[mplpost] toronto star story / jan. 3 / what's on

[Second Avenue]

Greg gets it...I've been in touch with him a great deal since h.r.
opened last April re coverage of the club and the performers it
presents. He's written quite a few good pieces.

All the best,

Lisa 
<http://www.hughsroom.com>


derek andrews wrote:
> 
> perhaps as a result of ann lederman's idea to lobby greg quill, perhaps because he just gets it, there was a major spread on the health of the toronto folk scene this past thursday.
> 
> it ran as a cover in the "what's on" section with a massive photo of stephen fearing up front. the point of the story was a little vague, but he speaks of the viability for folk performers being revived, in large part due to hugh's room's emergence this year.
> 
> sorry i didn't get this out sooner for folks who don't see the star. you can go their site:
> 
> http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1009796956470&call_page=TS_WhatsOn&call_pageid=978552666364&call_pagepath=Entertainment/WhatsOn&col=978552666551
> 
> or read on:
> 
> `Strum and jangle' lives
> 
> Acoustic music hasn't been this lively in Toronto since Yorkville in the '60s
> 
> Greg Quill
> ARTS WRITER
> TONY BOCK/STAR FILE PHOTO
> BACK TO OUR ROOTS: Canadian singer/songwriter Stephen Fearing is an example of a rebirth of acoustic rootsy sounds in Toronto.
> 
> "Sometimes it feels like the 1960s again," a friend remarked recently after he'd spent the better part of a week's nights sampling Toronto's live-performance music venues.
> 
> "All these great young songwriters and acoustic pickers, lots of harmonizing and audience participation ... lots of strum and jangle ... it's a millennial hootenanny."
> 
> If you extract the political component from the mix - politics seem far more complex and distant to the poet sons and daughters of boomers, who found in folk and pop music 40 years ago a means of effecting changes to social policy - the music that's being played around town these days, in clubs (more "listening rooms" in these comfort-minded times) such as Hugh's Room, C'est What?, Free Times Café, Holy Joe's, The Tranzac Club, The Cameron House, The Silver Dollar, The Horseshoe, Healey's, Cadillac Ranch, occasionally at The Rivoli, and, before its demise in October, at Ted's Wrecking Yard, sounds remarkably like folk music.
> 
> No one's calling it folk music, of course. It's "roots" or "alt.country" or "Americana" or just plain "country" - all misnomers that disguise the elementary charm of music that relies less on instrumental ornamentation and formal presentation than on communication skills, narrative powers and unusual ideas.
> 
> Its musical origins are cross-cultural, cross-genre, cross-generational - running the gamut from Celtic forms to Texas cowboy songs, from rhythmic Latin music to bluegrass and blues. It's not dance music. It's not drinking music. It's not singalong music.
> 
> And it's more personal and quirky, less "music of the people" than the tag "folk" implies.
> 
> This is, however, the real music that's left for thinking adults in the wake of the hip-hop/techno revolution in pop, now more than ever a highly capitalized form of mass-marketed pap for teenagers who've succumbed to the dubious rewards of globalized, big-box culture.
> 
> While Toronto has always had a reasonably healthy live blues framework, it hasn't embraced singer-songwriters and acoustic folk artists so heartily since the Yorkville days.
> 
> In the past year, the city has seen an unusual resurgence of interest in the art and craft of songwriters in the roots music medium, thanks largely to the accessibility and portability of acoustic instruments, inexpensive digital recording equipment, computer recording/mixing software, CD burners and the Internet, which have stimulated the growth of a vast alternative and completely independent musical culture.
> 
> Every second night, somewhere in a live performance space in Toronto, someone is celebrating the release of an independent CD, usually showcasing some hybrid form of rootsy "strum and jangle."
> 
> In recent months, roots music has acquired additional lustre and credibility in Toronto within the confines of the west-end concert club, Hugh's Room, on Dundas St. W., just south of its junction with Bloor St. W., and easily accessible by streetcar, bus and car (there's a shopping plaza parking lot within steps of the entrance). It's a wonderfully arranged, three-tiered space, raking gently down to a cornered stage, with tables and chairs on the floor and mezzanine levels, and a large bar area at the back of the room, near the front door.
> 
> Run by Richard Carson - the former social worker and the brother of the late Hugh, a devoted participant in the Canadian folk festival scene, has no prior experience as an entrepreneur - and booked by folk aficionado Holmes Hooke, Hugh's Room has hosted some of the very best roots music concerts Toronto has seen.
> 
> Jesse Winchester, Tom Paxton, Odetta, Loudon Wainwright III and Guy Clark - high ambassadors from American folk's "official" era, who'd be lost in a rowdy drinking pub and would have difficulty filling a 2,000 soft-seater like Massey Hall or Convocation Hall - have performed at Hugh's Room in the past year. Primo British folk-rockers Fairport Convention are booked for April 3.
> 
> More important, Hugh's Room, which relies for anciliary income on boomers' predilection for quality restaurant food rather than suicide wings and jugs of beer, has become home to Canada's folk festival regulars such as Chris and Ken Whiteley, Colin Linden, Stephen Fearing, Quartette, Ian Tamblyn, Mose Scarlett, Daisy Debolt and countless others who rarely get to play for city crowds under civilized circumstances.
> 
> Jane Siberry, whose performance art defies categorization, has twice in recent months adapted Hugh's Room for her own purposes for several consecutive sold-out events. Carson and Hooke are also booking jazz artists to augment the roots bill, as New York folk club owners used to in the 1960s.
> 
> They even invited yours truly - in my phantom guise as a singer-songwriter - to open recently for American country blues artist Guy Davis.
> 
> It was an absolute joy to play in a room where everyone had come just to listen.
> 
> - derek andrews
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> workday / mailto:derek@harbourfront.on.ca
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