Winnipeg music & culture since 1989
by Sheldon Birnie
The Hillbilly Highway crosses many borders. Provincial, state, international: it doesn’t give a fuck. I cruised myself down the Pembina Highway to America last week in order to check out two of my favourite bands — the Drive-By Truckers and Those Darlins — play at First Avenue in Minneapolis. The trip was short, but sweet as fucking sin. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Cruising the Interstates to First Avenue”
by Sheldon Birnie
The Drive-By Truckers are a band from the Muscle Shoals, Alabama / Athens, Georgia areas. They play southern inspired rock and roll, with literate as hell lyrics and a touch of country and a dash of R&B. They’ve put about a dozen records, give or take a couple, since 1998, most of which I own on LP, CD, or both, and the rest of which I have on MP3. They’ve played thousands upon thousands of shows up and down and all over the Hillbilly Highway, and are hitting Minneapolis right aways.
Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Drive-By Truckers passing on your left”
by Sheldon Birnie
Those Darlins are a group of three babes and one sweet dude who rock. The formula is sure fire – who doesn’t love babes? – but their output is above and beyond the pale.
The Hillbilly Highway is filled with groups with similar dynamics. Hell, Winnipeg itself is infested with successful groups of rootsy babes. But there’s more to kicking ass at every honky-tonk on the Hillbilly Highway than a pretty face or three. Those Darlins are different. Hard work, crotch punching songs and a bunch of hearts hungry for rock have combined: the result is an act to catch while you can.
Currently riding the road in support of their sophomore LP Screws Get Loose, the band is set to play in Minneapolis next week with the Drive-By Truckers, one of my favourite groups in the world. I am making the pilgrimage to Twin Cities, America to catch the gig, and I’d be a goddamn liar if I said I wasn’t pumped. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Gettin’ loose with Those Darlins”
Tim Hus is a Canadiana Country singer based out of Calgary, AB. Born in Nelson, B.C., Hus has traveled the Hillbilly Highway back and forth across the Great White North countless times, by train, by truck and by thumb. On Thursday, October 20th, he rolls into the Times Change(d) here in Winnipeg for an intimate set in one of his favourite watering holes.
Hus’s latest album, Hockeytown, is a Canadiana beauty in the vein of classic Canadian storytellers like Stompin’ Tom Connors and Ian Tyson. The title track is arguably one of the best hockey songs ever put to tape, up there for certain with Tom’s own classic and Propagandhi’s “Dear Coaches Corner.” I caught up with Tim as he was rolling through rural Quebec, after spending Thanksgiving playing shows on Prince Edward Island, and we quickly got talking about the Jets.
“I’m absolutely thrilled that Winnipeg has the Jets back again,” Hus told me. “I always figured that if there was ever a Canadian city that should have a hockey team, it would have to be Winnipeg. So, I was disappointed when they lost the Jets, and I’m thrilled that you’ve got them back.”
Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Pit stop with Tim Hus”
Sometimes when you’re cruising down the highway, some slick somebody cuts you off and burns away, leaving you in their dust.
This week, I was going to write about the Times Change(d), as beauty a rest-stop on the Hillbilly Highway as any in the free world. See, there’s a film coming out about the joint this Thursday at the Times itself, with screening and performances by Times regulars Andrew Neville & the Poor Choices and Guerrillas of Soul.
But Kent Davies beat me to it, the truck driving son of a gun. And he did a good job of it too, summing up the event and the beauty of the bar succinctly. Like an experienced vet; like a pro. Read about it on the Uniter’s blog.
Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – High & Lonesome Times”
Photo by Jordan Janisse // Jellyfish Installation
Since I had felt quite underdressed the night previous at The Drugs’ Festival Psychedelique at Negative Space, for Nuit Blanche I dolled myself up with eyeliner, some pearls of Elise’s, and a blazer of mine that I pretty much never wear. Indeed, I felt like putting myself out there for a night I hoped to be a little more out-there than Winnipeg’s first stab at Nuit Blanche the previous year.
First up was the drawing competition happening at the Edge Gallery hosted by the Places for Peanuts drawing club. Having been friends with some of the Peanuts—who are mostly Art City employees/volunteers—but never having attended their drawing club, I was keen to get drawing, and started making scribbling after scribbling of shit and drawings of people shitting as soon as Janessa handed out the paper pads and pens. (A pad which I later passed on to Kelly Ruth that night.) Soon enough, Chesterfieldians Elise, Scott, Ryan, and I got to playing a game of visual Telephone to warm ourselves up for Drawball(?) taking the name of Team Ottoman[sp?]. Drawball, which is pretty much Pictionary on speed, felt like some sort of “bring it bring it” b-boy/b-girl battle, with the practiced Peanuts definitely strutting their stuff ’n’ scribbles, and taking home their Cracker Jack prizes. But fuck, how can someone draw “Deal with it”?! Continue reading “First Class Riot; Nuit Blanche 2011”
I’ve been listening to Fred Eaglesmith’s latest, 6 Volts, since it dropped into my mailbox a couple weeks back. The songs on 6 Volts are classic Fred, tunes of murder, love lost, guns and the Road. Recorded with one mic straight to tape, the disc has the mono immediacy of old Sun records, a sound even John Mellencamp has toying with of late.
Fred’s a road dog, traveling thousands of klicks a year, playing hundreds of shows in an endless cycle that takes him into every backwater, big town and metropolis in North America, and beyond. Three tunes in particular, maybe four, off 6 Volts really hone in on the reality of an aging troubadour who can’t quit grinding it out.
“Betty Oshawa” tells the tale of a musical partnership that fell apart, eponymous Betty making it big while the narrator bags groceries in his hometown. “Johnny Cash” takes issue with Johnny-come-lately-Johnny-fans, taking the fickle listener to task for not supporting an artist while they’re alive. “Trucker Speed” ain’t necessarily about a traveling singer, but it very well could be.
“Stars” hits home hardest. Fred talks straight up about gigging non-stop, playing small towns like you’re the biggest star. Long after the lights have gone down, the protagonist sings “My hands hurt from playing my guitar / All those nights in all those bars / We played like we were stars.” Fred mentions long time bandmate Willie P. Bennett, and laments how easy it is to think the good times will never end. Playing in a band, it’s easy to feel this way.
I’ve seen Fred play a couple times now, and I’ve missed him even more by bad timing and my own traveling. I met him once, out behind the Park Theatre a couple years back. Me and my buddy Woodtick were slamming the last of our beers before heading in to catch the opening act, the Ginn Sisters. As we were rounding the corner, there’s a van with Ontario plates sitting there with the door wide open on the side. Out rolls Fred, putting his socks on.
We stopped, and I made straight for Fred, extending my hand. We chatted him up, gave him one of our CDs to “listen to if you get sick of the radio.”
“You in a band?” he asked us. We nodded. Yessir. We put out our CD ourselves, we humble bragged. “That’s the only way to do it, boys,” he said. He looked at the CD briefly, set it aside, and finished pulling his socks on. Then he looked up at us.
“Never quit, boys,” he told us, looking us both in the eye. “Never quit.”
In the songs on 6 Volts, you know Fred really means it. He ain’t quitting anytime soon. Thank something for that.
– Sheldon Birnie
There is a road that stretches back in time, back beyond the interweb, beyond compact discs, cassette tapes, vinyl records and gramophones. It winds between hills and hollers, follows riverbanks and lakeshores deep into the woods and across tall grass prairie. It picks up from quays and travels back across seas, crossing itself time and again in backwater voids, where wind whips dead branches against nothing and scavenger birds craw out in vain.
This is the same road Steve Earle and Dwight Yoakam sang about in the 80s, same road the Boss, and Dylan before him. Before them all, Hank Williams sang about this Lost Highway. The sands of time have largely obscured the names of those who sang about it before ol’ Hank, but their numbers are legion and their ghosts walk the road still.
This is the Lost Highway, the Thunder Road, Highway 51, Route 23. The Hillbilly Highway, the Nowhere Road. The low road. Maybe you’re walking it now, following your dreams up and down Pembina Highway or Portage Avenue, Highway One or 17.
I been on many of these roads, myself. I just cruised down a gooder: west on provincial Highway 2, with a south turn at Holland onto 34. 34 hits a stop at 3, then heads west again to 3A. Now you’re in country country.
The tiny village of Clearwater, MB has hosted the perennial Harvest Moon Festival for the past ten years. Formed as “a celebration of the harvest season, local food production, the area’s rich cultural heritage, and the bond between rural and urban folks,” the festival is like no other in Manitoba. A strong community dedicated to surviving against the economic and political forces that are draining people and money from the prairies, Clearwater is itself a beacon of potential for any community struggling to remain viable in the 21st century.
And the music is fucking good too. Highlights, for me, this year were the Deep Dark Woods, CKUW favourite Greg MacPherson and Ridley Bent’s Good Looking Country Band. Each delivered to-notch performances in weather bordering on frigid. Many other acts performed throughout the days, including Bog River and the Reverend Rambler, names to look for on the hillbilly highway in the months and years to come.
Keep your eyes on the road. It has a way of winding somewhere strange.
– Sheldon Birnie
By David Nowacki
Astron-6 are deviants. Astron-6 are pagan goat-worshippers. Astron-6 sacrifice small mammals for no reason but for their own fetishistic delights. Astron-6 are rotted barnacles on the hull of Hollywood. Astron-6 are sadomasochistic pain farmers. Astron-6 would cause the Marquis de Sade to dry heave. Astron-6 is like Chernobyl, if Chernobyl made films. Since 2007, Astron-6 has been spreading their vile trash through the Internet (a common home for most garbage). Ostensibly from Winnipeg, but more likely churned out from a vomitous carcass pit, Astron-6 consists of five filmmakers (Matthew Kennedy, Adam Brooks, Conor Sweeney, Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski) who revel in the filth, surrealism and violence of ’80s genre flicks. They recently were noticed by the industry’s premier purveyor of pulp, Troma Entertainment, who opted to produce their first feature-length film, Father’s Day. I managed to lure Conor Sweeney, the pervert, into my interview dungeon, and here’s what he had to say for himself:
Stylus: What is it about this genre of film that attracts you?
Conor Sweeney: They’re basically the movies you were MOST restricted from seeing as a kid. Sex comedies and Reagan Era action movies were as well, but exploitation movies had everything from all genres that were off-limits. And they had the coolest covers. That’s what drew us to them as kids. As filmmakers, it’s basically a genre that you can do anything in and get away with. You can be visually and thematically very surreal and still have a movie that people take seriously.
Stylus: What are your hopes for Astron-6, what is the group’s plan for the future?
CS: Chronologically: Father’s Day gets released, it gets rave reviews, after opening overseas peace is realized in the Middle East, followup film offers roll in, Roger Ebert teaches himself how to speak without a lower jaw in order to rave about us, we’re able to support ourselves with our art, suicide pact comes to fruition, little boy in the future makes an Astron-6 tribute on Virtual-YouTube that gets a few hundred hits.
Stylus: Why the renewed attention and interest in grindhouse/exploitation pictures (i.e. Hobo With A Shotgun, Grindhouse, Machete, etc.)?
CS: I think it’s really a nostalgia thing. It reminds a huge group of people of being young and thrilled by the taboo of the horror section at the VHS rental store, or sleazy grindhouse theatres that used to line 42nd street in Manhattan. Exploitation is like the middle sibling of the genre family, it’s the weirdo, and that’s exciting. Not to say middle children are exciting, they’re the worst, but I’m just trying to make the point that it’s a genre that excites people, and the fun aspect of it was abandoned for a long time. These movies bring that back. They don’t take themselves seriously, but they still have balls and that’s what pulls people in.
Stylus: Does Winnipeg have a movie scene that’s receptive to this genre?
CS: Not at all, unfortunately. We’ve hit nothing but brick walls and animosity when we’ve tried to get any funding from within the city. We made movies here for years, and tried to get funding for years and were continually rejected. It’s fine if Winnipeg is trying to present itself a certain way, but the Canadian film industry is so at risk of becoming completely irrelevant for that reason: very few people give edgy or truly ambitious movies a chance. For all those reasons, we had to take our idea to the states, so Father’s Day is an American release. We tried very hard to get funding to make a Canadian feature over the years to no avail. Having said that, there are great people in Winnipeg that have helped us more than we can say. Guy Maddin was nothing but helpful to us completely out of goodwill. John Kozak was the same way. If it wasn’t for guys like that we wouldn’t have been able to make the movie at all.
Stylus: Does everybody get a chance to be responsible for different aspects of the film-making, or do you have set jobs?
CS: Jer does the music and titles and some after-effects, Steve does miniature work and some After Effects, Matt and I write, direct and act, and Adam has had his hand in basically every pot for Father’s Day. When it comes to onset stuff we’re all doing the same thing together. The Communist Manifesto influenced us a lot. Steve is partial to Mein Kampf.
Stylus: Will Father’s Day be playing in any theatres in Winnipeg at any point?
CS: Yes, but I can’t say where until Troma books the theatre. But I promise that there will be a premiere here. If it doesn’t happen I give you permission to personally take it up with them.
Stylus: How important has the Internet been to Astron-6?
CS: It’s where we started, and we wouldn’t have half of the recognition we have now (which isn’t really anything) without it.
Stylus: For fans of your films, any recommended films/places to find similar films?
CS: They Call Her One Eye, Evil Dead, Suspiria, Wet Hot American Summer, My Left Foot, Sophie’s Choice, Fast Five. Movie Village in Osborne is great for obscure and foreign movies with a pretty good variety of pornography.
Perverts.
By Devin King
It’s said that someone suggested to Winston Churchill that he should cut funding to the arts in order to pay for the war effort. Churchill then replied, “Then what would we be fighting for?” Even though there’s not much proof that conversation ever happened, it’s still a good sentiment. This quotation illustrates that one of the hallmarks of a great society – indeed, maybe even humankind – is respect and appreciation for the arts. We are lucky then, to have the Polaris Music Prize as a means to recognize talented Canadian artists. This recognition is problematic though, on a few levels.
The first problem revolves around the criteria for winning the Polaris Prize. The criteria listed quite obtuse, with nominations going to acts who are “creative” and “diverse” as well as those which feature the “highest artistic integrity.”
Imagine taking all of your CDs and ranking them in order of creativity. It might be easy to separate the extremes—say, Len’s You Can’t Stop the Bum Rush on one end and Broken Social Scene’s You Forgot it in People on the other. But even then, it’s problematic because there is no set universal criteria for great music. One of the problems of “great” music is that the definition of great is largely created by the critics who are not necessarily the audience. (Elijiah Wald discusses this in his book How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll.) So while Len might not have the artistic integrity required to be a Polaris Prize winner, a lot of people once seemed to think their music was pretty good.
The Junos or Grammys are often heavily influenced by sales success, so awards given have a certain mathematical definition to them, even if people don’t agree with the outcome. But in the case of Polaris, the parameters are more are less “artisticness.” Maybe separating Len and Broken Social Scene is easy, but how do we decide if The Weeknd is more artistic than Neil Young?
The second problem involves receiving a financial prize. As a teacher, I believe that if someone does something wrong, then the consequence should match the mistake. So if you are caught spray painting a car, it would make more sense for you to hold a free car wash as a consequence than be made to write lines. I think the same might be true of positive actions as well.
This year, the big prize is $30,000, which is $10,000 more than last year. Additionally, every artist or band nominated for the short list will receive $2,000. It’s a lot of money that can provide lots of opportunities for bands. You can record a charity single like 2009 winners Fucked Up, support other bands financially like 2006 winner Owen Pallett or fade into utter obscurity like Patrick Watson in 2007.
$30,000 is a lot of free money to give away. Granted, winners have shown how they can use that money to support their communities, both in the musical and non-musical realms, but I don’t see the connection that means that great music deserves increased wealth. It certainly would allow for the further creation of great art, but offering up the cheque seems like a philosophical disconnect between why we make art and how we reward art.
It seems like a prize more in line with the parameters of a great artist outlined by Polaris would simply be recognition. And sure, recognition will probably lend itself to money. Perhaps there is another prize more reflective of artistic integrity. Maybe the prize should just be the title itself.
Regardless, when the arts are supported, it’s a good thing for society. But how, why and who we reward it are also important factors to consider in order to truly understand how our society perceives art.
