set-closing rendition of "Frights" that pulled back the velocity to good effect. Keep an eye on Teenanger in 2012, folks.
Listen to a track from this set here.
2:30 A.M.: The White Wires @ Wrongbar
As his bandmates set up around him, bassist Luke Martin was busy with a bit of DIY instrument upkeep, daubing whiteout dots on the frets of his instrument's neck. Such roughshod charm co-exists with precise rock'n'roll songcraft in the band's music. Launching with statement of purpose "Pogo 'Til I Puke Tonight", The White Wires are easy-to-grasp in the best way — when I first saw 'em, I noted they have "as much Eddie Cochrane as Young Canadians in their lineage" and that seems about right.
Playing with the wobbly certainty of the last band up (and therefore being the ones partying for the longest while waiting), singer/guitarist Ian Manhire uses breakneck speed to elevate his songs on the evergreen topics of rockin', partyin' and lookin' for a little love. Zipping by in something of a blur, there was a sort of soft ending to the set — after efficiently cranking out ten songs in twenty-five minutes, the band thought they were done. Told they had ten more minutes, they shrugged and went back at it for three more tunes. Things started pulling apart at the seams a bit toward the end, but it felt about right. White Wires are pretty great live band, and this was a good way to wrap up the festival.
Afterwards, the remnants of the crowd lurched out into the night. With the time change it was now four a.m., which made it feel even more like the end of a full day's night of rock'n'roll.
Listen to a track from this set here.
* A note on nomenclature: for years both the industry showcase and music festival components were known as Canadian Music Week. But as of 2009, this was deemed to be too simple and straightforward, and the music portion was "rebranded" as Canadian Music Fest, under the aegis of the larger Canadian Music Week. I see no reason to put up with this and will simply refer to everything as CMW — although there was a part of me that also considered using the slightly cumbersome "Canadian Music Fest presented by Canadian Music Week" throughout.
1 This was, in fact, by far the most memorable part of my convocation, as after receiving his degree, Penner pulled out his guitar and did a couple songs reminding us all that we could be whatever we wanted to be.
Fred Penner should be on hand to greet undergrads on their first day of university telling them that.
2 And in fact, I did so at the next available opportunity.
3 Coming out on January 24 on Telephone Explosion records, there are a lot of folks salivating for this record — some scene-watchers even venturing to predict that this might push the band up into the wider consciousness.
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