SOME WICKED: Dashiell Brown's Blog

John Brown, Newfoundland spoken word aficionado, did his thang on The New Spin with David Day backing him on guitar with some great alt-tuned licks that remind me of John Fahey and other instrumental acoustic guitar greats. I saw these guys down at Natalie Noseworthy’s open-mic night at the Hava Java, and John Brown has been going down there for more than a year now. John Brown initially started at the now defunct Turner’s Tavern.

Here’s the New Spin Podcast of John Brown and David Day, otherwise known as The Hip Replacements. This also features the hit “Once I Went On Medication.”

in sound,

dashiell brown

Hear all my other New Spin Podcasts.

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President’s Choice is not the brand I thought it was, and now I learn Loblaws heavily uses genetically engineered ingredients in many of their products. According to this Canadian Greenpeace Shopper’s Guide, up to 70% of all food items on the shelves of Canadian grocery stores have Genetically Engineered ingredients due to our lovely Members of Parliament who voted down a law to include mandatory labelling of GE foods in 2001. Yes, it’s one thing to have GE foods in the stores, but it’s quite another to have any lack of labelling on those foods whatsoever. This is a crime sandwich. To add further insult to injury, if you live in Newfoundland like I do, you have even less choice because many of the alternative products that are GE-free are not available here, much less any of the produce you can buy since the only stores you can shop from here are Dominion, Soeby’s, Wal-Mart, and Cost-Co. There’s Auntie Crae’s, of course, but you can hardly call them a grocery store. So what are Newfoundlanders to do?

You can do what Greenpeace is doing, calling on Loblaws to remove the offending GMO foods in their inventory as well as label the GE products at the very least. But they’re not even doing that.

According to the Greenpeace GMO guide above, retailers all over the world are refusing to sell GE foods and it is the law to label GE foods in more than forty countries worldwide. Yes, North America would be excluded from that list. Oh, the irony.

Read the guide and educate yourself. (You might also want to stop drinking Labatt and Molson beer; really that just leaves Quidi Vidi for us Newfoundlanders. Who owns Dominion beer? Molson, probably…)

The guide is organized by food category with three emoticons to easily see which foods are “happy” and which are not. Not much on the list surprised me save for President’s Choice. I really didn’t see that one coming. Basically any major brand is unhealthy, just add PC and No Name to the long list of untested crap that we are coerced to eat based on the sheer lack of choice we have in our beloved grocery stores.

At the very least, stop buying PC products until they start labelling them and email Chairman Galen Weston at customer_service@weston.ca and tell him why you are no longer buying PC products and that you’re spreading the word to everyone you know why they shouldn’t either. You can also become a fan of The People’s Choice Against President’s Choice on facebook as well and help spread the word. Everyone who shops at any Loblaws chain needs to know this since they obviously don’t feel your health is worth much.

And now for any of you naysayers out there who think GMO food is being blown out of proportion, who think that it’s safe to eat GMO foods. I’m not going to go into it, all the research is out there, but you can start by reading any book by Michael Pollan, specifically In Defense of Food and The Omnivore’s Dilemma and watch the movie Food Inc. Michael Pollan just wrote a new book Food Rules reviewed here in The New York Times. That should get you started as to understanding the eco-systemical nightmare that is GMO food. If you want a better understanding of the crimes of Monsanto against third-world food production and the devastating effects the WTO and NAFTA has had on these countries, you’ll want to read Raj Patel’s Stuffed and Starved. In a quick summary, basically poor farmers all over the world have been coerced into buying Monsanto’s seeds the same way we are coerced into buying GMO food in our grocery stores, and since these seeds are patented, these farmers will never become independent food producers in the same way that Newfoundlanders will never get to choose what they can fish. Furthermore, these foreign farmers cannot sell their local food in the markets since the cheap high-fructose corn syrup-riddled imports out-compete the locally-produced foods. It’s a nightmare, and we have our beloved institution of direct government subsidies to the soy and corn industry to thank for our corrupt food industry. King Corn is another must-see.

That’s all for now. Stop buying PC and tell Loblaws why. There’s going to be GMO food on the shelves. But at the very least, it should say so right there on the label. And not just PC, on everything.

Please become a fan of The People Against President’s Choice on facebook and help spread the word. It’s the least you can do, eh?

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Fresh on the scene out of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Matthew Hornell has only been playing guitar since high-school, but his songs aim right for your gut, riding on pure emotion. His well-crafted folk songs draw you in, you’ll be singing along, feeling at home as in front of the campfire with good food and friends. Sounding timeless, yet fresh and bold, played live, his songs are executed with whip-crack precision. And when backed up by Tiffany Hancock’s beautiful and exquisite vocals, the duets become absolute magic. “Goodbye for Now” is purely enchanting, and “Khaki Dodgers” is an immediate hit. You’ll be singing it for days. Matthew Hornell and The Diamond Minds seems to have struck gold, and we should be so lucky they want to share it with us.

–Dashiell Brown, The New Spin and The Folkin’ Freak Show

Local St. John’s folk act Matthew Hornell of Matthew Hornell and the Diamond Minds, and special guest Tiffany Hancock, performed in the studio and played several great numbers on The New Spin. Listen to the podcast here.

For more great folk music, be sure to check out my new show, The Folkin’ Freak Show. Tuesdays, 9-10 PM, streaming online at 93.5 CHMR-FM.

(Photo taken by Jon Janes)

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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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I am debuting two new shows tonight on CHMR-FM, The Folkin’ Freak Show and Other Frequencies. I have happily agreed to share a pint with myself and discuss the ever-growing popularity of the new folk movement and my two new shows.

ME: Hi, thank you for taking the time to chat with me.

DB: No sweat, but let’s make this snappy. I gotta prepare for my shows tonight.

ME: OK, sure. So, why The Folkin’ Freak Show? Isn’t there enough folkin’ music in this town?

DB: No, you can never have enough folk music. Folk music is the music of the people, the John Doe’s of the world, and when you consider Newfoundland’s own history, it’s no coincidence folk and trad. is so important here. Folk is labor songs, maritime songs, mountain songs, railroad songs…rock n’ roll grew out of it. And look at all the folk festivals going on everywhere, not to mention all the great new folk music popping up in St. John’s. And Tom Power’s Deep Roots on CBC2. You have folk night at The Ship every Wednesday. So why isn’t there a local show about it? It’s about folkin’ time, don’t you think?

ME: But don’t you play folk music on The New Spin?

DB: Well, The New Spin’s focus is really on new music, hot off the press, with lots of punk, post-punk and indie rock—folk fans might not dig that. The New Spin was initially called The Folkin’ Freak Show, but when I saw how much insanely good new music was coming to CHMR, I realized I had to devote an entire show to just playing the new stuff. But I still find I’m gravitating towards the folk-oriented new stuff. It needs its own show.

ME: So will it just be new folk music, then?

DB: No. The New Spin is a showcase of all that is great out there right now, that isn’t getting radio play or much promotion. The Folkin’ Freak Show will be about folk and world music and discuss it’s historical importance and influence to today’s mass movement that has brought us the likes of Devendra Banhart, Iron and Wine, M. Ward, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective, etc. It’ll be a mix of the old and new. There’s a whole slew of new Canadian folk, too, Timbre Timbre, Bruce Peninsula, Agnostic Mountain Gospel Choir… It’s a very exciting time for folk music. The Dark Was the Night comp is proof of this.

ME: Yeah, Grizzly Bear just hit the Billboard Charts with the likes of Eminem and Lady Gag. Animal Collective hit the charts at #13 with their latest release. Why do you think folk music is taking off again so suddenly?

DB: Well, it wasn’t suddenly, but Devendra Banhart has a lot to do with it when he released his critically-acclaimed album, Rejoicing in the Hands in 2004. But many other bands were doing the same thing, like Iron and Wine, Joanna Newsom, Coco-Rosie, Animal Collective, M. Ward…I think people were growing tired of shitty, compressed-to-death pop music which represented a growing commercialism and domination of the entire music industry which quickly killed the grunge movement in the 90’s. Folk music quickly moved in to fill the gap, but it took more than ten years for the world to catch on to this growing revolution. Malls are out, folk music is in. And now with the global economy in its fragile state…the new folk movement is going to speak to more people than ever. And it’s about folkin’ time.

ME: And aren’t you doing another new show after that?

DB: Other Frequencies, yes, a showcase of electronica and underground hip hop. What with Loft 709 on the go, Errand Boy, Le Malediction, Aoke, Sports, and Ye-Yeti, the popularity of electronica, dance and hip hop is growing, but there’s no show about it here either, and it needs a voice. New DJ’s are popping up and new electronica acts. Let’s support it.

ME: Do you plan on having guests on your show as you do on The New Spin?

DB: Funny you asked. Ryan Green of Patch is going to be my guest to help me launch Other Frequencies tonight. We’ll be spinning some Patch tunes, plus some of his favorite electronic tracks. Should be pumpin’.

The Folkin’ Freak Show roots through the backwoods to bring the best this folked-up world has to offer. Tuesday nights, 9-10 PM, streaming online on 93.5 CHMR-FM, or Rogers cable 942.

Other Frequencies is the first all-electronic show in St. John’s to get your booty groovin’, all genres of electronic music, from dub and grime to techno and trance. Tuesday nights, 10-11 PM, right after The Folkin’ Freak Show.

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Smiley Ralph is about the only local indie pop act in St. John’s that I know of, other than Greg Hewlett’s wonderful band Pelago. Smiley Ralph just played a wonderful show at The Ship on Saturday, truly proving themselves as one of the freshest indie acts out there. Ryan Kennedy (guitars, keys, vocals) and Andrew Strickland (bass, vocals) sung harmoniously with each other, Chris Donnelly ripped it on the drumz, and Justin Frampton colored the well-crafted songs with wonderful min7 chords. If you are a fan of Pavement, Sebadoh, Built to Spill, and any other band associated with the indie-rock cannon, this is your band to watch in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Like their name suggests, Smiley Ralph will put a dance in your step and a smile on your face.

Listen to the podcast.

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RN Wagner is St. John’s spoken word aficionado. He came onto my show to do so some of his clever raps and talk about his fundraiser, The Anything Goes April Fools Showcase & Community Project Tour Fundraiser, to create funds for community art projects as well as a play that was put on by the “resilient youth” from For the Love of Learning. (Anecodote: Robin Grant, the Director, is Jenn Grant’s sister–she’s coming here in May, see mightypop for details.) The play was on the same night as the RPM Listening Party, which RN Wagner also did an album for, and we played some cuts from it on the show. (You can listen to my own project Circuit Tree on my site or on this blog.) 

Here’s Part 1. Here’s Part 2.

Press Release from facebook:

“These fundraisers are to create funds for Community Arts Projects such as…Publishing Ongoing Arts Books, Permanent Free Jam/Arts Spaces, Free Audio Demo Recordings, Film workshops/projects. 
The money raised in Newfoundland, stays in Newfoundland. I will be going to Ontario for a month doing more fundraisers/projects for out there, and then making my way back with a few others visiting community centres, schools, and other partnering organizations/groups/individuals who wish to contribute to these ongoing projects. 

Any help and guidance will be greatly respected. There will be a review of the updated news as things progress further. So far the places of visit are…

Newfoundland:
For The Love of Learning, St. John’s

Ontario:
Lighthouse Youth Shelter, Niagara Falls
The Raft Shelter, St. Catharines
Welland
Hamilton
Milton
Guelph
London
Toronto
Barrie

April 1st Schedule & Slam:

“Remember the dope jam slam that Neil Conway throwed down last year, this is kinda like that, there is also a format for the closing round, where the others competing get to try and mess yer stuff up without using physical contact or sound, anything goes, like a jar of mold and pictures of relatives young and old.” -RN WAGNER

5-7PM 
Silent auction, Poetry Slam and music Sign Up

So far there will be art auctioned by works from…… Alison Rideout, Robert Keyes, Sakurah Horwood, Joey Pynn, Jamie Michelyn…more TBA

7-8PM (Round 1) Open-Poetry Slam 
Confirmation List of Performers….

- The Wham Bam-a-Lamer Riley Fitzgerald aka ‘THE RIT’
- The Influence and Anonymous Poet
- Nathan Doucette, YoungBlood
- RADAR
- JOHNNY HARDCORE
- CYRUS CLARKE
- BOOGYMAN BRAND
- Stan Nochasak
- Deborah Jackman (Debtress Janewoman)
- Johnny Lewis
- YOUR NAME HERE
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-
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-

8-9PM Music Showcase

- Dave Knill
- Hot Facets
- Stu Jones
- Patrick Molloy
- Matthew Hornell
- Johnny Hardcore
- Radar
- Liam Fitzgerald
- Sarah Stockley
- DowJonesNow

9pm !!!! (Final ROUND) Anything Goes Poetry SLam

Hosted by: RN WAGNER & 

Soundman: Jonathan Norris ( J FROST )

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Here is Part 1 of this segment.

During the first break of the night, I’m talking with Tom Power, host of Deep Roots every Saturday on CBCradio2, great show by the way, and without warning the next act begins when an intense man creeps up and hunches intently over the microphone like he’s ready to eat and attack it and his eyes burn a mark right on you—whoah, he’s intense, the “hunchback” of George St. United Church. I later learn his name is Jody Richardson, lead singer and guitarist of The Pathological Lovers, who often indulge in avant-garde improvisational mayhem at Night Music, a once-a-month showcase of unusual and unique talent, including a spontaneous jam session collective where musicians can get up to the stage with their instruments and jam in between sets. It’s every third Thursday at The Ship down on Duckworth Street—I would go but my radio show unfortunately conflicts with it right now.

And so Jody howls into the microphone in pitches all across the frequency spectrum, ripping his electro-acoustic apart like it was made of thin paper, and his gleaming white teeth shine at you like a beacon breaking through the fog, hunched over that microphone, daring you to move. Intense stuff, and then you have Alex poised on the drums anticipating Jody’s moves, and they start “talking” to each other back and forth with their instruments, they’re on the exact same page, and we’re bolted to the pews here, reading every word. I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t look away lest I miss something, I don’t know—seminal. Because that’s what these dudes seem to be about, and that’s what this whole show has been for me: seminal.

Here is my podcast with Jody Richardson.

And now intermission…

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I am sitting on one of the many hard pews in the George St. United Church, and the unexpected is about to go down. “Unexpected” because it’s not every day you see an indie-rock act like Julie Doiron play in a Xmas-decked out Church, all alight with Xmas trees, wreaths, and boughs of holly—not in St. John’s, Newfoundland at any rate. I’m pretty sure this is a first for the church, since Mightypop is new on the scene, along with my show The New Spin that showcases the underground Canadian bands Mightypop hosts (Julie Doiron, Jenn Grant, Share, Cuff the Duke, etc.)

Sufjan Stevens’ sparse banjo is pouring from the speakers, an apt choice for a church, considering Sufjan Stevens is publicly known as a devout Christian, his lyrics full of Christian themes, especially in his album Seven Swans. We’re all sitting on the hard pews, and it doesn’t take long for me, or any of us, probably, to realize this isn’t going to be your ordinary rock show—and that’s a good thing; though most of us are probably wondering where the beer has gone off to or when can we go out for a cig, I’m sure all of us are thinking about the irony of having a rock band play in a church and the meaning thereof. Or maybe I’m just thinking that, but I highly doubt it. As I sweep my eyes across the pews with so many of us sitting docile-like, anxiously patient and submissive, there are more hipster intellectuals crowded inside here than you can throw a stick at—we read, we’re up to speed on the latest news, we’re musicians, writers, a new generation of beats, perhaps, photographers, journalists, film-makers, artists, you name it, we’re all here in this church together, unified and separate, a “hi” to any stranger sitting right next to you, and you know you have umpteens in common because they too are sitting on the pew right next to you, ready to watch one of the most underground events in St. John’s history go down: Julie Doiron in a church—all thanks to Mightypop, of course.

Without them, we wouldn’t be here obviously, with no drinks in our hands and nowhere to stand and mill about, and not allowed to talk over the music like is our habit in any other bar, The Ship, Roxxy’s, CBTG’s, you name it. And we certainly wouldn’t be watching Julie Doiron sitting all bashful with her bottled water on the drums over there, making history here in downtown St. John’s, giving us all this magical moment that will be with us forever. I mean, who is going to forget this? Seriously. And I know they won’t forget it either.

This becomes even more clear to me as Fred Squire introduces the two of them, he’s on guitar and Julie’s on drums, as Calm Down It’s Monday, as a rock band. And it’s so quiet, the exact opposite of the raucous goings-on of a typical show, very church-like, we’re all very studious and dutiful as we sit in our pews—this has got to be a deer-in-the-headlights moment, for everyone. This is an unprecedented moment, and Fred and Julie are right in the center of it, being stared at as if they were Siamese fighting fish behind glass, and we’re waiting for a show. The entire church and everyone in it are still as stone. And then Fred gently strums the guitar and the show finally begins. We can all breathe a little easier now, but are still probably sitting a bit tensely on the pews, all kinds of uncanny thoughts running through our brains: what is going to happen tonight, what will it be like, will there be beer at intermission, should we stand up? It turns out no one stood up for the entire night, and I’m still not sure why that is. No matter, though, it was a show like no other, and if you were there, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Read the next installment of Julie Doiron goes to Church.

in sound,

dashiell brown

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I have now posted my interview with AE Bridger.  If you like what you hear, and why wouldn’t you, then you can win the cd! email me at thenewspin@gmail.com to enter the drawing and i’ll announce the winners this Thursday (you have to live in town, though!)

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