Okay now that we’ve dispensed with the introductions, lets get to the task at hand, looking at some of the local musical turf I managed to check out in just the last year.
The variety was immense – ethnic, folk, jazz, rock, pop, and every combination, thereof.
I’m just going to mention some names in passing, so you’ll get an idea of where this blog will go musically, and then in later blogs I’ll go more in depth on their music.
To start with, here are two artists:
DALA
Dala – which are two young Scarborough ladies who met in their Scarborough high school (Mary Ward Catholic Secondary School) – are still promoting their album, Angels and Thieves.
And a good one it is. Their “Twentysomething” track has been rotated into several Toronto playlists including CMT, MuchMoreMusic and EZ Rock 97.3, and a new track, “Drive Through Summer” was also gaining headway.
I thought it was a fabulous CD and that if anything prevented it from breaking big, it would simply be its retro folkie nature. You know if I, a mid-forty-something, like it so much, are the teeny-boppers and twenty-somethings going to buy it?
You can check out some of their music and their itinerary (including an Oct. 6 gig at Hugh’s Room) through their website at http://www.dalagirls.com. Their Angels and Thieves album is available, as they say, in fine record stores and on iTunes.
BRIAN GLADSTONE
I first met Brian Gladstone, a North York born-and-raised finger picker extraordinaire in a Danforth pub last winter to promote his Winterfolk festival that took over half a dozen pubs on the Danforth. He is also the long-running regular host of the Thursday Open Mike night at the Renaissance Cafe, located on the Danforth. He also hosted a Concert for Peace this past summer at North York’s Mel Lastman Square. His latest CD is called A Time For New Beginnings. I enjoyed that immensely, as well. His brilliance is sticking to his hippie/60’s/bluegrass roots while being completely relevant to a new century. Check out his website at http://www.backtothedirt.com where you can listen to long, two-minute bites of all the songs on his last two albums and selections from his first two albums.
He has also created a non-profit pro-active artists group, called A Better World which is located on the web at http://www.abetterworld.ca.
The mission statement is as follows: “Advocating artistic activism, we inform, encourage, and stimulate artist awareness of social and ecological issues; then create an information avenue to communicate their words to the world.”
It’s through this group that he runs Winterfolk and his Concert for Peace.
It’s also through this group that he has produced several compilation CDs.
He handed me Protest Songs for a Better World, and it knocked me out. Talk about relevant music!
I’ll review it in detail later.
