Gig: Betty Burke

Betty Burke

Holy Oak Café. Friday, February 25, 2011.

I hustled over to the Holy Oak from my last show, arriving to find the cozy room filled in to the brim. Openers Evening Hymns, playing in their trio format, were well into their set as I came through the door. And given the venue's layout — with the bands playing at the front of the room, right up against the window overlooking Bloor Street and beside the front door &mdash anyone entering late will find themselves right beside the band. The room was quite packed — I don't think at any point there was enough of a clearing for me to see all the way to the bar in the back — but not wanting to be one of those people who show up last yet presume they deserve the best view, I managed to I squeeze back to try and find enough room to even stand and watch the last song-and-a-half of the set.

During the switchover as people headed outside or to the bar, I scammed a spot up front for the main attraction, which was the celebration of Blocks' release of The Dirty Mouth of The St Lawrence River. Betty Burke is the band, not a performer, and though the lineup has settled after some early variations (about which more below) the central character is vocalist Maggie MacDonald.

When she called the room to order (calling to friends at the back of the room to have someone at the bar turn the background music down) she announced that the night's performance would come with a chronological setlist, showing the evolution of the band from its origins, when she "wanted to learn to write in a new way", leading to her partnership with Holly Andruchuk. Thus that pair led off with the rootsy "Suitcase", including a lovely harmony vocal from Andruchuk, who was accompanying on her electric guitar.

As MacDonald took a seat for a song, Andruchuk took lead vocals on "You Can't Wear Suede in the Rain", backed by original bandmembers Shaun Brodie and Jon Hynes — both of whom served in The Hidden Cameras' mild-mannered army alongside MacDonald. This was a chance to observe what she wanted to learn from Andruchuk, both vocally and in the songwriting approach. For someone that has been described (and even self-described) as more of a vocal stylist than a singer, MacDonald (on the song's recorded version¹) moves into her most accomplished and nuanced terrain, and the aching core of it was here on stage in Andruchuk's performance.

That led into the "contemporary" phase of the band as the musicians switched off and the current trio (with Sheila Sampath and Jo Snyder) took over. "All the stories we deal in are one hundred per cent true," MacDonald reminded the crowd as she slipped into her emcee role. I won't even attempt to explain the ongoing references to the time-travelling Dr. Who-vian "guitardis", but it was all part of a mini-narrative used to string the songs together.

With a musical backdrop of keybs, acoustic guit and a steady drumloop (courtesy of an ipod) as the setting for MacDonald's Mark E. Smith-like slurring drawl, "New Job" is indicative of where the band's sound has headed, even if it came from that first burst of compositions that came before the trio alignment. It was followed by a series of newer songs that originated with this lineup.² "Hazel Eyes", while arguably not the strongest of the pack, was described as the embodiment of the Michael Jackson/Rolling Stones hybrid sound that MacDonald was looking for, while "Giver and Taker", is an extension of "Suede"'s balladic approach. Adding variety, Sampath took lead vocals on "You Can't Stay Young", backed with disco-y beats.

Listen to a song in the band's trio format here.

For the show's final phase, everyone who played on the recording came back up to play on EP's remaining three songs. This raucous "expandaband" brought a swaggering roundhouse feel to "River of Need" and "Brink of Extinction", the latter even encompassing some nifty guitar licks from Hynes.

The rousing conclusion to the night was a triumphant version of "El Dorado" — the song's intro groove stretched out for a couple minutes as MacDonald introduced the band and hinted at the family relationship to true story behind the song, with Snyder shouting out the count-in a couple times to nudge things along, eventually propelling itself with some unholy combination of a lurch and a swagger.

Listen to a song from the "big band" portion of the show here.

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¹ The band also made this fab music video for the song.

² A recent dispatch from the band mentions that they're doing some more recording, so some of these should be coming to light soon. One might guess that they might emerge as a follow-up EP, a format that MacDonald seems to relish — I stand to be corrected here, but although she has released music with several bands, none have released a full-length album.