Monday Roundup #36

In the absence of concert listings, my regular Monday dispatches have fallen off. After bringing some life to the blog with the "bumping into" series, I figure I should get back in the groove. I'm guessing that this will be a bit like what used to get shoved into the end of the post when I was doing listings — some bandcamp suggestions, nods to a few livestreams, and sundry community notes (email me if you have anything that needs broadcast in the latter category!). Plus maybe a look back through the MFS archives.

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Video hits:

• Keep and eye out here on Tuesday (the International Day of Peace and the fall equinox) for a link to the premiere of a new collaboration between Ella Morton (photography/film), Anna Höstman (composition) and Cheryl Duvall (piano) pairing Moron's imagery with the composition ‘Late Winter’ (from Höstman and Duvall's Harbour album).

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Concert listings:

• Long Winter 10th Anniversary Kick-Off: Together Apart International DIY Festival (feat. Fiver/LAL/Status/Non-Status [Friday]; Obuxum/Absolutely Free/Zones [Saturday]) / The Garrison's rooftop (and parking lot across the street) 2021-09-24 & 25 (Friday–Saturday). $15 advance (reserved)/PWYC at the door. [FB event]
  After a season of "Long Winter TV", LW is easing back into IRL events, starting with these two nights inventively distancing crowds outside on Dundas. (Keep an eye out for any updates to the safety protocols at LW's site.)

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It happened this week...

• ...on September 24, 2012 at The Shop under Parts & Labour.

Sun Araw - Born Under Punches

• ...on September 22, 2013 at Christie Pits (Bloor Ossington Folk Festival).

Beams - White Belly

[Do remember that you can click on the tags below to go back and find the original posts (and often, more stuff) from these artists.]

Bumping into... Mike Duffield

Bumping Into... is a series of mini-chats with a variety of peeps that you might run into in some of our local music communities. (There's a bit of an intro and my thoughts behind the series here.)

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How are you? Where are you?

Overall, I'm doing fine. I'm still in Toronto, I've got a warm place to live, a supportive wife, eating well and have somehow fallen into enough work to squeeze by, which is amazing considering I lost all of my income once the pandemic started.

What have you been up to since March or so?

Musically, I've really spent a lot of time working on my craft. I put so much time and energy into the people I work with's ideas that I often don't nurture and develop my own. I've been trying to make a daily practice of trying to break through the physical and mental ceilings that have been nagging me since college and generally being able to be better at self-actualizing. Once I know what the hell I'm doing I'm going to write a drum exercise book from this experience.

I've also been saving up and strategizing how to release the new Beams album, which will be out in the spring. We worked with a dream team of people on the project and I can't wait for people to hear it. We were really struggling on how to release since we're essentially a live band and generally it's hard to contextualize us via internet. So right now in conjunction with the album, we're co-producing a concert film that's a celebration of physical spaces in Toronto (all covid precautions in place, of course) that's turning in to a real wild ride. We also have almost written an entirely new album that we hope to record once it's safe to do so.

Currently, Ben Oginz, Alex Gamble and I are in the last days of completing the Experts record. What was meant to be a well-recorded improv/cosmic rock album we started working on the day of the solar eclipse in 2017 has turned out the be a whole other beast. We've spent the last three years editing down over three hours of music into a 40 min record and have had people like Colin Fisher, Jesse Laderoute, John McEntire, Anh Phung and Neil Rankin make contributions. Also really excited for people to hear it because it has been one of my favourite things I've ever worked on and it's really opened up new worlds of creation.

Other than that, I've been trying to finish up turning our rehearsal space into a recording space and have been tracking drums for a variety of projects and just trying to create a comfortable workspace. It's something I've wanted to have my whole adult life and it's been a goal since we moved there in 2013. Just really happy I have the luxury of time to finally make it happen.

Have you found any new ways to do old things? How are you feeling about the shifts in how music is being made/shared/listened to?

I'm going back through old notes, exercises and approaches with the wisdom of age and realizing that I've been given all the information and instruction I could ever need. I just didn't really have the life experience upon the initial instruction to really grasp the full depth of everything. It's both humbling and inspiring and has kept me really thirsty and excited to basically spend time in states where I feel uncomfortable and inept.

I really miss experiencing art in physical spaces and the all the social stuff around it. There's no real replacement for that aspect. I really feed off other people's energies and it's beyond weird to just have all of that unavailable. That said, there have been a bunch thoroughly enjoyable livestreams I've watched. I've been able to catch all the stuff from artists in different cities that would normally be unable to experience and it's really nice. It's nice to see how all of these different communities are coping and finding ways to persevere.

Also, I've had a driving job which gives me a lot of time to listen and explore. For the first time algorithms have been my biggest source of discovery and it's really connected me back to being fourteen and being filled with glee of discovering new music.

Any works of art that have been a light for you in these times? Anything that's just been a good diversion?

Music:

• Hen Ogledd - Free Humans
• Richard Dawson - 2020
• Black Country, New Road - Science Fair
• Laurie Spiegel - Drums

TV/Movies:

• How to With John Wilson
• Lusty Crest (by Kate Skelton)
• The Last Black Man in San Francisco
• Mandy
• The Midnight Gospel

One of my favourite venues in Chicago, The Hideout has a variety show series called Cosmic Country. A bunch of the musicians and comedians who perform there have brought it online and it is absolutely fantastic. I hope they keep making them.

In research for the book I'm working on I found someone's master's thesis on my old teacher/mentor Jim Blackley's pedagogical approach. He kept bringing up that he made students read Zen in the Art of Archery by Eugen Herrigel, but certainly not me. So I got it from the library and it was super illuminating and has led to the path I'm currently on.

I also read Are We Still Rolling? By legendary recording engineer Phil Brown and now I just want to record music every day.

How are you feeling about 2021?

To be honest, I don't know and I'm not going to make any predictions. Either way, just going to improvise and try to exist as I'd like no matter what the world throws at me and hopefully do more good than harm.

Anything else we'd chat about if we bumped into each other?

I'd probably ask you what you were excited about so I could check it out. I definitely feel you have your ears closer to the ground locally than I do.

Recording: Demerised Elf Funk

Artist: Demerised Elf Funk

Song: [first piece]

Recorded at Dundas Video ("Track Could Bend #3"), June 2, 2015.

Demerised Elf Funk - [first piece]

Demerisation (from Latin, literally "to remove the sea") is the process of creating crystalline salt sculptures by allowing ocean water to evaporate. Elf funk is a musical genre that is often said to have peaked in 1968 — but as the recent resurgence of Hobbit Prog proves, there's new life to be found in every musical style. With the help of local drummer Eddie Muffilk, an Elf Funk aficionado, noted scientist Kari Sēnnamen has created musical patterns based on the salt sculptures she has discovered in her lab. Arranged for banjo and drums, the results are delightfully pleasing and full of unexpected moments of invention.

[Track Could Bend will return to Dundas Video on July 7th — more details coming soon!]

Recording: Beams

Artist: Beams

Song: White Belly

Recorded at Christie Pits (Bloor Ossington Folk Festival), September 22, 2013.

Beams - White Belly

Full review to follow. Starting out in living rooms and basements in its first year and piggybacking on the local street festival in its second, The Bloor Ossington Folk Festival took a big step up in size and complexity this year, all while holding fast to its mantra of "free music in shared community space". Settling into the topography of Christie Pits, this year's festival included two stages, a beer garden, food vendors and more. Sunday was chilly but dry, and the stages were busy all day, squeezing in a couple extra acts that were bumped from the day before. There were more people around all day, whether up front with the bands, hanging in the beer tent, or just wandering through the park. Kudos to Saving Gigi and the other locals who pitched in to make this a reality. And remember: "folk music" isn't a genre tag, but a description of music that lives in a community, shared between performer and audience. [Also: you can check out a few more pictures from the day at the MFS facebook page.]

Banjo-y goodness from these art-country locals, overcoming a few sound problems while encouraging the sun to peek out from behind the clouds.

Recording: Beams

Artist: Beams

Songs: Be My Brother + Too Much Fun

Recorded at The Silver Dollar Room, June 8, 2013.

Beams - Be My Brother

Beams - Too Much Fun

Full review to follow. "Art-country" upstarts Beams can throw a raucous party when on stage (complete with banjo, mandolin and singing saw), but they've now complemented that with a meticulously-crafted document in the just-released Just Rivers album. A big Saturday-night celebration at the Dollar gave it a proper push into the world, and showed that these songs work as well in the roadhouse as in your headphones.

Recording: Beams

Artist: Beams

Song: How Wonderful^*

Recorded at Trinity-Bellwoods Park (Pitter Patter Festival Five), September 16, 2012.

Beams - How Wonderful

Full review to follow. It might be mildly unnerving to hear a band singing a murder ballad where the deed is done "in the shadow of my favourite tree" when you are, in fact, sitting under a particularly nice one in Trinity-Bellwoods. And while there's a spooky frisson from Keith Hamilton's singing saw, the band's overall vibe was as sunny as the glorious day. Part of the Pitter Patter Festival, you'll be able to hear (and see) more of this set thanks to the folks at Live in Bellwoods, but here's a teaser for now, complete with a bit of wind noise against my mics toward the end.

^* Thanks to ragandbone for passing along the title to this one.