It’s been an other fine year for music in Wolfville. In 2009 I was lucky enough to ad a whole bunch of CD’s to my collection, which includes mostly local stuff and music by people who have performed in Wolfville. Most of these CD’s are available at the Box of Delights, by the way.

On January 10, 2009, Sarah Pound released “It’s About Time“, with a smashing concert at the Baptist Church. That disc is loaded with beautiful songs. These days, you can catch her with Matthew Magee under the name “Casual Show”.

Heather Kelday released her lastest work “Hitchin’ Post“. This album features contributions from a host of local musicians, including John and Andy Kavanagh, Ariana Nasr, Megan Lickley and many others local favourites.

Mike Aubé put out a second disc, “Cluster Folk“, a great collection of new songs. This one includes his band mates Rocket d’Eon and Terry

The Hupman Brothers released their second disc, “Countin’ Quarters“. This one with smokin’ R’n'B and great songwriting, featuring a pile of hot local instrumentalists like Bob Federer, Ian Sherwood, Caleb Miles, Ariana Nasr, Ryan and Scott (Hupman), of course, and Mike Carroll.

John Kavanagh’s second disc, “Small Rooms (Rags, Jazz and Encores for Uke)” appeared a few months after his passing: “To honour his memory and to celebrate his life, John’s friends and family pitched in to complete Small Rooms using the tracks that John had already recorded. The result is a beautiful, intimate portrait of a man and his music.”

That’s not all. There were brand new CD’s by Darren Arsenault, Thugs at Bay, Jamie Junger, Ryan Roberts, and many, many more. Added to the records from previous years I end up with quite a stunning collection which also includes: Band of Owls, Barefoot, Dungaree Brothers, Cuckoo Moon, Sean Peori, Don Osburn, Jack McDonald, Lustre Brothers, Hughie McDonnel.

The amazing thing is: I don’t know about most locally produced CD’s, but I still have enough local music in my house to last me for several days, without repeat! And my collection will get better in 2010. Several artists like Jack McDonald are gearing up to release a new disc this year! Yippee!

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!

John Kavanagh, 1960 - 2009

Who around here wasn’t touched by his music? The first time I saw him play was at the CD release concert for Jack McDonald’s “Domestic Acoustic”. John Kavanagh was a band leader at the Flower Cart’s  jam dance events. On the ukulele he played jazz, Mozart and everything in between. Being a popular session musician, he played bass for John Tetrault and viola da gamba for Hope Gillis. On  countless CD’s he can be heard playing guitar, ukulele and other instruments. He recently toured the New England States with an international ukulele caravan and was part of Heather Kelday’s Mud Creek Symphonic. Together with his son Andy he performed in the Deep Roots Jam Dance and other prominent ensembles. With his life partner Mary he founded the hugely successful Valley Ukulele Group, an ensemble of ukulele players and students. This is barely the tip of the iceberg. Google for “Kavanagh Ukulele”.

On Saturday, June 13, in the early afternoon, friends of John Kavanagh will gather at the Ross Creek Centre for the Arts for a memorial concert. Many valley artists will perform. We will hear music composed in celebration of John’s life and music which we associate with John’s memory. Check the event listings for details or contact Maurice Gave.

A couple of weeks ago, I noticed that somebody was spreading rumours about the front page of the Grapevine being written by somebody new. There was also an unsubstantiated claim that this person would be carefully selected by Ariana and myself. All these statements, in hindsight, seem a tiny bit inaccurate. I shall devote this, one of my last two front pages, to an effort of making better sense.

As far as the front page is concerned: We did not choose a new writer. We chose a new management. A few months back, we started looking for someone to take over this community newsletter. Two of the most community oriented individuals we know had expressed an interest: Jeremy Novak and Jocelyn Hatt.

Jocelyn Hatt has been participating in Wolfville and the Valley for a while now. With Michelle Kulyk she brought “Hatt & Kül” to Main Street, the ethically sourced clothing and accessories store. Jocelyn can sometimes be seen at Paddy’s Pub, where she provides music lovers and others (music non-lovers?) with beverages and good humour. She is the graphic artist who created the logo for the Wolfville Farmers Market. Jocelyn also designed all the graphics for the latest CD of Caleb Miles: “Memory Well”.

Jeremy Novak, too, is no stranger to the Wolfville community. He finished studying business administration at Acadia last year (2008) and participated in Edaline Theatre’s musical productions, including “The Newsies”.  He frequently helps out at town events and is perhaps best known as “Tour Guide Extraordinaire”. Jeremy ran “Wolfville Walking Tours” during the summer of 2008 and then created an overnight success with “Wolfville’s Gravely Ghost Walk”, an extremely entertaining walking tour, which employs “street theatre in the darkness” to embed local history and lore in the minds of visitors and audience.

Both Jeremy and Jocelyn are well connected with business and arts community. Both are creative entrepreneurs with a very pragmatic streak. With respect to the Grapevine, they conducted surveys, questioned suppliers, chatted up readers and examined advertising issues. They consulted with Adam Barnet, the founder of this publication and learned everything they could before accepting the Grapevine as a challenge.

The coming months promise to be a very exciting time for all of us who have been and will be involved in the Grapevine. With new stewardship is seems we might see all three generations of Grapevine operators cooperating, from Adam Barnett to Jeremy and Jocelyn. All of a sudden it is conceivable to have a paper with more depth, more contributions and more integrity.

We are thrilled to pass the Grapevine into such capable hands. We want to thank all of you: Readers, supporters, advertisers, past and future publishers. It’s becoming an institution, this Grapevine of Wolfville. We learned many things. About this town, about the people, about how things are and could be. We learned stuff about life, love, community and ourselves. We’ll stick around and learn some more. This is, after all, the best place in the world for us to learn in. Thanks guys!

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.

Maybe. Maybe not. It’s just a title after all. I also wonder about curiosity management or the lack thereof. That’s what had me wonder whether Wolfville welcomed warmer weather in the first place. Mostly I wonder about the temperature. Lately our thermometer has clocked in at a whopping 15 degrees ABOVE that magic freezing line and the mountain of snow outside our door simply vanished. Crocuses! Some say that the north pole keeps gettin’ better and better peeks at the sun lately. When this sort of thing happened last time, things just kept getting more exciting around here.

Will there be patio restaurants on the mighty highway number one? Like last year? It definitely made summer downtown more enjoyable for me. I like to sit in the sun and chew on bun. Sometimes I wonder: If we wanted more human rear ends than automobiles parked along Main Street, what (or how many front patios) would be required to accomplish that?

Did you hear about the new projector? You didn’t?!? I heard (through the Grapevine, of course,) that the Acadia Cinema Coop is going to install a brand new digital projector. Apparently, it will happen this April and have a dramatic impact on the entertainment at the Al Whittle Theatre. Many new motion pictures are only available in digital format. The new projector will be able to display these films with brilliant clarity. It will also be capable of accurately reproducing high definition video on the silver screen. Even theatrical and musical performances will benefit from new stage lighting options, which are made possible by this amazing new apparatus.

There are more signs of summertime. The folks from www.wolfvillefarmersmarket.com are moving outdoors. Starting on Saturday, the 16th of May, they can be found at the Robie Tufts Nature Centre, right between Front Street and the library. That will hopefully be the last nail in the coffin of this bratty little winter. Snazzy local musicians will be performing at the market every week. Sausages will sizzle and veggies change hands. Jewelery, gossip and pottery will be traded and deals will be struck. The JustUs! people might join the fray and setup a Saturday morning outlet on the south side of Front. Rosie’s patio deck will provide shade and Paddy’s is going to provide market goers with late lunches to the sounds of their famous matinee concerts. Back will be the days when the music lover can get five consecutive hours of organically grown, responsibly and sustainably produced local music. There’ll be nuttin’ like a Saturday spent in downtown, metropolitan Wolfville. Never was, in fact.

There’s more. Not only is Paddy’s bringing back the amazing Saturday matinee shows (1-3pm, starting May 2). Paddy’s has also upgraded their sound system to better serve both audience and musicians. Mike Milne’s Monday Mayhem (open mic) is back with a bang and the Sunday Irish Session still takes place every Sunday night.

Yes, summer is coming back. With a vengeance. Back to Wolfville. Where the tides meet the music. Where people hike on the dikes and gather to share wine, food, music and drama. In person, not in chat rooms. Like in the ole days, when people still used instruments to accompany a dance… Gosh, I love this town!

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.

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.

There sure is a lot of performing art coming down the pipeline! Looks like all kinds of Nova Scotia residents have crawled out of their igloo with their latest productions. Or their igloo has melted in this recent onslaught of tropical heat in our latitude. Or maybe it’s just me, getting one of them hot flashes again. Confusion has a firm hold of me, and indecision is scraping away at the insides of my skull. Where to go? What to choose? The options stretch to infinity. It’s a smorgasbord of entertainment on countless silver platters. Women provide a huge share of artistry in the days to come. Check our listings.

On the day of this Grapevine’s appearance, three productions can be seen: The Vagina Monologues will be on stage at the MacKeen Room of the Acadia Student Union Building. The WOW production “Women of the Night” will premiere at the Festival Theatre. (Tickets are still available.) And on campus, in Lower Denton, Machinal, a play written by Sophie Treadwell, and directed by Anna Migliarisi is happening. That one sounds intense: “Inspired by the notorious Snyder-Gray murder trial of the late 1920′s, which led to the first execution of a woman in the electric chair, and set against the dehumanizing clatter of the machine age, Machinal is the story of an ‘ordinary’ woman who progresses from anonymous secretary to wife of the boss to young mother, adulterer and, finally, murder defendant.”

Jenny MacDonald will be featured at Paddy’s open mic (Mike Milne’s Monday Mayhem). “Passion for Dance” will bring together friends and students of Elizabeth Ryan at the Al Whittle Theatre. Along with special guests, they will celebrate Elizabeth’s friendship and support. Proceeds will go towards the Elizabeth Ryan Trust, benefitting children with autism and education in Africa, for the greatly under-privileged and disabled.

Andrea Curry will be at both, Night Kitchen and IWD Celebration

And just around the corner lurks international Women’s Day (IWD). A great celebration will be held on March 6 in the St. John’s Parish Hall, featuring Laura Smith performing with the Women of Paddy’s Irish Session. Many musicians will perform, including the women of TripALady, the women of Trillium and the women of Cuckoo Moon.  This will be a fundraiser for Chrysalis House and the Acadia Women’s Centre. At the same time, compositions of Carmen Braden, an incredibly talented Acadia student, will be performed in Denton Hall.

On Saturday the 7th of March, two women will headline “Night Kitchen Madness” at the Al Whittle Theatre: Sarah Pound, who just recently released an amazing CD, “It’s About Time”, will be featured as well as music therapy student and songwriter Andrea Curry, who will perform a with a woman from t@b. Meggie Lou from Hantsport, Erin Dalton and Marcie Clowery will perform at the event as well.

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.