award tour

I forgot to mention it but I’m going to south by southwest this year with matt & aaron. already booked my flight and aaron scored some local passes. yeeha! austin, texas, here we come. feel free to note how much you hate me below.

So one of the major perks to my job is that various musicians come into the office during lunch hour and play a couple tunes. In the last year this has included Mike Doughty, Matisyahu, Ben Harper, Mates of State, and Gomez. So today was made “extra super fantastic” by the fact that John Roderick of The Long Winters came into the office to play. Playing solo on an acoustic guitar, John belted out Pushover, Honest, Cinnamon, Ultimatum, Scared Straight, and Commander Thinks Aloud. If you’ve ever seen John in concert on heard him on the radio, he’s a really entertaining guy. Today was no different. Not bad for a lunch hour.

I was also lucky enough to snag a copy of the new album from Barsuk’s owner Josh Rosenfeld, who only had a couple to spare. After running back to my office to grab a marker, I returned to where John played to see if I could get an autograph. He was still around and we started to chat. If you’re a regular reader of awardtour, you might remember that I reviewed the album about a month back. I followed up the post by pointing out that some fans on the Long Winters forum really didn’t appreciate my writing. This became even crazier when someone posted a comment saying they actually were John Roderick and said they actually enjoyed my review. So, as you can imagine, I just had to ask him about this…

Me: Any chance you read the forums on your band’s website?
John: Ya
Me: Any chance you commented on my blog that was getting trashed in the forum?
John: That was you! Yeah, I commented on your blog…

He then went on to comment about how sensitive people get about stuff like that and how he thought it was cool that I actually pointed out people bashing me. And I’m flying to San Francisco for the weekend. Not a bad day eh?

One great thing about living in the states is that when a canadian band comes to town you don’t have to rush out to get tickets to the 4th sold out show. No, for the most part you just calmly walk to the venue the night of the event and purchase a ticket from the door. This, of course, does not apply to the Arcade Fire. But when Jason Collett plays a show at the Sunset Tavern, you know you’re signing up for a pretty intimate concert. Collett and his ragtag 4-piece band of musicians played to an audience of about 20 active listeners. This included the fellow I stood in front of who had come to the show with a mic (attached to an 8 foot tripod) and what appeared to be some serious equipment in a backpack. I have no idea why he was allowed to do such blatant bootlegging but I’m glad he did because I ended up with a copy of the entire set. It’s good to know that you can depend on the kindness of random bootleggers to send you CDs in the mail.

The Tavern, which is situated in Ballard, isn’t the most compelling venue. It’s narrow, the stage is about 6 inches off the ground, the speakers are always tweaking, and for every person watching the show there’s at least one other person in the back talking as loud as they possibly can. This last fact is really important if you’re trying to bootleg the show in question. To my surprise, the disc that arrived at my house actually sounds pretty good. Come to think of it, the loudest voices on the recording are either me or my friend John. On Tropic of Safety you can hear me yell “whoo” several times. John, who was blown away by the band, can be heard to say “I might following them tomorrow night” to Portland (listen at 1:49 on the same track to hear it).

What is missing in the recording is a proper record of the several absurdities that occurred that night. First, there was one obscenely drunk college student named “Scotty” who’s friends kept buying shots of JD for the band in the name of ole’ Scotty. Then, during a song for which I don’t know the name, a not-so-good-looking woman began to dance in front of the stage in a fashion which I can only describe as gypsy/third-rate-stripper. But she wasn’t done with just this first interpretive dance. She later topped herself by attempting to include a handstand in her dance which ended with a loud thud of failure. Though Collett kept his composure, the guitarist had trouble holding back laughter while the bass player just stared in utter disbelief. John, on the other hand, had to walk outside because he was laughing so hard.

It’s also worth noting that the concert was fucking amazing. Collett was awesome and his band fucking rocked. It was easily one of the best concerts I’ve been to in the last year. If you have a chance to see them in concert, do so. If you’re in southern ontario, they’ll be playing at hillside . So, without further ado…

jason collett - tropic of safety [MP3]
jason collett - unknown (highway 401) [this guy’s flickr account.

I’ve been trying to think how to best describe Josh Rouse’s latest LP Subtitulo. You see, it’s good but it’s also formulaic. And my music-nerdness insists I dislike for this reason but, at the current moment, rouse’s very good formula is winning out over my unqualified snobbery. I mentioned to Bryan that one of the Bill Withers-esque songs on thealbum is destined to appear in a Gap commercial. Bryan’s response: “I think he’s been hoping for a gap commercial for a long time… this is like 6 albums or something and he’s still playing for crap small venues”. This is true as I did see him over at Neumo’s on the weekend. And wow, there were some superfans there.

To be a bit lazy, I’m just going to steal Amazon’s dead-on review of the disc because it’s so damn satisfying to read. You should also note that It Looks Like Love is one of those Withers-esque songs I was talking about…

Subtítulo, so named because the artist has curled himself up in the culture of his adopted country, Spain, is as stuck in the ’70s as anything he’s produced, only this time he’s sprinkled on Basque-country flavoring. Quiet Town paints so pretty a picture of sleepy romantic Euro villa life that it comes across as a kick in the shin to daydreaming suburbanites; Summertime effectively recreates long days by Grandma’s kidney-shaped pool; It Looks Like Love cops a Seals & Crofts soft-rock creaminess that goes down so easy it really has no business presenting itself in this decade. [...] Pick an adjective to attach to this disc, and invariably you’ll come up with a tepid one like “nice.” But you’ll mean it in the best way possible.

josh rouse - quiet town MP3
josh rouse - summertime MP3

The photo in the header is a creative commons enabled photo.

The last time I had been in the Horseshoe Tavern poor Davey von Bohlen and his new band Maritime had to perform in front me, my two friends, 4 music nerds (each of whom was there by themselves), a couple that was all over each other, and 2 girls who showed up solely to talk on their cell phones. Luckily for Sam Beam, better known as Iron & Wine, more than 11 people showed up for his show at the Horseshoe. As it turned out, a whole helluva lotta’ people showed up and all of them had put their applauding pants on that morning. I can only imagine the shock someone might have had if they arrived at the concert having never heard the uber-mellow sound of Iron&Wine and then witnessing the crowd react like a 747 at take-off after each and every song. Although the music is bare boned and sleep-inducing to mtv viewers some, you can’t deny the intensity of Sam Beam’s words. Like Serj Tankian, Beam’s lyrics scream from his very soul. This is all the more remarkable since Beam does his ’screaming’ through Downy soft vocals which he whispers into the mic ‘as though he’s trying not to wake a sleeping baby in the next room’*. (more…)