Calgary Folk Club Tickets - A Perfect Gift
The holidays are right around the corner, and what better gift could there be for the folkies and music-lovers in your life than tickets to the Calgary Folk Club? Individual show tickets are only $27.50 each, and can be purchased for any of the shows in the remainder of the season.
Not only do these affordable little stocking-stuffers show that you care about your loved ones' happiness - music is a balm for the soul, after all - they're a gateway to a warmth and community that is sure to feel festive through February and beyond.
Give your friends the gift of music, and treat them to our 45th season's incredible lineup! To order, visit our website, or call 1-888-655-9090.
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Our Next Shows:
Coming on
November 25th:
Corin Raymond
If you're a CFC regular, you'll remember Toronto troubadour Corin Raymond
from 2012 as the great Canadian Tire money man, and if you like songwriting tales that are tall, dark and slightly nefarious, don't miss this show. In a rapturous review of his latest album, Acoustic Guitar
said this: "romantic, immediate and narcotic, Hobo Jungle Fever Dreams
charts an emotional topography in which touchstones from the waking world drop into dreamscapes and resonate, the dead stay reassuringly close, and the fever never breaks." Enough said.
First Up: Treasa Levasseur
Blending old school R&B with her songs, Treasa Levasseur's smart, soulful grooves has made her a hot name in folk, roots, blues, and jazz circles. Her 2008 album Low Fidelity was critically acclaimed and JUNO-nominated, and her latest offering, Broad, is winning praise from all across the musical press. Expect to be won over by Levasseur's consummate musicianship and
well-honed songwriting.
And when we resume on
January 13th of the new year:
Gretchen Peters
Based in Nashville, Gretchen Peters is one of music city's most beloved, respected artists, writing and singing deeply moving, poetic songs drenched in beauty and mystery. A member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, Rodney Crowell said upon inducting her that her song, The Matador, moved him so greatly he cried from the soles of his feet. Whether for her solo work or collaborations with the likes of Bryan Adams, kudos follows from fans and critics alike, most recently for her double album The Essential Gretchen Peters.
First Up: Smarty Pants
These daredevils from the Columbia Valley all wear the pants. The harmonies of Brian Rogers (percussion), Kurt Reichel (guitar) and Bill Cropper (guitar, harmonica) will leave you undone while their repartee leaves you in stitches.
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Backstage with Roger Roger
The Roger siblings on writing, and their experience at the club.
Calgary Folk Club: Since it's your first visit to the club, could we ask for your impressions of the experience?
Madeline Roger: That it's an institution - it's so clear that this place is a really thriving and deeply-rooted established community.
Lucas Roger: It's legendary, in my life. It doesn't happen everywhere, this is incredible.
CFC: I know there's a certain amount of friction involved in working with siblings, so how is it that you write songs together?
LR: We've never done it.
MR: We actually don't write songs together, we arrange them together. All the lyrics and the foundational chord progressions we do separately. We bring them together, and it's almost like an audition. ... We'll play the new song, and sometimes right away, it's like "Yes, let's add that into the set list," and sometimes it's like, "Meh, I'm feeling like that's a better project for you separately. But I think we're getting pretty good at figuring out which songs belong with Roger Roger.
LR: And the lucky thing is, between the two of us we've written enough songs where we can say, it's not a bad song, it's just not right for what we're doing. How about that other one you wrote that was perfect for this, let's focus on that one.
MR: I think the sibling dynamic actually makes it easier and more efficient, because we can just tell each other, "I think that kinda sucks."
LR: There's no tiptoeing.
CFC: Any final thoughts on your experience tonight?
MR: Oh, it's one for the books. It's a great vibe.
LR: It's an A+, it's a gold star, it's 100%.
MR: I love that there are so many people that will [do this] so frequently. I love that there's such a ravenous appetite for folk music.
LR: And beyond that, the volunteers that are here - we were, like, taken care of, in a way that is not normal.
MR: We couldn't not have a beverage in our hands-
LR: You show up and they've got your food waiting.
MR: And the sound was amazing! Which is rare for a room this shape, and these materials.
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The band shares their enthusiasm for the CFC's unique treatment of artists.
Calgary Folk Club: So, after your second visit to the club, what is it that stands out in your mind about the experience?
Geraldine Hollett: The volunteers, it's amazing.
Andrew Dale: It's an incredible network, and they're all so passionate about each of their jobs, and they're all so committed and dedicated to doing the best possible job that they can.
Phil Churchill: They don't seem like volunteers. If you came here when we come here, which is in the afternoon to load in gear and do soundcheck and stuff, in my mind, I think anybody would be surprised to learn that they're volunteer - I think anybody would just assume that they're pros that have been hired.
GH: Also, the crowd is eager, which I love, and they're a listening crowd, which is great.
PC: They seem well-trained! [laughter] Into what a folk club is supposed to be, and what this one in particular is. Everybody seems on the same page with the way the evening runs. There's a town hall meeting but also family reunion feeling.
AD: You get a real sense of community with this group - you can tell that it's not just a bunch of strangers coming from different parts of the city or beyond. They spend time together.
CFC: It's always a little chaotic for artists, and moreso the more people involved - could you describe your songwriting process?
GH: For me personally, I just go around with my voice recorder, and I have so many ideas I'm gonna have to go on vacation for a month just to get them all out. That's what I do - I like doing it in a dark room, and not sharing it ever. Have them hauled out of me at some point. Sometimes I have thoughts, like, people are gonna look at this when I'm dead. That's not a way to get them out there, Geri!
PC: For each one of us, once it moves beyond ourselves, the process after that is staggeringly quick and easy. If you can get it to the point where ... it's playable, like you can sit around the table and sort of hack through it, the other two, just like, teeth in, ideas right out of the gate. And generally by the end of the first little sit-down, there's something going. It might change, and it might never get put on a record, but it's a song. ... That's something we've got really good at, because our background is in arranging. When we first started the band, we didn't write our own songs, we just arranged them. So we quickly got good at being able to grab what's there, and come up with what worked for us, and we had a sound. So by the time that we decided we were going to continue doing this, we might as well be doing some heavy writing - the process, and that ability to take something that is in pieces, or not complete ... we got good at doing that. The design phase takes a really long time, but once you see that model on the table, you got cars in production the next morning.
CFC: What are your final thoughts on the evening?
GH: Everybody made us feel like a million bucks today, and treated us well. They really should know how that makes someone coming from a different place feel, because it's genuinely awesome.
PH: It's not our first time running a workshop, so everybody's in good hands. Hopefully they'll enjoy what we have to show them. And I really hope someday there's like twenty or thirty of or forty or fifty clubs just like this one, all across the country, because it would be a really different and awesome country if you could swing that.
AD: These clubs make the country and the world a much better place.
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Reflections on the Death of a Ladies' Man
On the Passing of Leonard Cohen
By guest contributor Phil Hoffmann
Around ten years ago I attended a concert at the Jack Singer by k.d.lang and joined in when the audience spontaneously gave her a standing ovation. Nothing remarkable about that, other than that it came not at the end of her show, but in the middle, just as she was finishing Leonard Cohen's incomparable Hallelujah. Such is the alchemy that transpires when a perfect voice meets an ethereal song.
Rewind to my high school days in Sydney, Australia in 1974, when I eagerly devoured two paperbacks called The Favourite Game and Beautiful Losers. By then, his magical early LPs and fables about Cohen's Greek island lifestyle were already talismans for me and the crowd I ran with. Many morose, candle-lit nights later we landed in the Eighties, by which time, as we would now say, his brand was no longer trending. By 1984 his relevance was questioned even by the president of Columbia records, Walter Yetnikoff, who famously quipped: "Look, Leonard, we know you're great; we just don't know if you're any good" in reaction to Various Positions (which included the sleepers Dance Me to the End of Love and Hallelujah itself). A few years later, I'm Your Man signalled a comeback, presaging the searing urgency of The Future in 1992, with its prescient message that democracy is coming to the USA, a line that recently lit up the twitterverse south of the border.
Ever struggling to reconcile the sacred and profane, Cohen turned to self-imposed exile and lived as a Zen Buddhist monk in California for several years. But just when he should have been able to rest on his artistic laurels, he found himself having to tour and release records again to make ends meet when he discovered his nest egg had been swindled. His misfortune was a blessing for those of us who caught his 2008 world tour, as I did, fittingly once again at the Jack Singer. Three hours of songs, every one of which somehow made time stand still.
Of the many stories about him, my favourite is a response attributed to him regarding a reporter's question about where his songs come from, to which he replied: "If I knew that, I'd move there." He knew the end was near for him when he released his valedictory You Want it Darker a few weeks ago, which reveals the depths and heights of his artistic range. This may be the end, but then again he once told us that you'll be hearing from me baby / long after I'm gone / I'll be speaking to you sweetly / from a window in the Tower of Song.
Philip Hoffmann 2016
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Bob Bossin's "Davy the Punk" Comes to Calgary
"A story of bookies, the mob, Toronto, the good, and my dad."
On Sunday, December 11, the Calgary Jewish Community Centre presents "
Davy the Punk" - Bob Bossin's one-man musical about his father's life in the gambling underworld "Davy" is story that is, according to CBC's Michael Enright, "fascinating... amazing and sometimes hilarious."
Davy Bossin, Bob's father, was born in 1905. Raised in poverty, Davy blazed his own path in a new, vibrant, international industry - gambling. There he matched wits with cops and mobsters, grifters and grafters, crooks and judges. His court cases set precedents that affect us to this day.
Davy's son Bob grew up to found
Stringband, to pioneer Canadian indie music, and to write songs Pete Seeger praised as "funny, informative and inspiring at the same time."
Now Bossin Jr. tells Bossin Sr.'s story, in a performance that is, according to musician and playwright Si Kahn, "the stuff of dreams and movies." Says musician and author Leon Rosselson, "[Davy the Punk is] about fatherhood, family, immigrant life, political high life and the criminal underworld. Entertaining, illuminating and, at times, touching."
When: December 11, 6PM
Where: Jewish Community Centre, 1607 90th Ave SW.
For a trailer or more information go to
www.davythepunk.com
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