Recording: Derek McCormack

Artist: Derek McCormack

Reading: excerpt from The Haunted Hillbilly

Recorded at The Dakota Tavern, Jason Collett's Basement Revue, December 1, 2009.

Derek McCormack - excerpt from The Haunted Hillbilly

My notes for this show can be found here.

Gig: Jason Collett's Annual Basement Review (week one)

Jason Collett's Annual Basement Review (feat. Jason Collett, Susan Holbrook, Neil Quin, Derek McCormack, Bahamas, Fraser Young, Danielle Duval, Beatlejuice)

Dakota Tavern. Tuesday, December 1, 2009.

For the third year running, local man-about-the-Scene Jason Collett has taken over the Dakota Tavern for December's Tuesday nights. Dubbed his "Basement Revue", each show features a different (and generally unannounced) line up, with poets and authors rubbing up against singer-songwriters and rockers, all playing short sets in a live variety show format. Tickets usually go fast for the cozy confines of The Dakota, the pleasant little country bar in a basement just off Dundas and Ossington. It's actually a venue I rather enjoy going to, which makes it strange that I hadn't, in fact, been there since this time last year. This night, showed up with K. at about quarter to ten. The tables spread out on the dance floor were filled up, be we managed to find a nice place to stand a bit further back. Just time to settle in, grab a beer and soon enough Jason Collett was taking the stage.

"How does it feel, not knowing who's gonna play tonight?"

Scattered, muted applause. One woman lets out a "woo!".

"Sounds like Toronto out there."

Picking up his guitar, he launched into "Airport", followed by "Fire", the sound system occasionally overcome by that that perbety-perbety-perb blipping noise of cellphone interference. It returned, more persistently, during a performance of one his new songs ("Cross the border down in Detroit/ workin' hard on my sangfroid"), forcing Collett to lengthen an instrumental break to wait out the ringtone.

With that warm-up, he introduced poet Susan Holbrook, who said this was the coolest gig she's even done ("the fact that I can call it a gig makes it more cool"). Filled with comedic wit, she read to an admirably quiet room, her poems employing found text and wordplay, deliberate use of cliché and pop culture ("The Disney Princesses had oatmeal and quail eggs for breakfast — Barbie had a diet pill and a grape pop tart.") Her reading occupied the rhythm of the words rather well — enjoyable stuff.

Then, a set from a slightly nervous Neil Quin of Zeus, playing solo electric guitar. Working a similar terrain to Afie Jurvanen (and even with a similar kind of bantering vibe), he did three generally agreeable songs, though they sounded a bit undercooked without accompaniment. More entertaining was Derek McCormack, reading from his novel The Haunted Hillbilly. Narrated from the perspective of Nudie Cohn — here a gay vampire trying to seduce Hank Williams — and written in a stylized minimalist-yet-flamboyantly-dramatic avant-comic-book style, McCormack gave very good reading that made me eager to check out his stuff — even ending his excerpt on a cliffhanger: "'Why does my ass hurt?' Hank thinks."

Listen to a part of this reading here.

Collett introduced Bahamas by unspooling a free-association family tree of all the night's musicians before bringing up the pair. Accompanied by Jason Tait on drums, Afie Jurvanen promised a set of all-new songs, playing three that all turned out to be instrumentals.¹ That was pleasantly rockin', and after Collett directed him to stay on stage to sing one, Jurvanen obliged with a cover of Dylan's xian era "In the Summertime" (from Shot of Love, Jurvanen here sounding a lot like Warren Zevon) to round out the first set and head, after a pretty solid hour, for a short break.

The second half started with a new wrinkle for the basement review — stand-up comedy from Fraser Young, delivering a slightly goofy observational take on contemporary issues such as classified ads, the internet and sexual mores. Good stuff. K., who was a fan of his work, reported that the ten-minute set was mostly older material, which made me think briefly about the different sort of standard an audience tends to hold comedy to than, say, music, where we wouldn't raise an eyebrow at the prospect of a set of stuff we've heard before.

The next mini-set was from singer-songwriter Danielle Duval. Unfamiliar to me, she fit well into the schema of the night, with her forthcoming album being produced by the Zeus tag team of Carlin Nicholson and Michael O'Brien. Taking a hands-on role, Nicholson even jumped onstage to whip a wayward amp back into shape during Duval's first song. With a pleasingly yearning voice, she played both on guit and piano, and sounds worthy of further investigation. All the more so since this was the one point of the evening where the crowd — or at least a small clot of oblivious, yapniks to my left — threatened to overwhelm the music. Her last song, "Imposter", was notably catchy.

Collette then brought back Susan Holbrook to read another poem, this time backed by an impromptu band featuring Mike O'Brien, Afie Jurvanen, Jason Tait and Carlin Nicholson. She read "Good Egg Bad Seed", a longer poem dealing with life's little dualities, with a suitably smoky groove from the band. One of the highlights of the night.

Listen to Holbrook and the band doing this piece here.

"I really like this band, so I'm going to hit them with a brand new song. We'll see what happens — we like the trainwrecks around here." Collett said, taking the stage following the poem. He picked up his guitar and showed the band the changes and they started into it once, abortively, before Collett stopped them, admonishing himself for misleading them about where the song was going by spending too much time talking. They started again and made it through a verse before Collett stopped to give further instructions, and then again — this time going all the way through. The song, maybe called "My Daddy was a Rock'n'Roller", was a sweetly nostalgic sort of remembrance, still with a few lyrical odd thumbs sticking out — but that went perfectly well with the figure-it-out-as-we-go along vibe from the musicians. A bit of a treat to see that raw live magic.

Listen to the band figuring it out on the fly here.

And then, the final set from "wedding party band" Beatlejuice, basically an amalgam of members from Zeus and The Golden Dogs. Playing, natch, all Beatles covers. Within those confines, the group managed to avoid some of the more obvious parts of the catalogue, ranging from early stuff ("You Can't Do That") and covers ("Please Mr. Postman") to late era material ("I've Got a Feeling").² The band found its sweetest spot in the second-tier '63-'65-ish stuff ("What You're Doing", "All I've Got to Do") which is punchy and more amenable to live performance. Keeping up a fast pace of quick songs, the band managed to squeeze out fourteen titles in just over forty-five minutes. A bit of a goofy lark ("this was all Jason's idea, for the record," the band explained) it made for a fun dance-the-night-away end to the evening. Not breaking new ground, but it took the overarching idea of the show's intimacy in a new direction — one could easily imagine these same musicians' teenaged selves jamming out these same songs in another basement somewhere, fusing these changes into their musical DNA.

During the set-up, a good chunk of the crowd decided to head home, and more trickled out as the hour grew later, leaving more elbow room as the band brought a cellar full of noise. Between songs, I kept waiting for someone to shout "Mach schau, Beatlejuice!", to the point where I was wondering if I'd have to do it myself. But seeing as none of the players on stage could be bothered to wear a toilet seat around their neck, I held back.

Perhaps lacking a bit in star power, this was still a solid night's entertainment — two-and-a-half-hours of show. To be in such an intimate space with the winning off-the-cuff vibe always makes these shows into a memorable event.

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¹ Jurvanen even left nearly all of his characteristic banter at the door, making for a wordless set all around.

² The set included "The Word", making it, strangely enough, the second time I'd seen a band cover that one in less than a week. What are the odds?