Out of This Spark 4th Anniversary Celebration (feat. OOTS Family Band / Evening Hymns / Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills / The Pale Mornings / Jenny Omnichord / The Phonemes / Kite Hill)
The Tranzac (Southern Cross Lounge). Friday, January 7, 2011.
After a one-year jaunt at The Garrison, local label Out of This Spark returned to The Tranzac for their annual anniversary celebration. This edition, however, was quite different from past ones. Though the celebration could have filled the larger main hall, label honcho Stuart Duncan instead opted for the more intimate Southern Cross Lounge, putting the audience closer to the bands, though it meant that a few latecomers were turned away. Like shows in the Southern Cross usually are, this was a pay-what-you-can event, and like several other shows preceding it, this was a fundraiser for the Tranzac itself. And further mixing things up, unlike the previous anniversary shows, instead of a series of sets by the bands on the label's roster, this was given over to a night of music by friends of the label.1
N.B. I was without camera on this night, so to break up the text, I'm going to slip in a few videos from the night by Colin Medley.
The room, normally set up with loosely scattered tables, was opened up to accommodate the crowd, with only a single row of tables in front of the "stage" area. I got there early enough to snag one of the precious few seats, so I had a sweet spot to witness what would turn out to be a pretty lengthy show. It got off to a solid, though mellow start with Kite Hill, which made me ponder whether the band with one of the more complicated setups played first just for the sake of quicker changeovers down the line.
Ryan Carley led off with a solo piano number that I didn't recognize from the previous times I'd seen the band, but the songs after that were familiar. His songs are theatrical, and they succeed most when the music is called upon to evoke the moods to go along with his words — hence the need for a mini-orchestra with clarinet/sax, cello, violin, stand-up bass and drums. Songs like the stately "Warm Winter" were powered by the interplay of the mini-string section of Anissa Hart (also a member of Ohbijou alongside Carley) and Lisa Conway (also of The Owle Bird). There was also a stirring rendition of "Gathering". It sounds as if the band's long-awaited album is "in the can" and awaiting release — in the interim, you can get a taste of what's coming on their soundcloud.
Listen to a song from this set here.
Given how jammed the room was getting, it was pleasing that it was rather quiet for The Phonemes, another band that play in mostly softer tones. Magali Meagher's voice is always at the centre, but her guitar work is accompanied by Stephanie Markowitz and John Tielli, each shifting between several instruments. Meagher's gentle strumming on "Paper Plane", for example, was backed by zorbing blurts from Tielli's theramin, and he'd later also contribute on bass and drums as well as his high, keening vocals.
The band is featuring a lot of new material — hopefully the follow-up to 2007's There's Something We've Been Meaning To Do is in the works — including "Queen's Counsel", which I don't think I'd heard before. The set ended, as is usually the case, with the sublime "Pain Perdu". This time, it was a little more ragged than usual, but it was brought home with the help of Kat Burns and Gentleman Reg who were brought up to sing along.
Listen to a song from this set here.
Jenny Mitchell presents her songs under the name Jenny Omnichord, a nom de guerre which gives away her main accompaniment. Even if its musical range is a little narrow, the omnichord has its own unique vibe, and makes for a fitting partner to Mitchell's always-ebullient stage presence. Even when pressing through the occasional scatterbrained or self-deprecating moment, her sunny warmth animates her sets. On this night she was testing, of all things, an omnichord strap, so she could play standing up — and not, say, use the ironing board she otherwise brought as a stand. That, and the new omnichord that went with it, weren't entirely show-ready, but the bumps didn't matter in the face of the instantly memorable "Pain of Maybes".
Showing how her songs are tied into her life and friends, each of them came with a dedication, including "All Our Little Bows", which was played for her fellow ex-Barmitzvah Brother Geordie Gordon, who'd be playing later on in the evening. Coming at the far end of the holidays, there were not one but two seasonal songs in the set, including The Flaming Lips' "Christmas at The Zoo" as well as the pleasing goofiness of "Snoopy's Christmas", which I hadn't thought about in decades but then had lodged in my head for days.
The last time I had seen The Pale Mornings, they were called Whippoorwill. But change of name aside, this was basically the same band — an assemblage fronted by Sylvie Smith dedicated to playing some good ol' country music in a manner guaranteed to break your honky-tonk heart.2 Leading off with the dreamy tones of Santo & Johnny's "Sleep Walk", the band proceeded to tackle a range of classics. So one could, I suppose, dismiss this as a mere "cover band", but that seems to miss the point when they're so damned good — to use the technical term from the Institute of Country Music, they're hot shit. All of the musicians really nail this, but Chris Stringer on guitar and John Dinsmore on bass should be singled out — and as mentioned in this space previously, Smith is a top-notch singer, animating the material pretty fully.
Only on the immortal "Walkin' After Midnight", which was new to the setlist, were Smith's vox a little unconvincing, but on stuff like Don Williams' "I'll Be There", she was pretty great. And, as before, her own composition "On Our Own" (which came out under her own name on the Friends in Bellwoods 2 compilation) had me aching for more original material — though, keeping busy as she does in a couple other bands probably means that's not at the top of her agenda. If you get a chance to see these folks play, don't hesitate.3
Listen to a song from this set here.
The namesake of Richard Laviolette and The Oil Spills was unfamiliar to me, but I did know that his album All Your Raw Materials, originally released independently, had been picked up by You've Changed Records, which was enough to make me take notice. As it turned out, this was a logical follow-up to The Pale Mornings, bringing another barn-storming hootenanny. The Oil Spills were a big ole country band, with eight on stage all told, including accordion (Meredith Grant), pedal steel (Mike Brooks), banjo (Greg Denton), fiddle (Geordie Gordon, also of The Magic) and piano (Lisa Bozikovic, also adding her wonderful voice). Plus with Jenny Mitchell making a return to the stage on bass, this would be essentially the crew who'd played on the album. A group this big required some set-up on the fly — more vocal mics were still being added after they started playing, and though the sound was a little ragged at times, it was ragged in the right way.
A bit of a similar vibe to classic Jon-Rae and the River, but this was feeling more drilled into the music's honky-tonk roots like a raggedy back-porch band (or, on songs like "Snuck Right Up", like a back-porch Band). And from the start, this was all likeably fine. But then, as the band lurched into "Funeral Song", a tune good enough to fry biscuits in, it was suddenly pretty awesome. A shoutalong ode to facing the end with realism, the song is as enthusiastic about the notion of drunken wakes as it is against sombre funerals. The enthusiasm of that one caused, of all things, a broken accordion strap. For the next song, Lisa Bozikovic leaned over from the piano to help hold it in place while Grant played on. The rest of the set didn't quite reach the lift of that one moment, but the rambunctious fun that the band was playing with made it enjoyable throughout.
Listen to a song from this set here.
After, I looked back behind me and for the first time all night, there was some open space in the room. It was half-past midnight, so no surprise it was getting a little quieter. Which made it just right for Evening Hymns, who were, on this night, just Jonas Bonnetta (with a creaky acoustic guitar) and Sylvie Smith. The pair played mostly new songs, leading off "Family Tree" — which was not an upbeat one: "I'm going to chop down the family tree / break it into piles and burn all the leaves". On the night before heading up north to record their second album, it was quite amazing to hear the new songs in their most stripped-down, fragile state, and a powerful introduction to songs like the affecting "Arrows".
The only older song in the set was "Dead Deer", which was played to celebrate the release of the song's rather beautiful video. And there was also a cover of Michael Hurley's "Wild Geeses" — Smith's ethereal backing vox were especially strong here. Bonnetta, who had been in a friendly, chatty mood throughout, no matter how dark some of the new music was, finished off playing a solo version of "Spectral Dusk", which seems to be set to be the title track of the band's second album. There's no release date yet, but I'm guessing once fall rolls around we'll be hearing from the band.
Listen to a song from this set here.
An excellent set that held the audience totally quiet throughout, that wouldn't be required as the night wrapped up with another OOTS tradition, where players from different bands on the label's roster combined into The Family Band. As there had been throughout the night, there was a twist on the concept here, with a rotating series of vocalists doing covers, backed by a house band that was essentially Forest City Lovers.
First up, Jonas Bonnetta returned to the stage, and in a sort of inverse of the quiet set he had just played, belted out Tom Petty's "I Won't Back Down", with backing vocals by Sylvie Smith and Gavin Gardiner from The Wooden Sky. Smith stayed on stage to take the lead on "Got My Mind Set on You". Given the loop of the verse and chorus, it looked like Smith would have been happy to keep the song going indefinitely.
Daneila Geshundheit (of Snowblink) made her first family band appearance, cementing her place in the OOTS-sphere in advance of the then-forthcoming reissue of the band's Long Live album. She delivered a totally smouldering version of "Take My Breath Away" that would leave any fighter pilot a heap of repressed homoerotic longing. The set ended with Kat Burns (Forest City Lovers) and John O'Regan (Matters, Diamond Rings) joining forces on Stevie Nicks' "Edge of Seventeen" that segued into "Bootylicious" by Destiny's Child — a canny combo as the latter sampled the former's guitar line. I was not ready for that jelly — or at least that wasn't what I was expecting, but it was a pleasingly fun way to end the long night.4
In retrospect, that was a helluva show. It's mind-boggling that there are things in our midst like this that you could go to on a pay-what-you-can basis, but hopefully everyone else at the show acknowledged that this was more than a usual amount of music and talent and filled the donation jar accordingly. Kudos to Stuart Duncan and all of the musicians, and here's hoping there will be many more birthdays to come.
1 For the analytically inclined, there was also a strong Guelph theme running through the night.
2 To be clear, in terms of country music, this is high praise indeed.
3 Pale Mornings will be playing on Saturday July 23, 2011 as part of the unique Wavelength "Band on the Run" event — a sort of musical treasure hunt spread across the city. The locations of the sets will only be revealed on the day, so keep an eye out here for further info.
4 It looks as if the next mutation of the Family Band is coming up at the SummerWorks Festival, on Wednesday August 10, 2011, where something called House League will be making their debut. Details are scarce right now, but they're listed as featuring members of "The Magic, Forest City Lovers, Matters and Evening Hymns".
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