Disclaimer: This report may seem somewhat bitchy, because I really did have a great time this year. But what with everyone over-enthusing, and all the gushing, often undeserved compliments in the pro media, I figured I'd argue for the other team - the realists.
Every year, one of the cities, or as some should be called, somewhat large towns, across the Maritimes and Newfoundland hosts the East Coast Music Awards. The main set of awards are usually about as pathetic as the Grammies, with no one who did anything that year of substance ever winning anything, and people being rewarded for sticking to it, or staying home, and punished for going down the road where real opportunties lie (except Gordie Sampson, who is soon to be promoted to Cape Breton deity alongside Allan J. MacEachen and Billy Joe). I mean, has the best band ever from here (Sloan) ever won an ECMA? (oops, guess what, they won something this year!)
What the ECMA's do is bring some focus to local music in the centres thoughout the Maritimes and Newfoundland at a time of year when the successful musicians (those working) are likely to be on cruise ships, at resorts, or at festivals in Australia. Of course this is still a good thing, as one thing I know, our musicians are just as good as anyone else's. Which is of course, by definition, average. That is what I was thinking when some mouthpiece at a showcase blurted out that we just want to show the rest of the world that our musicians are as good as any where else. I frickin' hope so, buddy!
What can make a difference is the vitality of a music scene and local industry that is vital enough to attract talent from other, less vital places. In Halifax, that means, um, well, it mostly means the other places that sometimes host the ECMA's. So when the ECMA's come to the city of Halifax, a lot of people from the other places come here to see how their exports are doing. They are called delegates, and are often getting a free ride paid for by a government organization like "Music NL", as one example. They have big parties and get drunk on their taxpayers' tabs, or on the fees their membership pays. At least as far as I can see, that's what they do.
Now we in Halifax cannot be considered as so sophisticated that we have outgrown our rabidly anxious need to receive adoration, or even a bit of credit for competence from other places, so we do what we can to bring people here to show them how good we are at making music. In fact, this desire for acceptance seems to be one of the underpinnings of the ECMA's - it tends to become a "look at me! See, I can do that too!" type of thing, as we strive to show the rest of Canada what we got, eh?
But I digress. The best part of the ECMA's, arguably, is not the awards show (is it ever the awards show?) but the general level of increased live music activity in the city. And for this, I very much appreciate the fact that the gathering happens. It gets me out to see local bands I might have missed... no, would have missed. Following is a bit of a travelogue of our adventures (I was in the tow of a media type who was covering the thing for an out of Province publication).
Thursday
Out to Gingers for a quick snack - beef stew, hot enough to stay safe to eat, tasty and cheap. The pints of bitter were dead on, as good as Ginger's Best ever is, both the regular and dry hopped version. We have a bit of a Juno nightmare recap with Joe Keefe, enjoying once again the famous story about the biting incident in the lineup for Jully Black.
Then it's down to Tribeca, where we arrive in time to get a seat at a table before the main crowd arrives. This seems too good to be true, and it is. Although the night's entertainment lineup is impressive, we cannot see anything, due to people packing in (almost certainly far over any fire limit - note to self, sit near exits). Not only that, the sound is so muffled, we can not hear Ruth Minnikin (note to self, remember how good she was last week "In the Dead of Winter"?). But we have fun. David Myles' girlfriend (famous CBC personality) is sitting with us, and we learn more about him than we really need to.
Home at 2:00 am, after a grab at a slice of Pizza at Tony's (note to self - what were you thinking?) and to bed.
Friday
Finishing work a bit early, we head down to the Palace to see some of the 24 hour Jam. Let's just say it was Bluegrass Hour, and the music was, um, interesting. A bluegrass version of Copperhead Road was the ___light. What was more fun was that they would not sell me a beer - it was an all Molson event, and despite the probable illegality of it (I think you need a special occasion license to restrict product sales to a paid sponsor) I was ready to play along. So I asked for a Rickards Red - there was a shelf full in the fridge in front of me. Nope, "we can only sell you Molson Ex and Canadian". Huh? But Rickards is Molson. "No, let me see, I can sell you Coors Light and Corona, though". We leave. So weird.
Arriving at Rogue's Roost my usual time. No IPA on tap - well, I guess this is somewhat understandable as the Grand Porter was supposed to be the IPA...... Somehow, I only manage to eat some potato skins.
From there we head down to the Casino and catch the Roots Room show. This was really very good, and ended with the slightly over the top performance of the Divorcees (only one is actually divorced, apparently, but maybe the rest are working on it). Amelia Curran went first, and to my taste, was the best of the acts, though many probably will tell you the Divorcees were. Unless they are a hard line Cape Breton fiddle/piano type, in which case Troy MacGillvary would punch their ticket. Amelia was followed by Norma Macdonald, who was good, but not as memorable as she was when I saw her last summer at the Celtic Corner. Then Troy, who was followed by a young, cute little Cape Breton gal named Chrissy Crowley who plays the fiddle very well, and is somewhat reminiscent of either a young Natalie McMaster... or one of the Brady Bunch.
Then the Divorcees came on and messed with the Caper's heads. That was fun.
Hey, there's Natalie D, half-cut, out drinking with her radio station sponsor pass-mates.
We headed out immediately for Ginger's, for good beer, and for the Music Association of Newfoundland Stage night there. As with Tribeca, we arrive just in time to get a seat before the hoardes. And this seat should be OK - anyone who would be such a jerk to block out our view would be cutting off the view of about 1/4 of the room.
Well, it just goes to show you, we Maritimers have an overdeveloped sense of just how nice we think we are. The people who came into that place were jerks. OK, not all of them, but some of them. Thinking themselves fans, they kept other, perhaps even bigger fans from seeing the acts for part of the night. Especially one parka clad Justin Timberlake wannabe lookalike that we just called "The Flying Squirrel" (he kept his parka on despite how hot it was, and kept airing himself out, you get the picture).
Despite the totally drunken and ignorant flux of "fans", the music was great, and worth being there for. The beer was fine too, with the IPA tasting dead on, as the UK style it is, making Keith's taste like, well, you know.
The evening lineup was as follows:
Ian Foster - Good, interesting songs, needs help with stage presence, voice sometimes annoying at high notes.
Chris Picco - Wow - hold the mike, we have something here. Lloyd Cole come to Newfoundland. This guy can write songs, and sing them. His backup, the rythym section from The Novaks, are not just sitting in for fun. They know the tunes and sing along. My first "find" of the fest.
Duane Andrews - Great finger guitar in the old Jazz thing where they work hard to make their guitars sound bad, like they did when pickups were first used. This man can play. I'll go see more, but I would love to hear him play a more normal guitar.
Sherry Ryan - maybe she was not feeling well. I don't know, there was some buzz around her, but she just fell flat with me. Occasionally off key, not quite country, not quite folk. Her final song brought some redemption, however, slipping occasionally into Lucinda-ness, which is a good place to go. Maybe she just needs the three thousand bad relationships and drug overdoses to catch up to Ms Williams.
The Novaks - Hot, tight, edgey power pop. They look like muppets, or those cute creatures from Star Wars. But who can see them, there are drunks standing in front of the band waving their parkas! Someone tells me the next day that Steve Van Zant is high on them. Not sure if Lil' Stevie has a parka....
Chris Kirby, and then "hey rosetta!" followed, but I left after the Novaks, all music'd out. The media guy I am with stays out real late, catching "On Vinyl" and "The Tom Fun Orchestra", then reportedly hits Tony's again. Does he not know the meaning of the word indigestion?
Saturday
Wake up sometime around 11. WTF? Oh yeah, it's the ECMA's! Yahoo....
Walk down and take lunch at O'Carroll's. I am still running on last evening's potato skins. Steak and Eggs are somewhat disappointing as they seem to use the same "breakfast striploin" that every pub in town uses. After Stayners last week, I am looking for more from this kitchen, attached, as it is, to a fine restaurant. At least the poached eggs are not superballs.
We pop over to the Casino and catch the last part of a Radio Show taping - In Flight Safety sounding like some band I hear on other people's radios. Meeting up with George Bauer (one of my music guru sources) I discover that this may be some band called "Coldplay" that I have heard of, but never really heard. George tells me it is hard to tell the difference - both bands play with the same level of emotion.
The media person had almost snoozed off, which is odd as he is reportedly a BIG Coldplay fan.
I drag him kicking and screaming someting about having Chris Martin's love child, all the way down along the waterfront to Bishops Landing, where we pretend to be interested in $89 bottles of Bordeaux, and then walk up to the new pub in the Brewery Market - The Red Stag. On the way in the Media Person taps the apparently stone archway. It is plastic. In fact almost all the inside of this place is fake plastic stone and brick. But wait, this is a 200 year old building made of real stone and brick - they put fake plastic over the real stone and brick? Lacking confidence in finding anything else real inside, especially beer, we run out of there. Fast.
We land at Maxwell's Plum, scoring the free peanuts, slurping on MacAuslan, Pumphouse, and Propeller beers, and eating a plate of poutine right down to the point where, when you look at it, it just don't look like food anymore.
It has very suddenly become nap time. Home to bed for a couple hours.
Eating at home this time (after my diet of the past few days, I needed real food) and sharing a bottle of good Languedoc red, we pronounce ourselves ready for another kick at the festival. A quick cab ride downtown finds us sliding into the Seahorse just before the crowd hits. Again, we are strategically positioned to be able to get out in case the overfilled room bursts into electrical short-caused flames, but still able to see the band as long as the AH quotient is lower here than in the Newfie event.
Of course, I should have known that we in Halifax can compete with St. John's on everything. Especially the overweight bearded 55 year old dude who parked himself right in front of us, blocking the way to the washroom, and feeling up the girls when they squeezed by as much as he could.
So, who did we see here? Well, this was the Music Nova Scotia Stage.....
Rebekah Higgs - She tries hard, has some good songs, but in Halifax, where great female singers seem to be falling out of the sky nowadays, she seems outmatched vocally and without having found her place yet.
Steven Bowers - Speaking of trying hard, this guy seems to work at collecting friends more than anyone. He has some nice songs (love the one about Catching Bees in Jars), but may not have that extra "it" to overcome the road to anonymity.
Jill Barber - Jill seems a little tipsy tonight, just where you want her to be - relaxed. ("I think I've had a little too much wine") She starts with "Moon River" delivered from the middle of the floor, singing back to her band, and moves on to cover music from her recent, and great, album, For All Time (buy it, that is all I can say). She ends the set by taking a request from the audience (Summertime) and getting everyone else to sing it for her. Two of the three people who did could have been on stage, they were that good.
Hotshot Robot - Holy Shit Batman! The B-52's meet Devo, with a bit of a trashy edge. Hot babe in tight dress on near toy synth playing spacey hooks while Devo-like guitarist slashes at chords played high speed with sloppy dressed but musically impeccable bassist playing edgey lines in time with frenetic drumming all with very bawdy lyrics from the mouth of a babe who looks like butter would not melt in her mouth. Fun fun fun but not for CHNS oldies....
Carmen Townsend - OK, sometime long ago, Jimmy Hendrix and Janis Joplin had a love child and left her in New Waterford. That is the only explanation I can come up with for this girl. Her band, called "The Shakey Deals" needs only to sit back and watch, but they do play along. I was 18 again, for about 15 minutes there.
Dr. dFunkt - And now for something completely different! I thought the Novaks looked a bit odd. This was serious hard paced sweaty funk from a Halifax Band I've never seen before. The leader looked like a version of Doctor Evil on way too many uppers. The bass player looked like some mountain man right out of Deliverance. If the music wasn't so frickin' great you would have to laugh, but instead you just moved to da groove.
I am still not sure if they were real.
Head home, L already there, having been to the Cape Breton night at the Lord Nelson where the stars were on stage, but the sound was not. But she was all excited at having been in attendance at Ashley MacIssac's wedding, which seemed to make up for not hearing anything but bass guitars all night. I made, and scarfed down a chicken burrito and crashed by 4 am.
Sunday
11:45 AM - is that coffee brewing that I hear?
Bacon eggs toast and coffee. Then down to the Songwriters Circle at the Casino to wait in line until they get the thing set up. There was some significant, semi-arrogant manipulation of the people for this one, making sure that we would all be ready by 3, by telling us it started at 2. Pure evil. I could have been in a pub really getting ready.
But it is worth the wait, as Bruce (I am just too good to believe) Gouthro manages to limit his adolescent banter to almost non-embarrassing levels, and participants Amelia Curran (voice almost shot from the weekend's work and revelries, but still impressing), Mark Bragg (voice also shot, he used to be just a blue axeman, now he also writes great, sometimes disturbing songs), Sarah Slean (a Goddess on this planet - ye who choose to disagree shall be burned at the stake - who completely had to rethink - she said "transcribe" the song "Mary" because her piano was tuned wrong, and did so beautifully), and the one who was a bit in over her head, (they always seem to put someone in that spot) Stephanie Hardy. She was OK, but was in deep. I'd like to see her in another context.
I just don't know about Gouthro. He is certainly talented, but he manages to perfectly project the image of someone trying very hard not to take himself seriously, when he obviously does, and maybe to a fault at that.
Dinner, after, at the Wooden Monkey is covered in another post.
And the redux:
1. The ECMA's are fun, but they do serve to remind us that we are no more polite to each other than New Yorkers.
2. At times, the events seem to be designed for the industry people to remind the paying public just how unimportant they are. In time, I wonder who will pay for the music.
3. Is it just me, or do we have more than our share of good female vocalists in Halifax? Jill Barber, Ruth Minnikin, Amelia Curran, Rose Cousins, Meaghan Smith, and Jenn Grant are all making very nice music right now, and there are clearly more in the wings and on the way. And Toni Piggot is making nice jazz stuff too.
4. Those same female vocalists all seem to have a noise in their repertoire at one point or another, some more than others, that sounds like a little doggie barking. "Ow ow-ow-ow Oooowwwww-ow-ow..." It is starting to get irritating, girls. Hold a note for chrissakes! (you're fine Toni, just don't start, please)
5. Guy to watch for - Chris Picco
6. Girl to watch for - Jen Clarke, who fronts Hot Shot Robot. This reminded me of the first time I saw Thrush Hermit and wondered who that kid fronting them was.
7. Music to buy: Rose Cousins, Sarah Slean, Amelia Curran, Jill Barber, maybe The Novaks... yeah, the Novaks. I'll probably get the Hot Shot Robot EP and report back on that. I have a Chris Picco demo he gave me, his album won't be out til spring.
8. Band to stay late to dance to: A tie, Hot Shot Robot and Dr. dFunckt. Either way, you will dance cause you got to.
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