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.

Yeah. That’s what April does. It marches in, way past February, and then into May, the month of the AMP Festival. It marches to the beat of the coolest music the Valley has to offer. While nights quickly get shorter, days quickly get longer, hills greener, and the marchin’ warmer, the only thing left cool around here will be the music. Forget about the cool food, the cool potlucks, the cool films and all the other cool things in and around Wolfville. I mean: who needs to eat when they can, essentially, live and breathe the music, the moods and the melodies available in the next few weeks…

I had the op to snoop around a few local recording facilities lately, and I heard several tracks being laid down. They’re mostly for new CD’s by some of our finest musicians and songwriters. Some of those I won’t mention (yet), since the Hupman Brothers new disc is scheduled to come out around the end of May, and Jack McDonald and Mike Aube are reported as working on the finishing polishes of their new song collections. I won’t talk about Sean Peori‘s new disc either, that’s done later in this issue of the grapevine. Nor will I talk about the TripALady spring dance this Friday, the 27th of March at the Horton Community centre.

I also won’t talk about the upcoming “Night Kitchen Ultimate” event on April 4, even though a lot of exciting people will perform there, including the infamous Jude Pelley and Darren Arsenault, playing as the “Blue Nose Pickers”. I won’t say that it will be the last and ultimate Night Kitchen until September, and I won’t mention that this event will feature Trillium, Wanda St. Louis, Kadijah, Bruce Clarke, Madelene Embree, Hope Gillis, plus an amazing Cello player from Acadia, Gib McInnis, a scene from Wolfville’s Gravely Ghost Walk and much more. No, i shall not whisper a peep…

On Friday, April the 17th, Heather Kelday will have a CD Release show at the Al Whittle Theatre. Her new disc is called “the Hitchin’ Post” and it is Heathers first official solo venture after having released several CD’s with “A Band of Owls” and “Barefoot”. The CD contains eleven very original songs, folk music with elements of jazz and bluegrass. Heather Kelday is a multi-instrumentalist and plays various guitars, mandolin, banjo and piano, among other things. I’d classify her voice under “amazing”, or maybe under “fantastic”. Only grave illness or death in the family will prevent me from attending her CD release show in Wolfville. She will be supported by a cast of fancy musicians, both from Halifax and the Valley.

Another amazing show coming our way is the “World in Wolfville Drum Night“, on Saturday, April 18. This year (yippee!) the Toronto based fusion band “Autorickshaw” (www.autorickshaw.ca) will be the special guest. I experienced them for the first time in Toronto in the summer of 2006. Suba Sankaran and her band had me hypnotized from the first note to the last. The Drum Night will be hosted by Wolfville’s very own Ken Shorley, who will also perform a percussive duet with each member of Autorickshaw. For more information about this  one please check www.worldinwolfville.com.

The photos in this vid taken by Bruce Dienes, Ming Sam, Amanda Ferguson, David Gallant. Depicted AMP 2009 participants are John Kavanagh, Jack McDonald, Chris Robison, Adam Bazinet, Cheryl Gaudet, Heather Kelday, Mike Aube, Rocket d’Eon, Sean Peory, Ryan Hupman, Scott Hupman, Ariana Nasr, Andy Flinn, Kimberly Smith, Mike Milne, Kate Adams, Darren Arsenault, Aran Silmeryn, Denise Aspinall, Paul Marshall, Carter Lake.

Apart from the readership, the greatest supporter of the Grapevine is a Windsor business called Cocoa Pesto. Since I am a great fan of this publication, and a fan of good food, I took one of those front page coupons from an earlier issue and carried it all the way to the birth place of hockey, to that yellow house on King Street, the one with the reputation for great taste. Of course I was accompanied by my life companion.

It was easy to find a parking spot next to that elegantly restored 1850′s home, even though the restaurant was very busy. Yes, I was glad we had a reservation, which got us seated immediately. The restaurant is compartmentalized into several semi-open rooms, each with ample light flooding in from the courtyard garden. The atmosphere was relaxed and very cozy, the ceilings high (yes, I like that) and the smiles on the staff genuine. I think what pleased me most about our dining experience at the Woodshire Inn was the fact that my high expectations were surpassed. Easily. We were pampered, entertained and fed better than we had been in a long, long time. Kinda nice. A real treat. Good portions, visually pleasing presentation, great taste and a gentle, attentive pace of service. Now that’s the kind of pleasure that hit’s the spot. All spots!

Last summer I wrote an article about Scott Geddes, partner in Cocoa Pesto and the Woodshire Inn in Windsor. I spent a big part of an afternoon with him in Windsor and learned a lot about the enthusiastic and energetic entrepreneur. This time we had coffee in Wolfville, and we talked about various issues related to an emerging local economy. About supplies of local produce to restaurants (he knows a lot about that sort of thing), about supporting local causes and about creating local information networks. And we decided to run a related experiment:

In this issue of the Grapevine (and the next two issues) you’ll find a special coupon at the bottom of this front page. It is available only in the Grapevine, and and can be entered into the draw for a grand prize when buying the “AMP Festival Special” at Cocoa Pesto. The Prize: A front row entrée for you and five friends (6 people) at a live jazz performance at Cocoa Pesto on the evening Tuesday the 5th of May, 2009. The winners will be announced in the Grapevine of April 23.

For each of the next three issues of the Grapevine (March 26, April 9 & 23), Cocoa Pesto will draw a winner of two weekend passes for AMP Festival in Wolfville. This includes tickets to four shows at the Al Whittle Theatre in Wolfville featuring artists like ECMA 2009 nominee Ryan Cook and award winning singer/songwriter Ian Sherwood, blues virtuosos Caleb Miles the Hupman Brothers and many others.

For more information about the Woodshire Inn and Cocoa Pesto, visit www.thewoodshire.com on the world wide web, and for more information about the AMP Festival in Wolfville, visit www.ampfest.ca.

WOW! This is a community event of staggering proportions. More than half a dozen dozens of women in our community pull together to complete a project that started almost a year ago. The new show is called “Women of the Night“.

Blows my mind. They write, edit, negotiate, choreograph, act, sing, dance, direct and produce. There’s fund raising, poster design and distribution, canteen duty as well as hundreds and hundreds of hours of memorizing steps, lines, melodies and movements. There’s set design, props, stage management, wardrobe, musical arrangements and direction. There’s coaching, all kinds of learning and there is team work.

This is definitely part of the Wolfville “bubble”. These women, aged 5 to 93, build and strengthen our community through artistic creation. They are part of why I dig this town. To me, they radiate love and passion for art and performance. I keep trying to imagine all the give and take. I marvel at the tolerance and capacity for compromise that is necessary to put such a classy show together. These are skills I recognize more often in Wolfville than any other place I’ve lived in. And they kind of are “our” women.  I mean: Nobody here knows nobody in WOW

The script for “Women of the Night” is an original work that examines the lives of women between midnight and dawn. The poster explains it in detail. It’s black, black again, and shows a pair of legs in fishnet stockings. Check it out when you see it. It’s provocatively designed to remind of show times, ticket outlets and the theme of the show. Yep, it’s gonna be something else! After googling for WOW and browsing web sites I suspect that this years show includes a whole bunch of dance and vocal performances. Duh! There are hints of Spanish singing and dancing. I heard about joking song-and-dance vampires. There’s been talk about monsters who have parents. But that’s just about all the information that is available. I guess there is an easy way to find out more about this production: “Go see it!”. I’ve done just that last year, the year before, and the year before that. I was thrilled and delighted every single time. There’s nothing like it within a 10 hour drive, I’m sure.

The Women of Wolfville sell out the Festival Theatre every year. I dispense shrewd advice when I encourage an early ticket purchase! Proceeds will go to charitable causes selected by the WOW fundraising committee. This year that includes: Stepping Stone in Halifax, Carey Me Supporting Palliative Care in the Home in the Valley, The Change Project in Tanzania, War Child, G2G (Grannies) project in Kenya, and the Jan Vikas Samiti project in India.

Show times are Thursday – Saturday, February 26, 27 and 28th at 8 p.m. and a 2 p.m. matinee on Saturday, the 28th. Tickets cost $15 ($12 for students/seniors) and are available through WOW members, in Wolfville at EOS FINE FOODS LTD on Front Street and the BOX OF DELIGHTS BOOK SHOP or at PHINNEYS MEN’S and LADIES WEAR LTD in Kentville or by calling 542-5738.

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