SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

A few weeks ago, Jon Janes of St. John’s The Mountains and The Trees was my guest on The New Spin. He has a new e.p., Hop, Skip and a Jump, and is playing at the North by Northeast Festival and Conference currently underway in Toronto. Strongly influenced by Iron and Wine, he brought his banjo, guitar, and harmonica and played a few ditties and we chatted folk, which I also play on my new show, The Folkin’ Freak Show, Tuesdays 9-10 PM (7:30 Eastern) on 93.5 CHMR-FM.

Here is The New Spin Podcast, featuring Jon Janes of The Mountains and The Trees.

Here is his website.

“As the name suggests, The Mountains and The Trees will wash over you with simpler times, lost memories, and wonderful dreams.”

– Dashiell Brown, The New Spin

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When it comes to St. John’s musicians, you can’t get any more homegrown than five-time MusicNL Award nominee Ian Foster, but this summer he’s going to spread his roots, embarking on his largest Canadian tour to date, to promote two remarkable new albums, We Begin Here and Found: Music From the Unmade Film, his latest project composed for the 2009 RPM Challenge (my own RPM album is here.) I chatted with him to get a better understanding of who this guy is and what he’s all about.

Ian Foster is not unknown in these parts. He was born and raised here in St. John’s, playing the keyboards in Radio Shack at 10 years old until he got kicked out of the place. His parents then gave him a keyboard and he immediately started playing The Beatles’ songs that came with the book. Seeing this as a signal that Foster seemed to have a knack for this music thing, they enrolled him in private lessons for piano and voice. Foster picked up the guitar along the way, though he didn’t study music at the university; rather, he majored in English and History because he enjoyed the folk/pop/rock idioms of popular music and though he loves classical music, he didn’t want to devote himself to the formal study of it.

He started gigging live in 2003, supporting other musicians, and then went out on his own with the Ian Foster Band, debuting his critically-acclaimed album, Through the Wires in 2006, which captured the live sets his band had been playing. But since the other members of the IFB had other jobs and priorities, the IFB served as a one-shot deal, and Foster has been going solo since, having released Room in the City and now his two new releases.

Where Through the Wires was about methods of communication, Room in the City was about traveling in cities, which had a major impact on him as he started to tour his material, made possible by funding through MusicNL. His latest release We Begin Here is about history. “There’s a weight to history and we feel it. If we don’t feel it, we should—it has to at least be acknowledged,” Foster says.

For example, take his Dylanesque folk song, “Gone with the Good Earth,” driven by his rich acoustic guitar and harmonica. The title, taken from Robert Wright’s A Short History of Progress, laments the plight of the farmer, the entropy of man’s detrimental effect on his land, farming the land until there’s nothing left. “I used to know what it was worth/But now it all seems to be washed away/Gone with the good earth.” History teaches us we must be good to the land. Not only today’s farmer, but the microcosm of modernity surrounding the farmer, is all but destroying it.

Or take “The Pacific’s Waters”, a folk song also inspired by history, in this case, herstory. A 30 yr. old woman sat next to Foster on a Greyhound bus and revealed that she had left her family to go meet a man she had met online, to see if she could escape her failing marriage, her own past which she was trapped by, to see what could be. We must acknowledge history, but sometimes we are compelled to go forward.

The title track “We Begin Here” is the centerpoint of the album and defines its overlying theme: “History is just an art of creating where we begin.” Foster means that history is not set in stone, that it invites many interpretations, and it’s flexible. In other words, as the title of the first track states, “the future is an ocean,” and “you’ve gotta be brave enough to sail.”

When asked about his own future, what his plans were, and whether he felt successful, he modestly told me, “I do…when I get close to writing the songs that I hear in my head…I know it sounds cliché, but I just want to make the music I want to make.” In fact, his aim has always been about communication. If he can make people respond to his music in some way, then he feels successful. He told me about the 1000 true fans theory, that if you can get 1000 loyal fans that will support you, buy all of your music, follow everything you do, then you can make a living doing what you love as a musician. But for Foster, I got the impression this would be the icing on the cake for him. Doing what you love and being able to do it, that’s his ultimate aim, and he feels he’s achieving it.

Indeed, once you listen to his two brand new releases, you will feel it for yourself. We Begin Here and Found are the mark of a man who fears no musical bounds or traps himself in any kind of formulaic song craft or sticks to any one genre. This isn’t songwriting to be ignored but wrapped around you like a cozy blanket that will get better with the wear and tear, especially the Knopfler-like “Different Songs,” perhaps my favorite song on the album, an ode in a way to all the different songs will you hear, not only on We Begin Here, but also on Found: Music From the Unmade Film, which has a Magnum P.I.-like techno number, a ragtimey piano jazz feel, and a gypsy, flamenco track; the album is mostly instrumental and may be somewhat inspired by Daniel Lanois. It is also an enhanced cd, which includes images of the unmade film.

We Begin Here slows to a crawl towards the end, taking you into more contemporary territory, with several power ballads, but the album is quite a journey and utterly memorable, like he’s taken you into a delicate, vulnerable world you never knew existed and want to protect with your life, lest it too be gone with the good earth.

Ian Foster’s tour and cd-release party begins here in St. John’s at The Ship, Sunday, June 21. This will be his fifth tour and his largest to date.  His website is ianfoster.ca.

Listen to Ian Foster this Tuesday on my new show, The Folkin’ Freak Show on 93.5 CHMR-FM, Tuesdays 9-10 PM, newftime, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific.

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King Khan and The Shrines’ new album, What Is?! is kickin’, you can listen to the whole thing at thenewspin.ca. I’ve also been playing it on my show (which is on tonight, by the way–it will stream online here at 9-11, 7:30 Eastern, 4:30 Pacific.) It was released April 21, and they are about to do a tour across Canada.

Here are the dates:

Myspace Presents:
8 May Babylon – Ottawa, Ontario
9 May La Sala Rossa – Montreal, Quebec
12 May Phoenix Theatre – Toronto, Ontario
19 May Calgary, Alberta – The Warehouse
20 May The Starlite Room – Edmonton, Alberta
22 May Commodore Ballroom – Vancouver, British Columbia

They will also be performing on MTV Live on Monday, May 11 at 6:00pm & 11:00pm EST.

Listen to the album now at The New Spin! It’s full of classic rockin’ freak funk. For fans of The Arkelles, The Hives, The Strokes, and other “The” bands.

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 My latest review: Transgendered Canadian alt-country/folk with an electronic twist!

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