Gig: Giant Hand

Giant Hand (Winchester Warm)

Imperial Pub Backroom. Thursday, January 6, 2011.

The 50 River concert series was started with an admirable idea — not just to present quality acts in the intimate space of the Imperial Pub's backroom, but to curate and contextualize the experience by having well-written previews and Q&A's with the artists available online beforehand. And to do it all with an enthusiastic, personal touch — as I rolled in to find a half-filled room on a rather snowy night, I was greeted by the effusive Holly Andruchuk, lighting the candles stuck in the tops of old liquor bottles that were decorating the tables.¹ It's always so nice to come across a genuinely nice person, the sort who will ask a virtual stranger how their day was, as if she were genuinely curious.

That quietly earnest quality pervades everything about the 50 River concert series — and there was something similarly earnest to openers Winchester Warm, an Ottawa duo of Jon Pearce (acoustic guit/vox) and Matt Godin (drums). Godin was wearing a John Deere hat, which felt like a telling detail and fit right in with their Heartland folk-rock. Pearce's voice brought to mind, say, Buffalo Tom's Bill Janovitz or perhaps J. Mascis' less-croaky moments as he reeled off a series of songs from their debut album Sky One Room. Music like this stands or falls on the quality of the songwriting, and there were some encouraging signs here, like the agreeable "Cracks and Clues".

And this kind of music is definitely enhanced in such a homey space, where between songs the band was close enough to the audience for Pearce to sniff the air and ask, "does someone have fries?" There was a bit of mid-tempo sameness in the songs, but thankfully, following a series of mellower tunes in the middle of the set, Pearce commented, "we'll pick it up a notch" before tackling "Surf's Up"². And on "Like Hell" he even had had the audience singing out the title phrase along with him.

True to the band's name, there is something warm and agreeable here. Sometimes there was only a subtle shade of difference between this and something more generic, but the songs were largely good enough to keep it worth paying attention to.

Listen to a track from this set here.

Whatever your opinion of his work, Kirk Ramsay (who performs solo under the bandonym Giant Hand) isn't at as much of a risk of being labelled a generic singer-songwriter. With a slightly quavery voice as distinctive as his lyrical stance, Ramsay seemed to arrive fully-formed with the songs that made up his debut album Coming Home.

The real trick is whether he can grow and expand upon that original template, and at this point there were definite encouraging signs. This was no rehash of what I had seen nearly a year previously when I had first encountered Ramsay. Not only was he now playing an electric Gibson instead of an acoustic guitar, but he was playing better — a latecomer to his instrument, his original technique was pretty bare-bones, and while still no virtuoso, there was a wider palette here. He was also expanding his sound with pedals and more technology as well — set-opener "Down By the River"³ came with some textual synth sounds. "Now I'm going to invent a bandmate," said Ramsay before "Bones Are My Home", which employed an understated backing track, including canned backing vox from Rolf Klausener of the Acorn.

The setlist was titled toward the songs that Klausener produced and played on for Ramsay's then-forthcoming EP Starting As People, including "Another Step Down". But, just as the last time I saw him, Ramsay was also already looking beyond his released material, and he was joined by Winchester Warm's Matt Godin who added drums on one new one.⁴ And adding percussion with a drum machine loop, Ramsay closed with another unreleased track — I can't seem to find a title anywhere — that's one of the best things he's done, a limping man's catalogue of defiant self-loathing: "don't look at me like that / I ain't no sewer rat / oh, don't look at me like that / I ain't sleeping with the maggots yet". Definitely words to live by as the short set ended and I headed out to the snowy street.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ With Andruchuk a bit busier with her own music right now, it looks like the concert series is on hiatus at the moment.

² This was, in fact, an original and not a Beach Boys cover.

³ Also not a cover, but rather a song written from the perspective of a young polar bear who happens to be just as existentially agitated as the rest of Ramsay's narrators, musing, "if no one will remember me / then what was I alive for?"

⁴ Another benefit of seeing shows in the Imperial Pub's backroom is that there are frequently some random moments as regulars in the front bar wander back and forth past the stage to get to the outdoor smoking area. At this show, a nattily-dressed gent took a seat by the stage on his way back from having a smoke and considered Ramsey closely for about half a song and telling him, as he finished, "you look like Elvis Costello." Ramsey was mildly flustered, commenting, "that's weird." And that led to a semi-awkward back and forth on whether, following from that observation, Ramsay should be more inspired by Elvis Costello.

Gig: Betty Burke

Betty Burke (The Phonemes / Kathleen Phillips)

The Imperial Pub Backroom. Thursday, October 21, 2010.

Out on a Thursday night to the cozy back room of the Imperial Pub on Dundas for a show put on by the good folks at 50 River. The series is the brainchild of musician/promoter Holly Andruchuk, who can be found greeting patrons at the door with a bright smile and saying, "thanks for supporting live music!" There's a genuine charm in the whole presentation, starting with the idea that rather than just giving the musicians a stage to play on, there's a curated experience, including knowlegable write-ups that you can check out to acquaint yourself with the musicians before coming down. In the sliver of the room, the tables are topped with tall candles stuck in empty liquor bottles as the occasional rumble of conversation from the regulars at the front bar occasionally wafts through the air.

Besides the two bands on this night, each set was preceded by some comedy from Kathleen Phillips, delivering her deadpan stylings in storytelling mode, the first set discussing the shortcomings of cats (the "nihilist unemployed poets" of the pet world) in her dry drawl. Entertaining stuff, not always taking things to the obvious destination.

That applies, too, to The Phonemes, centred around the always-joyful Magali Meagher with frequent co-conspirators Stephanie Markowitz and John Tielli (plus a nimble guitarist whose name I didn't catch). I hadn't seen 'em for almost a year, so it was interesting to see how some of the newer material, now feeling a little more lived in, has gotten fleshed out. "Vanishing Point" is as catchy and appealing as anything Meagher has penned while "Paper Planes" (not, um, to be confused with the M.I.A. song) dances and drifts like its namesake. Meagher mostly played guitar, but also moved over to the piano for one number.

And then for a special treat, the band was joined by Maggie MacDonald for a bilingual duet on the sprightly yé-yé tune "Cet air-là", most famously performed by France Gall. MacDonald sang in English in her own translation while Meagher sang the original French, their differing voices (brash¹ and gentle, respectively) contrasting as much as the languages they were singing — but it all worked.

That would be the start of a series of guest stars that continued with Bobby Wiseman adding some piano to "Sunday Morning" and the members of Betty Burke adding percussion on "Steeples and People". Gentleman Reg, celebrating his birthday in a glittering pair of heels, came up for a sprightly version of "Pain Perdu". The Phonemes' off-kilter pop is always a good time and a chance for Meagher to give her friends something to sing about.

Listen to a track from this set here.

After another quick set from Kathleen Phillips (this time staying in grandmotherly character to tell a story about a weather-predicting dog) the show was switched over to an "AM Radio from a parallel dimension". That's the natural territory for Betty Burke, tellers of true stories. There had been some changes in the BB camp since I saw them last, with mainstay Maggie MacDonald now joined by Jo Snyder (guit) and Sheila Sampath (bass, keyboard). There were still echoes of the rootsy sound that Holly Andruchuk had provided while active in the band, but with an ipod providing drum machine beats the sound veered more towards new wave.² MacDonald was dressed for that sound, too, rocking a Patti Smith look in a blazer and skinny tie.

The band is undoubtedly MacDonald's show, but there's room for her bandmates — one song, for example, featured Sampath's lead vox. And in the same community spirit as the Phonemes set, there was a series of friends and collaborators joining the band on stage. Sarianna Mileski sang lead vox on "The Prince" and there was another appearance from Gentleman Reg for a duet ("I can make you come, but I can't make you stay") which was followed by cake, everyone in the room joining in on "Happy Birthday". And besides those guests, there was also a visit from MacDonald's sunglasses-wearing alter ego Loni Lalonde. "I had to get rid of Maggie... she had too much impulse control," said Lalonde, a channelling of MacDonald's Cornwall days.

The stage was jammed full of people as the band closed it out with "El Dorado". Spirited throughout, the set had a celebratory vibe. Good fun — a band you should definitely check out.³

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¹ "I'm not a singer," Maggie commented at the outset, "but I am verbose."

² Before one song, MacDonald gave praise to The Jesus and Mary Chain for their seminal historical influence in their use of drum machines, though interestingly the song that accompanied that comment owed at least as much to "Rivers of Babylon".

³ And, in fact, you have an excellent chance to do just that this Friday (February 25, 2010) at Holy Oak Cafe, where Betty Burke will be celebrating the release of their first EP. As a bonus, Evening Hymns are playing too.

Gig: Jon-Rae Fletcher

Jon Rae Fletcher / Ryan Driver

Imperial Pub (back room). Friday, July 24, 2009.

How has Jon-Rae Fletcher changed in the past couple years? Consider these lines from "Best of My Time":

I've heard some people say

forty bucks is too much to pay

when you're out drinking the night away

Back in the days when he was backed by the rollicking River, he'd lean into the final line: "But I say it ainnnnnnnnnnnnnn't". Now, the song's a little less rambunctious, and on this night, hitting that same line, he says, with an implied chuckle, "Well it kinda is."

I tend to think we kind of like to create little narratives for our pop heroes, and a little switch like this is grist for the mill in the tale of Jon-Rae Fletcher's own mythopoetical tale of recklessness and redemption, a prodigal son of the scene returning as a visitor to dispatch the wisdom of lessons learned.¹

Playing again in the cozy back room of the Imperial Pub — site of another Jon-Rae gig thirteen months ago when he was bringing his new songs to the old town — there was a bit of a smaller crowd this time, about a couple dozen, all told. I was out with R., a friend from the Old Days, who came out based only on my recommendation. Honoring the vibe of the place, I was unironically drinkin' bottles of 50 and generally enjoying the surroundings. "The white piano haunts my dreams," R. lamented as we settled into the back room, looking at the low-slung stage and the old stand-up piano flanking it. There's usually a clear demarcation between the Imperial's regulars and folks coming out for a show like this. The regulars, for one thing, are given the respect of place that they can head outside through the door behind the stage and go for a smoke.² One such guy — scruffy beard, Tiger Cats jacket — ducked out and came back in during Ryan Driver's opening set. Sitting down beside that piano for a minute, he seemed to be taking it all in as he pulled what looked like a small piccolo from his pocket and looked, for one queasy second, like he was going to start playing along, before heading back into the main area of the bar.

I was mostly familiar with Ryan Driver for his role in some of the Rat-Drifting bands. That's as good a sign-post as any to give some indication of what he was up to, a sort of fractured folk sound. Playing solo acoustic in a variety of tunings, mostly involving a high string or two being flattened enough to give the guitar a bit of a banjo-y sound. Driver has a pleasing voice (shades of, say, Sandro Perri and Bob Wiseman) and could hit the high notes cleanly when he wanted to — though sometimes, for effect, he'd mess with those those as well. Musically, his songs got by without a strong melodic sense, eschewing easy hooks for a trickier internal logic, dodging traditional structure to the extent that most of the time the ending of the song came as a sudden and unexpected stop. Sometimes, music like this turns me off, but Driver kept each song going with enough momentum that I was carried along. It helps that he's clearly got the chops to pull this off. Mighta just been the 50 speaking, but I dug this.

I'd come in expecting that Jon-Rae's set would be solo acoustic, so it was a pleasant and interesting surprise to see that this was going to be a bit more expansive, with Crystal Dee Denham's bass and Denver Rawson's trombone reproducing their fine work on the recent Oh, Maria album. Also somewhat unexpected was Jon-Rae's re-embrace of his own back catalog, as he split the set between the new album and his older stuff, something that he has pretty rigourously avoided in the past year. So besides solid runthroughs of "The Big Talker" and "Downtown", we were treated to an Old Songs one-two of "Time and Effort" and "Two Hands" as well as later River-era standards such as "Best of My Time" and "Fuck Me". The trips to the past even stretched back to "Fourteen Years", a song Jon-Rae said he wrote, in fact, fourteen years ago, his first country song after being in a "terrible teen band". The set ended with an excellent solo take of "Fire", which Jon-Rae would have left on to go out on a high note had he not been called back for a couple more, including "Come Back to Me", not heard in these parts for quite some time.

A very encouraging set. Jon-Rae comes across as being more comfortable in his own skin than he was a year ago, far less tentative, and reconciled to his own past good work.

Listen to a track from this set here.

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¹ Which is to say, of course, that I have no notion as to what's a biographical clue and what's just a good line, just that it is pretty irresistible to try and wrap all of this up into a little story where the art and the artist blend into each other.

² I've also wondered if there's any interesting byplay at that back door between the Imperial's patrons and the non-overlapping group of guys hanging out at the discount sneaker place right beside there. Take note, prospective documentarians, slice-of-life observers or aspiring odd-couple sitcom writers.