Wavelength 519: Idus Maia (feat. Betty Burke / Hobson's Choice)
Holy Oak Café. Sunday May 15, 2011.
It was a rainy night that felt more like xmas in Vancouver than mid-may in T.O. That made it feel all the more cozy inside Holy Oak Café, where the window normally overlooking the street was covered by a sheet for General Chaos' swirling projections. And it seemed like I wasn't the only one casting my mind westward, as host Doc Pickles — filled with post-election malaise — was in a mood to fulminate on Canadian history, settling in somewhere around the junction of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers. With one of the scheduled bands cancelling at the last minute, there was some extra time to kill, which was filled in a lengthy discourse on Louis Riel, Bloody Saturday and "grid thinking": "the reason it's flooding — it has nothing to do with bad planning. It's like bad ideological memories. [...] Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen, Louis Riel isn't dead, he's just part of the memory that doesn't end yet."1
All of which was a pretty good lead-in to Betty Burke, a band with its own share of true stories and whispered secret history lessons. Leading off with the jaunty trouble-with-capitalism ground-level reportage of "New Job", vocalist Maggie MacDonald led the band through a non-stop ride down the Trans-Canada, with a special radio that only picks up broadcasts from the nearby mythical past.
The venue's low-tech sound system was getting some on-the-fly adjustments while the band got going, with musical confederate Magali Meagher hopping up to make the adjustments. In performance, Betty Burke's beatbox folksongs bring goofy joyousness into the service of truth, and when, for example, the band managed to break each other up during "When the Wind Blows" it felt like an enhancement, not a flaw.
Waving to some passers-by peering in through the venue's front door, there was also the usual amount of improvised interactivity that MacDonald brings to a gig, this time out including queef jokes (including some on-the-fly lyrical rewrites to "Hazel Eyes"). In theory, every song begins when the new drum track is selected on the ipod, but there's always a discursive overlap, with the bandmembers commenting on the last song's performance and MacDonald informing the audience of the next song's true story status.
But under that, there's a whole bunch of good songs as well as the musical flexibility to adjust on the fly. Guitarist Jo Snyder is often the one holding things together, keeping MacDonald's lyrical train on the rails as well as adding some excellent backing vox for "River of Need". And after slowing down for a brief seance, the set went out with a rambunctious "El Dorado", Sheila Sampath channelling her inner John Paul Jones on the keybs.
The band's Dirty Mouth of The St Lawrence River EP shows off their musical and songwriting strengths (you should get yourself a copy!) but live, they never step into the same river twice, and all the minor indeterminacies make for a fun time.2
Listen to a track from this set here.
I didn't really know anything about Hobson's Choice, but I recognized a couple of the folks that were in the band, first and foremost including Felicity Williams, who has one of the most beautiful voices in town. I also recognized Michael Davidson on vibes — his presence, plus Rebecca Hennessy on trumpet, implied that this would be a textured sort of music, even if the only other instrumentation was Harley Card's acoustic guitar. And indeed, as they began with "Oh Beauty", there was a spare loveliness to the sound. It'd be conceptually easy to fit this into the new wave of soft rock alongside, say, THOMAS, with whom Williams also sings, though Hobson's Choice brings more of a jazzy edge to it — enough so that Joni came to mind in a few spots.
Card sang lead on some of the material and was certainly a capable vocalist, but less distinctive than Williams' ethereal tone, which is so lovely that it's very expressive even when she's singing wordless phrases. But the vocal arrangements, including Hennessy's harmonies, were top notch. Even with an album and a couple EP's under their belt3, the band was working on new material, including "Watcher", a song about the Gulf oil spill ("is this the cost of more?").
Beautiful music, perfect for a candlelit café. Kudos to Wavelength for bringing a show into into a space that always has a good atmosphere — in fact, it's always worth checking out what's coming up at Holy Oak.
Listen to a track from this set here.
1 Louis Riel surrendered on a May 15th, and the murderous force of the police fell upon the assembled citizens of Winnipeg on a different May 15th, making the "Ides of May" a unique signifier in the annals of resistance to the status quo in Canada.
2 There's no word of any upcoming activity from the Betty Burke camp, but Maggie MacDonald will be examining that dirty 'ol river from another perspective when her musical play Paper Laced with Gold debuts at Harbourfront's Hatch Festival on April 28, 2012.
3 The band is giving away one of those EP's on their website.
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