New CD “Look at them Apples” Launch on Nov. 28 | t@b Music.

On the day that this Grapevine hits the streets, there’s a grand “We Love Lovis” benefit concert taking place at the Festival Theatre. Heather Kelday will arrive just in time to participate…

Arrive from where? Well, well, well. It appears that Heather, over the last few years, has accumulated quite a following in Ontario. She plays shows in Toronto and other hot spots several times a year. With her latest release, “Hitchin’ Post” she’ll appear in many festivals this summer, including, but not limited to, the Deep Roots Music Festival and the Folk Harbour Festival in Lunenburg.

The Hupman Brothers, who just released a brand new, smoking CD titled “Countin’ Quarters”, toured with Matt Andersen earlier this year. That trip brought them as far as the murky waters of the Pacific Ocean, dishin’ out blues, Valley style, in the west-most provinces. Of course you’ll be able to catch them at the Dutch Mason Blues Festival in Truro and many other great events this year. Check their calendar.

I also saw John Tetrault performing at the Jazz Festival in Toronto, where I also saw Coco Love Alcorn, Ian Sherwood. Around the end of June, Thugs at Bay, another Wolfville ensemble, played a string of 15 shows in New Brunswick, Ontario and Quebec. Bluegrass guitarist Darrin Beaton was seen performing in Ontario this summer, including shows in Collingwood, St. Catherines, Toronto as well as the Cicadafest on the Niagara Peninsula.

It appears that the rest of Canada is slowly noticing and appreciating the musical talent from Wolfville and the Annapolis Valley. It’s sort of funny when you hang out in Ontario and run into people and Festival organizers who know very well who the Hupman Brothers are.  And folks are coming to Wolfville to hear music, to wine and dine, and to enjoy stylings like nowhere else on the planet. No wonder I have so much fun around here!

It’s been brewing for a few months now. Initially I heard only whisperings. Then I met Ian Sherwood, “Up on the Ridge”, at the Hupman‘s Place. He was there to lay down some saxophone tracks. I heard, for the first time, a few tracks of their upcoming new CD: “Countin’ Quarters”. There are Hammond and fiddle sounds, double bass and some (un)real electricity. Now the disc is all that’s a-playin’ at our house.

A couple of years ago, when their first CD came out, I said to myself: “It just ain’t gonna get much better than that!”. Of course I was wrong. Since then I learned that Scott plays electric and upright bass, that he is a recording engineer and sound guy. Ryan is a visual artist and lyricist, and together with drummer Mike Carroll the brothers keep a groove that can be felt all the way to Chicago and Detroit. I am still amazed at how accurately this new CD represents the Hupman Brothers: The sounds are straight forward. The mood of the songs reached my heart before my mind caught on, and the space that the band creates allows them to be joined by musical fellows, listeners and dancers before the first verse is done.

Man! I stuck the thing into my computer and the thing went from zero to sixty in just a few seconds. The first song is called “Repeat” and features the classic trio sound with drums, bass and strat. Halfway through, Ian Sherwood kicks in with a few horns. I took the hint and switched my player program to “Repeat”. Gimme some more!

The Album mixes a laid back sense of home with melancholy. It oozes heart and hope. These are the guys everybody wants to play with. They make fast, driving R’n'B sound like a piece of cake and they draw fellow virtuosos like moths to the flame. On this record you’ll hear Caleb Miles playing his electric guitar, you’ll hear Bob Federer playing keyboard like nobody else in the Valley and Ian’s Saxophones are on six of the twelve tracks.

“Countin’ Quarters”, the CD, and “Countin’ Quarters”, the title track, both, conjure up an image of taking stock, choices made and dues paid, hands extended to friends, joy and sorrow shared. I tip my hat to Scott and Ryan, to the trials and tribulations of brotherhood. They keep setting the example, the standard and the bar of musicianship, of inclusion and of support.

The band met at the Frizzelizer's Place

I will make sure to be in attendance when the Hupman Brothers celebrate the completion of their latest recording with a concert at the Al Whittle Theatre in Wolfville, on Saturday, the 30th of May, Apple Blossom weekend. The preparations for this show are running at full steam. Most of the participating musicians met last Monday at Brian Frizzle’s Dungaree Lair for a rehearsal. I was lucky enough to listen in, and I heard a world class blues band, having fun, groovin’ out, tradin’ licks. There’s a buzz out there. It’s coming. My number one CD of the Year.

CD Cover: Frank Fisher ~ Buttons and Whistles

Frank Fisher, who is a walking repository of bluenose folk music, has just finished his first CD recording. After the last Night Kitchen event of the 2008/2009 season, Frank Fisher met Jude Pelley, who was performing with Darren Arsenault under the handle “Blue Nose Pickers” that night. Jude Pelley is an accomplished mandolin and guitar player, with countless recording from coast to coast to his credit.

Frank Fisher was consequently invited to the South Shore, where Jude helped him arrange and record a bunch of original and traditionals songs. This beautiful collection of songs features Frank Fisher singing, playing the button accordion and the tin whistle.  Jude Pelley plays strings, percussion. Derek Pelley, Jude’s father plays the bass guitar.

When you next see Frank Fisher play his accordion in Wolfville, ask him about his new CD. He’ll likely be able to fix you up with a copy. It’s worth it! I got one myself!

Find Frank Fisher on YouTube…

Shannon Lynch performed as "Frodo" in the Lord of the Rings in Toronto

In less than two months, the front page of the Grapevine will be written by somebody new, somebody who has been carefully selected by Ariana and myself, somebody who we know will do a wonderful job.  More about that on another of my remaining front pages. We will focus a little more on music.

Everybody in my household is a musician. All of us are quite passionate about noise that sounds pretty. We’re into sounds that gently touch people, and we’re into people who love music, which brings this diatribe right back to Wolfville. In the course of the last three years, people of this town and it’s surroundings have taught us more about music than we learned in the 8 years prior to coming (back) here.

Since April 2007 we had the privilege of continuing a Wolfville tradition called Night Kitchen. This event takes place on the first Saturday of every month, from September to April. It was started (under a different name) by Ken Shorley and continued by Valley Arts Award winner Jack McDonald and later by the fabulous Mud Creek Boys. We saw shows of Ken, Jack, the Boys and countless other performers, and we experienced the most incredible phenomenon of all: the Wolfville audience. While we learned from the Hupmans, while we sang songs by Adam Bazinet and other Wolf-villains, while we worked with visual artists and organizers, we were overwhelmed by the Wolfville audience. Where else do three percent (!!!) of the population fill up the local (Al Whittle) theatre and sing, as an audience, three part harmonies to a song they never heard before? Just search YouTube for “Ian Sherwood Shot Our Love @ Night Kitchen” and you’ll know what I mean. These days, if you want to get a musician to play at the Al Whittle in Wolfville, you just need to mention the audience. Ian Sherwood, decorated with awards and ECMA nominations didn’t need much convincing to return to Wolfville for the AMP Festival on May 8,9 and 10. That is this weeks story. continue…

The trumpet player Caleb Hamilton, who will share the AMP Festival stage with several performers, must have mentioned the audience, when he told the eclectic songstress Ronley Teper about the AMP Festival. She will fill her trunk with friends and instruments, drive some 2000 klicks from Toronto and back, just to play the Whittle in Wolfville. She told me about her plans to get Acadia’s own percussionist Mark Adam to sit in with her on her May 9 performance here. Ryan Cook, “Best Country Recording of the Year 2009″ ECMA nominee, must have felt the same. Haligonian Shannon Lynch, who performed as “Frodo” in Toronto’s Lord of the Rings musical, of course already knew. He will be the Master of Ceremonies in the Saturday night show and perform at the Sunday Night Mothers Day Gala. In fact, more than thirty single performers and groups will come to Wolfville on Mothers Day (Convocation) weekend to play for this, the most wonderful audience north of the south pole.

Tickets for each AMP Festival show cost $12. All four shows can be seen for $36. They are available at the Box of Delights Bookshop in Wolfville or from t@b at the Wolfville Farmers Market.

Sometimes, I get sort of freaked out a bit.  The April night kitchen is going to be our (Thugs at Bay‘s) two year anniversary. And it has been an incredible learning experience. I can’t help think that night kitchen benefits from the best audience ever. Last Saturday, in fact, they filled the Al Whittle Theatre completely: With Laughter, with support and with goodwill. They also filled every available seat.

This video here is John Kavanagh’s Ukulele Group. They meet weekly and practice enjoying music uke-in-hand….

Performers (2 this week) travel from as far as Halifax (sometimes farther) to participate in this event under the same conditions as our local performers. Below is a video of Ian Sherwood, singer/songwriter from Halifax, who drove to Wolfville with fellow musician Erika Kulnys, just to participate @ Night Kitchen…

And then, of course there was our Chris Robison, performing in sextet formation:

Wanna perform? Contact us: http://tabmusic.ca/contact

The newest “Thugs at Bay” (t@b) CD “New Teeth On Stage” is now available on iTunes. Below you’ll find a few music videos from the very same CD. It contains nine brand new songs written by Thugs at Bay along with one song each by Jenny Ritter (from “the Gruff”), Jack McDonald and Chris Robison. The CD was recorded live at the Al Whittle Theatre in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada.

Between May 8 and May 10 this year, a brand new music festival is going to take place in Wolfville: The Acoustic/Alternative Music Producers (AMP) festival. “Why would that be necessary?”, I asked myself more than a few times already. Acoustic could be quite an elastic term, and most things are an alternative to most other things…

So I spent some time talking to several people involved in the AMP festival. Most of them are professional performing or recording artists, or both. Some are media folks, venue representatives, photographers, film makers, actors, poets, legal experts, politicians or “organizers”. Turns out, apparently, that there are many, mostly legal and financial impediments to selling concert or movie tickets, posting YouTube videos, printing photography books or distributing films, DVD’s and/or CD’s. Independent artists are typically too busy struggling. They’re unlikely to solve or circumvent the problems associated with media production. There are intellectual property issues, recording costs, photographic model releases, various forms of copyrights, mechanical rights, synchronization rights, credits, remuneration, accounting… feeling nauseous yet?

In the media and entertainment industry the money goes to whoever secures all required rights, to the pushers of pencils, to the providers of the (cash?) “advance”. Traditionally production problems are solved like this: One single (legal) person buys the services of camera operators, writers performers and writers, sound engineers and others. That (legal) person also purchases the required rights and permissions for background music, songs and “logos”, and, as a result, owns and controls the entire production. A workable arrangement if you’re included, compensated and credited. In these parts, where water, ideas and air apparently can be “owned”, people with “legal tender” thus control people who create or invent things.

The AMP music festival, on the other hand, works like this: Performers, songwriters and composers, including some of the valleys very finest, will gather during several (ticketed) festival events, and perform exclusively self-composed material to which they own all intellectual property rights. The ticket money collected from the audience will pay for venue rental, advertising, professional sound recording, photography, and the operation of multiple video-cameras. It will also cover some of the expenses incurred by the performers and festival staff. All net profit from the festival will be evenly divided, as honorarium, among performers and festival staff alike.

In the center of it all, the festival facilitates the bartering of artistic services by creating contract relationships with performers, photographers, audio and video professionals, staff and audience (ticket conditions). Performers end up with the right to commercially use all photo, audio and video footage of their performance. Photographers will end up with the right to freely profit from any photographs they took during the ticketed events. The festival will be allowed to use one composition per performer for compilation CD’s or DVD’s and promotion.

But most of all, the Audience will experience some of the most intense performances by some of the finest independent talent. Performers are very likely to perform some of their newest and hottest material in order to produce the newest and hottest media possible. I’ll be there for sure, lemmetellya!

My band has done it twice now. Within the timespan of about a year, we’ve recorded two concerts with a multitrack recording system. Once, we produced a live concert DVD and last time we produced a CD with mostly brand new songs (example: Thinking About You). We plan to record another 8 shows (not all our own) during the year 2009. This document sort of summarizes some of the things we learned.

Planning/Preparation

The planning of a live audio recording affects the end result more than most other aspects of the process. While the actual recording of a show takes aproximately 2 hours, It takes at least 4 hours to set up the venue with snake, soundboard, recording gear, microphones, level checks, sound check and other details.

Leading up to a live recording session, we step up rehearsals significantly. We also try to fill our performance calendar. The more we play, the better we sound. Weird eh? The quality of the performance is likely the single most important factor in the quality of the end product. Here’s one thing I cling to with near religious fervour:

“The performer needs to play for the audience, while the “tape” is observing (recording). Do NOT play for the “tape” while the audience is observing. Big Diff!”

Here’s a (likely incomplete) checklist for things to plan for.

• Channel Allocations: We usually create a channel map way in advance. Since the number of channels available for simultaneous recording was limited (8 track in our case). Here’s what it looked like for a more simple project: http://tabmusic.ca/live2008sound
• Hard disc space for post production: at 96kHz 1 hour of one track takes, lets say 2 gigabytes of space. Every hour of  an 8-track recording thus will take 16 gigs. Plan to use 40 gigabytes for a two hour show…

Recording Tips

• All your inputs (Mics/DI’s) are sent to two main destinations: The main speakers for the audience (or no speakers at all in a pure acoustic setting) and the recording device. It is vital, saving time and money, to make sure that recording levels are NEVER adjusted during a performance. EVER. Your signal paths must branch to the recording device before manipulation for the audience.
• The more quiet a stage is, the more crisp a performance will sound. Recording or not. Avoid amplifying the loudest acoustic sound source on stage. Only amplify (through monitors) quiet sound sources to properly match the loudest acoustic sound source.
• Never mute a recording input. If a signal comes through, you may as well record it. In fact, this might save the day. Also, depending on your recording hardware, this will make it way easier to reassemble the recording on a personal computer (, if you use a standalone DAW for recording…).