As we’ve mentioned at Stylus, Big Fun Festival is approaching quickly. The last weekend of January is when it’s happening, venues all over the Exchange is where it’s happening. Exciting times if you’re in that whole indie/folk scene here, or if you’re curious to check any of it out. Continue reading “First Class Riot; Big Fun Nearly Under the Sun”
Hillbilly Highway – Speckled Bird Burritos
by Sheldon Birnie
I’ve been turned onto a lot of great artists over the years by just flipping through the stacks of used records, waiting on something to catch my eye. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Speckled Bird Burritos”
Hillbilly Highway – Beer break at Big Bad John’s
by Sheldon Birnie
Holidays are a time for visiting family and friends. My folks have moved on out to Vancouver Island, and so I hit the Highway last week to visit them and spend a couple days in Victoria. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Beer break at Big Bad John’s”
Hillbilly Highway – Holiday Jukebox Party Time
by Sheldon Birnie
Well, it’s holiday time here in Canada, and that means Christmas themed albums are being churned out by the Music Machine as though they are going out of style. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Holiday Jukebox Party Time”
Hillbilly Highway – Scott Nolan live at the Park Theatre
by Sheldon Birnie
Scott Nolan could be to Manitoba what Guy Clark is to Texas. A songwriter’s songwriter with an attention to the minutia of everyday life; drawing from a vast, detailed knowledge of all those who’ve walked the line before him; capable of delivering a heartbreaking line followed easily by a knee-slapper the next. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Scott Nolan live at the Park Theatre”
Hillbilly Highway – Prairie Roots Revue rolls into Winnipeg
by Sheldon Birnie
On Monday, December 12, four prairie songwriters will descend on the Park Theatre to pick some tunes for all of y’all. The Prairie Roots Revue is cruising the Highway from Saskatoon to Winnipeg, then back across Saskatchewan, hitting smaller towns like Dauphin, Gravelbourg, and Swift Current along side larger centers like the ‘Peg. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Prairie Roots Revue rolls into Winnipeg”
Hillbilly Highway – Let’R Buck with the Poor Choices tonight
by Sheldon Birnie
If you’re looking for a good time on a Wednesday night in Winnipeg, book your ass down to the Standard Tavern on Sherbrook. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Let’R Buck with the Poor Choices tonight”
Hillbilly Highway – Dave Lang is a Beauty
by Sheldon Birnie
There is a guy in Regina named Dave Lang, and he is a fucking beauty. I’ve never met this man, nor seen him to confirm that he is, indeed, a real human. But I was digging through the Mountain of Broken Dreams the other day, here in the Stylus office, and I came across an album by Dave titled Live and in Quonset. Most of what I find in the Mountain goes straight to one of two places: the garbage or the recycling bin. But not this nugget. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Dave Lang is a Beauty”
Hillbilly Highway – Afternoon drunk with Mag 7s
by Sheldon Birnie
I had a couple beers with Matt and Andy from the Mag 7s this afternoon — hard traveling troubadours if ever there were any — interviewing them for an upcoming feature for Stylus. Keep your eyes peeled, friends, it’s a gooder! The problem is, though, that I have yet to transcribe the SOG, and the clock is ticking down to load in for the One Hundred Dollars show at Pop Soda’s.
Maybe if we’d drank less beer, maybe if I’d eaten more food, I wouldn’t be sitting here typing up excuses on the Hillbilly Highway when I should be transcribing a half hour of interviewee gold. But there is always tomorrow, and the deadline is at least a day away. Plenty of time for a professional to get his shit together and deliver the goods. Live fast, live free!
Right now, I’m listening to the new Mag 7s disc, All Kinds of Mean, courtesy of Transistor 66, and it is solid, partner! I’ll review the platter in good time, never fear, but for now I’d like to reflect on some personal memories I hold of one of my favourite local acts…
I first heard of the Magnificient 7s back in 2006. At the time, I was living in a house in South Osborne, playing in a couple shitty punk bands. One of those bands used to host basement shows at our place, and one of the groups we used to get to play were called the Ponys. The Ponys soon changed their name to the Ex-Girlfriends, and made a name for themselves on the local punk/garage circuit. It was a pretty sweet band, three babes who partied hard and weren’t half bad at rocking out.
During one of these gigs, Ida told us we should check out her other band, the Magnificent 7s, who were playing some street-fest later that week. Sure, sure, we said, half-assed committing to do so.
But me and my pals ended up checking them out, and I was blown away. Here was a band that was perfecting the ideal mix of old time, traditional country/bluegrass with contemporary punk rock ethos, and having a blast with it the whole while.
Since that fateful day, I’ve seen the Mag 7s play plenty of times, and even shared the stage with them more than once — at the Albert, the Park Theatre, and the Shine On! festival out near Steinbach. During the latter, me and a few of the other Gad Guys had downed a hearty helping of zoomers, and dug their set on an ethereal plane beyond anything witnessed up to that point. Beautiful shit on a starry night out in the sandilands, just beautiful!
The Mags are hosting a CD release in Winnipeg in December. Stylus will be profiling them in our upcoming issue, and I urge you heartily to check them out, if you have or have not already. You won’t fucking regret it. Pick up their new disc when you get a chance, too. Toe tapping good time drinking music! Bottoms up!
Hillbilly Highway – One Hundred Dollars
by Sheldon Birnie
“I think of [Winnipeg] as a really tough city, a city that has survived a lot,” Simone Schmidt, lead singer of Toronto based country band One Hundred Dollars, told me when I had the opportunity to chat with her on CKUW last week. Currently on the road supporting their latest release, Songs of Man, the band will be passing back through Winnipeg on Tuesday, November 15 after playing the West End Cultural Centre earlier this fall with Elliott Brood.
“I feel like there’s a grittiness to Winnipeg that I really dig. When you come from a city like Toronto, where I’m from, where there’s just so much new money pumping into it that it sort of allows people to deny history, and deny the past because buildings are always being torn down and built up new.”
Our conversation was cut short a couple times, as the band was driving the Crow’s Nest Pass between Fernie and Nelson, B.C. The mountains were wreaking havoc with Simone’s cell reception, but we managed to have a great conversation about country music nonetheless. I also caught up with her a few days later, exchanging text messages as the band boarded a ferry from Vancouver to the Island.
“Country music in particular makes more room for explicit story telling than most other genres and in that sense it’s relatable to people,” Simone says of country music’s appeal. “And it is generally tragic music, hurting music. Most people feel that.”
“I think I first fell in love with country music when I was about 15,” Simone explained to listeners last Friday. Visiting her brother, who is a bluegrass musician in Nova Scotia, Simone stumbled upon the voice of George Jones in a cabin with electricity, but no running water. “[The cabin] had a 5 CD disc changer. I started playing, by chance, George Jones on the CD player. A song called ‘Just One More’ came on and I freaked out in my mind. I didn’t ever know that anyone could sing with that much emotion. After that I was obsessed with George Jones for years, I listened to him all the time, and I kind of taught myself how to sing by singing along to George Jones.”
From that first introduction to country, Simone explained that she quickly “got into blue grass music because that’s what my brother was into and I look up to him a lot and loved the harmonies and the virtuosity of the musicianship. I got really into the 70’s era of grass players who were sort of rejected by the purists, like the Seldom Scene and Old & In The Way. They picked the best songs and crossed out if bluegrass quite a bit.”
“Because I was born in the 80’s, I had so many distinct eras of country to sift through and find my favorites,” she continued. “Jones’ catalog was expansive and I just sort of got deep in it. Later I got into Tom T. Hall’s writing and so I’d listen to whoever was recording his songs. I was really struck by Bobbie Gentry too, but her career was so short. And then I got into Dolly who I think was the most courageous writer in terms of certain stories she was telling, like ‘Down from Dover.’ A true feminist.”
I asked Simone whether she felt any contemporary country artists were doing similar work to One Hundred Dollars. Not really, she replied, but directed me to some of her favourite contemporary acts.
“There’s a band out of Toronto called the Pining who’s got a great writer in it, her name’s Julie Faught who’s writing some really beautiful songs,” she said. “There are six members in that band, and they’re all writing great stuff. You should check them out for sure. I’ve been listening to a lot of Dwight Yoakam lately. I also really like the Foggy Hogtown Boys, which are a bluegrass band in Toronto. They’ve really inspired me over the years. And everyone should check out John Showman, who’s a great fiddle player from a band called New Country Rehab.”
Simone clearly commands a wealth of knowledge on the subject of country music, and I felt I could keep asking her questions for hours. However, there’s only so much time in a day, so I called it quits as the band rolled into Victoria, and the sun set in Winnipeg. Make sure to check this band out when the Highway brings them to Pop Soda’s on November 15th. It’s gonna be a good night for country music, I guarantee it.