Winnipeg music & culture since 1989
by Sheldon Birnie
Well, friends, the grass is turning green, the trees are budding, and sleeves are being cut off t-shirts at an alarming rate. That can mean but one thing: Festival Season is upon us, Manitoba! Get ready! Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Festival Season warming up”
by Sheldon Birnie
It’s playoff time, folks! If you haven’t been utterly bummed out by the results thus far, keep your chin up; the Sharks are bound to go all the way. Right?
With the Jets dead in the water by the third period of their final game, three out of four Canadian teams out of the running in the first round, and summer bearing down on us like a freight train, it’s understandable that many are losing interest. But not the hockey diehards!
Last week, we spoke with Canadian songwriter Jay Aymar on his way down the Hillbilly Highway. Aymar has written one of the best hockey songs going, and it got me thinking that the time is right for a Top 5 Round-Up about the Best Game You Can Name. So here goes. Game on! Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Top 5 tunes about Hockey”
by Matthew Dyck
Stumbling on Vikings’ yet to be released recordings was kind of like spotting an offshore ship I wasn’t meant to see. Despite playing to large crowds at The Lytics’ CD release show, and opening for touring acts Twin Shadow and Poolside, Vikings have remained almost entirely off the Internet’s radar as the electro-pop trio gathers a following through word of mouth alone. So, naturally, I was curious why an act so catchy would purposefully keep such a low profile. After a daylong blizzard, vocalist Josh Youngson and brothers Dave and James McNabb braved the snow to have coffee with Stylus and reveal their secret strategy to take over your eardrums in 2013 – well, maybe not so secret anymore. Continue reading “Vikings :: Ready to Make Landfall”
by Sheldon Birnie
Toronto based troubadour Jay Aymar is hitting the road for his fourth cross-Canada tour, making an early stop in Winnipeg at the Folk Exchange on Friday. Aymar has been writing songs for over 20 years, going hard at it in the 90s before applying the breaks a bit until a song of his jump started his performing career a few years back. With a keen eye for the details of everyday life, and a storyteller’s approach to the narrative form, Jay Aymar is a great Canadian songwriter slugging it out on the Hillbilly Highway. He checked in with us just before hitting the road on Tuesday. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Jay Aymar rolls through town”
by Victoria King
Good people eat good food. It’s a simple fact of life. Those who are miserable munch on things like “low-cal waffles” and “fructose-free popsicles.” After grabbing some dinner with three quarters of the local folk outfit From Giants, their plates said it all: One order of pad thai, one veggie burger, and a mango smoothie later, (which ended up coming out purple, so let’s hope it was just an accidental “Very Berry”) I had a good feeling about the music they were making. Continue reading “An Interview with From Giants”
by Sheldon Birnie
Country music lost a legend last week. George “The Possum” Jones was quite simply country music’s greatest singer, one of its greatest songwriters, and a legendary personality who will never be seen again in Music City. As the old adage goes, “they broke the mold when they made George Jones.” Amen. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – The Possum Has Left The Building”
By Adrienne Yeung
Blue Hawaii are Alex “Agor” Cowan and Raphelle Standell-Preston, who live in Montreal and play electronic music. If their sound can be described as dream pop, then their first full length album Untogether is a dream neither nightmare nor sweet, but introspective and amorphous. It’s a dream lit by strobe light, where people from your past flicker in and out of the narrative of your subconscious. Untogether sounds like the kind of dream which you wake up from, lie still, and think about.
Instrumentalist Agor and vocalist Raph wrote Untogether in physically separate spaces – and the sound of many songs are likewise disjointed, drifting, pensive, and fragile. Stylus was curious about Blue Hawaii’s songwriting process, so on a spring day in Winnipeg, drinking coffee and wearing three sweaters, we called Agor (who at the time was in San Francisco record store “Amoeba” watching label-mate Doldrums play an in-store show) to chat. Continue reading “Blue Hawaii :: Untogether, Together”
\
by Sheldon Birnie
Last week, I was deep in the desert of southern California, waiting on Coachella festival to get cranked up. Of equal interest to me, though, was the proximity of Coachella to the Joshua Tree National Park. Perhaps most famous among pop music circles for inspiring arguably U2’s best album (if you can stomach any of them, that is), this beautiful space holds a special place in the hearts of country-rock fans as the spiritual home of Gram Parsons. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – Tracking down Gram Parsons’ last partying place”
by Broose Tulloch
An f-hole is the fancy sound hole on a violin, mandolin, or arched-top guitar.
The F-holes are an energetic entanglement of dixieland jazz, traditional bluegrass, and Manitoba roots music. Continue reading “The F-Holes get Red Hot”
by Sheldon Birnie
Chasing a Song is a brand new documentary from local filmmaker Charles Konowal. Some of y’all might remember Charles’ work on Happily Dysfunctional: The Story of Transistor 66 Records. Konowal’s latest is a study of the art of songwriting, by way of local songwriter Scott Nolan, who Konowal met while working on Happily Dysfunctional. The film is a beautifully shot, stirring contemplation of what makes Nolan tick as an artist, with some special appearances from Bobby Stahr and Jesse DeNatale. Shot in Winnipeg, Oklahoma, and Folsom Prison in California, Chasing a Song takes the viewer on quite the trip along the Hillbilly Highway. Stylus caught up with Konowal recently to chat about the making of the film. Continue reading “Hillbilly Highway – A conversation with director of Chasing a Song”