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Newfoundland's Hey Rosetta! have drawn comparisons to recent Grammy award winners Arcade Fire in the past, and they're well deserved. The six piece band has a big sound that's capable of filling rooms much larger than the ones they're currently playing. I saw them at the Commodore Ballroom last year when they opened for Hot Hot Heat and one of the most telling moments was watching the crowd filter out of the venue when the headliners hit the stage: Hey Rosetta! had a larger audience than the more well known headliners.
Wherever Newfoundlanders go in this country they remain staunchly proud and identified with their home province. It showed on this night, as a flag made its way from the audience to the stage for the closing numbers.
The Rio is a beautiful venue and the band played a fantastic night of live music for the sold out room, ending with a cover of Cyndi Lauper's Time After Time that I recorded on video.
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Surrey's Winterfest is an annual festival celebrating a season that barely exists in Vancouver most of the time. During last year's Winter Olympics the weather was arm and the sky was dry. Naturally this year the festival was blanketed by five inches of fresh snow and temperatures that were unseasonably cold.
With Kyprios featured on the main stage I wasn't going to miss it. Kyprios is one of the most dynamic performers I've seen in the last year, and that makes him very fun to shoot. The man just doesn't know how to stand still. The hour long Olympic celebration that preceded it featured Steff Lang and Widemouth Mason's Shaun Verrault performing with a full orchestra in support, and did a nice job of bring back memories of the best party this city's every thrown.
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Daniel Lanois brought his new band Black Dub to the Commodore Ballroom on February 2nd, 2011 for their first ever Vancouver performance. It was one of the finest nights of live music I've seen with Trixie Whitely's vocals fronting Lanois' guitar work and percussionist Brian Blade's absolutely outstanding drumming. One of those nights you never want to end.
My review of the show is on Guttersnipe News along with a full photo gallery.
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It's become a cliche to attach superlatives to Daniel Lanois' name when discussing his career as a producer. Having had a hand in some of the most notable albums of the last 30 years, the man has earned each and every one of them. Just to get it out of the way, I'm going to call him a "legendary producer" and move right along.
Lanois' reputation as a musician isn't nearly as well known despite having released a string of solo albums starting with 1989′s Acadie. That album spawned a couple of minor radio hits which have gone on to become Canadian classics, but subsequent releases have largely failed to find much traction with the mainstream (though his sophomore album For the Beauty of Wynona is, for my money, a stronger body of work). No matter: the man's stature hasn't suffered at all and he remains one of the most in-demand producers in the world of music.
Given this, when Lanois announced that he was starting a new band last year it generated a lot of excitement. Black Dub features Trixie Whitely on vocals and Brian Blade on drums. The band was formed in October of 2009 but was sidelined first by Lanois' producing duties on Neil Young's outstanding Le Noise album and second by a motorcycle accident which, by all accounts, resulted in Lanois fighting for his life.
After a successful recovery and the release of Young's album, Black Dub's first album was released and tour dates announced. Originally booked to play Vancouver's Venue, last night's show was quickly moved to the larger, venerable Commodore Ballroom thanks to brisk ticket sales. It's a good thing too, as that beautiful room was packed to the rafters last night with the crowd arriving early for a fine, but brief, opening set by California singer/songwriter Rocco Delucca.
When the four members Black Dub took the stage, the crowd wasn't disappointed. Singer (and daughter of Chris) Trixie Whitley's voice is strong and powerful and, combined with the touch of twang from Lanois' guitar, put the band into loud blues-rock territory.
With Black Dub's big, full sound (in part thanks to Lanois' custom-tooled sound-booth) well suited to the larger venue, the next hour-and-a-bit was some of the finest live music I've heard in the past year. The band played much of the material from their first album with some instrumental interludes - including a gorgeous turn on the slide guitar by Lanois - with other Lanois- penned material filling the gaps.
This night was about the music, and stage banter was kept to a minimum despite persistent audience requests for "Jolie Louise". Lanois responded by saying that "they had to get through some stuff first." With that stuff presumably gotten through, Lanois introduced the "orchestra" at the end of the set. Though rock and roll drummers are often unappreciated and overlooked, the crowd gave Brian Blade's drumming the loudest round of applause at this point. It was well deserved.
The band left the stage for a few moments until Lanois returned solo for an encore and finally delivering on his earlier promise with solo renditions of both "Jolie Louise" and "The Maker", both from Acadie.
With some of the best musicianship I've heard in in recent years, a strong selection of material and a talented opening act the only problem with Black Dub's performance was an occasional glitch with sustained feedback from the custom soundboard Lanois travels with. This happened a few times throughout the night and though it was a minor annoyance, it didn't ruin the night. This one's already got a place on my end-of-year list. Here's hoping Black Dub finds commercial success and we can all do this again next year.
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With the demise of Richards on Richards, the awkwardly named Venue on Granville Street took over as one of Vancouver's mid-size concert destinations last summer. Alejandro Escovedo played last August, and it was the first show I saw.
Alejandro and his backing band--the Sensitive Boys--gave it their all, along with opening act Amy Cook and the musicianship on display was astonishing. The room was sparsely populated, probably not helped by the mid-summer date and the relatively unknown Venue. The show ended with Alejandro's putting down his guitar to cover Beast of Burden, and a happy crowd filing out into a warm Vancouver night.
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Grace Potter and the Nocturnals hail from Vermont and played Vancouver's Venue to their packed, sold out crowd. When Grace announced they were going to perform a song that they'd never performed before, I expected new material not a cover of Wilco's Muzzle of Bees, one of my favourite Wilco songs (it's a long list...I know.)
To say that Grace knows how to put on a live show is an understatement. The crowd didn't just go wild, it was completely entranced. Venue can be a hard club to play, but these guys didn't disappoint. Openers Chamberlin were excellent as well.
The video included here was shot in a narrow ramp surrounded by a packed crowd with a waitress passing by me at regular intervals, making it almost impossible to keep the camera as still as I'd have liked. I missed the first half of Muzzle of Bees because I'd been shooting stills and it took me a few bars to dig up a lens. A more complete set of stills is available on my Flickr photostream.
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Jenn Grant's Echoes was one of the most overlooked albums of 2009, full of beautifully written and performed music. Jenn lives in Halifax, so she doesn't get out here to the raggedy edge of the country as often as some of us would like.
In October, she visited Vancouver's St. James Community Square with Justin Rutledge. Justin is one of Canada's finest singer songwriters, and this was a show that wasn't to be missed.
St. James Community Square is one of the most beautiful venues in Vancouver, and also one of the most intimate. This was the hardest part about the night: most venues are noisy and loud and full of boisterous crowds and the challenge is weaving amongst them. On this particular night it was my painful awareness of exactly how loud the shutter on my camera is, and a desire to try to be as discreet as possible that presented the biggest challenge. I got feedback from a couple of audience members that seemed to indicate I'd succeeded. I certainly hope so.
The other challenge was the lack of sightlines at the venue. Sound equipment sits in front of the stage, which is both elevated and bounded on three sides by walls and inaccessible to the audience. I was able to shoot through a narrow gap between the speakers (where this photo was taken from) and the wall, but other than that it was pretty much straight line views.
In general, the solution to both of these challenges was to shoot long lenses from well back and to try to spend as little time standing right in front of the stage as possible.
The night didn't disappoint musically. Justin was the headliner and he brought Jenn back on stage for a duet before closing with an audience sing along of his song Don't Be So Mean, Jellybean. I wanted to get video of the sing-along, but it was such a fantastic night of music and I got involved in the sing-along. That doesn't happen to me too often.
If either one of these comes to a town near you, do not miss them.
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The 2010 Live at Squamish Festival was the first edition of what's hoped to be an annual festival of music taking place about an hour's drive from Vancouver on the beautiful Sea to Sky Highway. An similarly ambitious plan had been launched a couple of years earlier in Pemberton. The Pemberton Festival was a huge hit with audiences, but ultimately failed and hasn't happened since. I wrote an article for Beyond Robson wondering if the same fate would strike Live at Squamish.
Squamish had a diverse lineup with international acts like Devo, Bad Religion and The Decemberists headlining the main stage, a Club Zone featuring all day live DJs and a side stage that featured notable local acts like We Are the City, Rich Hope, Hollerado and Kate Morgan. The mix of music was diverse, and the different areas were spread out widely enough to give everybody their space both physically and acoustically.
The festival was produced by Brand Live and by all accounts was a success. I attended the full festival, camping just outside of town, and the sunny weather and excellent production values on stage made for some beautiful photography. With so much going on it wasn't always possible to see everything, but I did my best. At the end of the weekend I had about 800 photos to sort through, and I was actually extremely happy with most of them.
Complete galleries for each day appeared at Guttersnipe News and have been used widely by the acts involved as well.
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The Vancouver International Folk Music Festival is probably one of the best known of Vancouver's music festivals. It's been running for more than 30 years and for many people marks the official beginning of summer. From the opening hour Birkenstock clad dash for premium grass space to the closing night's lantern procession, there's not a better place to spend a summer weekend.
I covered the festival for Beyond Robson in 2010 writing a daily wrap up as well as shooting extensive photos. With multiple stages going all day it wasn't possible to shoot everything, though I did my best. Quite a bit more photography is found in my Flickr stream.
The three articles were published early in the morning the day after they were written, and remained the top ranked Google search result--beating the larger more mainstream publications--long after the festival ended. They also remain one of the top ranked sources of traffic for Beyond Robson according to Alexa: The Web Information Company.
Articles are online at Beyond Robson. Follow the links below to read them in their original location or to download the PDF file.
| Day One | Beyond Robson | |
| Day Two | Beyond Robson | |
| Day Three | Beyond Robson |
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The Vancouver International Fringe Festival is one of the biggest festivals in Vancouver. Running for about ten days and starting just after the Labour Day holiday weekend, it takes over its Granville Island location and transforms the island into a sort of alternative universe version of itself. With performers in costume roaming the island promoting their shows there's a bit of a surreal quality to it.
As a photographer I was asked to capture the essence of the festival but was only able to take photos of a limited number of performances (I was only able to take performance photos of 52 Pick Up and Happily Ever After.) This meant a lot of time roaming the Island taking photos of audiences and performers as well as the Fringe Bar, a beautiful outdoor live music venue--when it wasn't raining.
The opening night Appiteasers Gala presented a unique opportunity as well, with a number of notable personalities from around the city in attendance. Tommy Chong, whose daughter was performing in a production and who's called Vancouver home at times--was on hand and graciously allowed me a moment to take his photo. I had about a minute in a crowded tent with less than ideal light to get a shot, and was pretty happy with the results.
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Tellebration is a nationwide event in the United States held around Thanksgiving that celebrates the art of Storytelling. Local events are held in most major cities and I was lucky enough to attend Minneapolis' event held at the amazing Open Book centre for literary arts in Minneapolis.
Tellebration features a mix of curated stories being told, instructional workshops and open mic events. It provides a wonderful opportunity to learn about the art of storytelling and a chance to tell your own.
If you're in Minneapolis don't miss a visit to Open Book either. It's a reminder of the central role that books and literacy have played in our society through the ages.
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Young Galaxy is one of Canada's best young bands and one of the best acts I've seen live in recent years. Their show last year at Toronto's legendary Horseshoe Tavern almost convinced me to move back to that city. They recently toured Canada as the opener for Stars and the tour ended at one of my favourite venues in Vancouver: the beautiful Vogue Theatre.
I shot the show for Guttersnipe News which has more complete galleries of both Young Galaxy and Stars. I had to cut my Stars shoot short to head to the Rickshaw Theatre for a Civet & Nasville Pussy show, so my opportunities were a bit more limited with the headliner.
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