The Bud Light Escapade Music Festival took over Landsdowne Park in Ottawa last weekend and brought Ottawa a much needed dose of EDM with a dash of hip hop thrown in for good measure.
My Son The Hurricane – The Shape to Come to Funk Tour Stop Ottawa
My Son The Hurricane brought their The Shape to Come to Funk Tour to House of Targ in Ottawa Wednesday night to a very appreciative enthusiastic crowd of fans and fans to be and certainly gave them everything they had and a touch more.
My Son the Hurricane set to storm into Ottawa TONIGHT!
My Son the Hurricane is a 14-piece brasshop funk beast with the mantra: anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Hailing from Niagara/Toronto, the band mixes New Orleans style grooves with funk, jazz and hip hop. Driving the show, charismatic frontman Jacob Bergsma “can playfully pluck every nerve in your body with his voice” (Earshot), while the well-oiled rhythm section including 2 trombones, sousaphone, 2 trumpets and 2 saxes creates a spectacle of sound. With this lineup, My Son the Hurricane “stood out like a sore, yet extremely talented thumb at every show they’ve played” (Pulse Niagara), and became revered for their live show.
Monster Spectacular in Ottawa – a Smashing Good Time
Monster Spectacular, the ultimate sports and entertainment spectacle mixing racing, showmanship and the ultimate fan experience into one incredible, action packed live show, roared in to Ottawa last Saturday. The crowd gathered at the Canadian Tire Centre was not left disappointed as some of their favorites, including Bounty Hunter, Anger Management, and Train Wreck revved their engines and crushed everything in their path.
That Place You Know with Ali McCormick
Once, before they called her the Lioness of Lanark County, Ali McCormick was growing up off the grid on a farm with the first steps to the rest of her life lying in wait in the form of an acoustic guitar. Home was a small house on a Watson’s Corners hill where her family grew vegetables, tended to livestock and lived a life many of their loved ones couldn’t quite understand. They were tough times but they were beautiful times. The great wide world was somewhere beyond the horizon but first there were spring melts, maple syrup runs and days chasing deer out of the garden with an old hound dog. Then, of course, there was that guitar.
Somewhere between the jump into 5 and the step to six, McCormick started strumming her brother’s six string. It wasn’t long before she was given one of her own, a cherry top parlour guitar which would graduate into theTaylor that has now seen many miles beyond where it started from.
“Our family was always big on long, drawn out and frequent visits,” recalls McCormick. “It was during those visits with heated in-depth family discussions, boisterous tea and coffee drinking sessions, where inevitably the guitars would come out.”
Though she refers to music as always having been a strength and comfort to her, she admits she hadn’t seriously thought of pursuing it as a career until a few years ago. That desire, though, was pulled by another dream, one to see the world over the horizon line she’d spent so much time looking towards out her Watson’s Corners window. In her late teens, guitar in hand, she headed towards the city lights, tucking snippets of songs into suitcases and dusting off melodies at way-station stops along the journey. On snowy night highways, in lonesome hotel rooms, on smoky room stages, here she found the words and the words found themselves onto scraps of paper that found their way into her songs.
“I’ve been known to park the car half-way up the driveway and stop everything to hammer out a song coming home from work,” she’ll tell you. Her tunes would be very much like McCormick herself, a stitched together patchwork quilt of personality, one that has a sense of worldly wanderlust as well as a fiery, back woods tough personality. Even sandpaper, of course, has a softer side and you’ll find that there too.
This wilderness wordsmith populates her music will characters you can slip on like a well-worn sweater. Though you’ll find struggle and bittersweet kisses, McCormick usually gives you a clearing at the end of the past where you can dip your line into a local fishing hole and dream a little dream. Though mainly rooted in folk, her tunes do like to wander in other pastures. From time to time you will catch a hint of jazz and even hip-hop on the wistful winds.
“I love bringing something out in my songs, be it a story or feeling, to people,” she says. “If a song has made someone else think of something they want to change about themselves, or remember someone they love then I’m in my happy place.”
Having released two albums (2014’s self-titled recording and 2016’s Clean Water), McCormick is ready to share perhaps her most personal offering to date with That Place You Know. Tracks like “Tackle Box, Saw, Chain and a Knife” and “The Woodstove” show that though the body has ventured across the land the soul has never strayed far from her childhood farm. The path at the end of a tour now leads to her own cozy clearing where she runs a sheep farm between her musical interludes. A need to be inside nature’s envelope is part of her DNA.
“If I learned anything related to musicology during my years in restaurants it is that some recipes call for familiarity. Nature has the perfect ingredients for an environmentally inspired songwriter to cook up some good, wholesome poetry.”
That Place You Know is an album of road-tested songs that could be called an ode to youthful memories filled with hijinks and wild days at the midway. In between there are moments spent at home nestled in the warm caress of love. One would expect no less from The Lioness of Lank County.
Before hitting the road from Ontario to the West Coast, Ali kicks off her Album Release Tour at Irene’s on June 8th. Special guests Fluffy Little Cowboys!
Dancing Into Tradition with the Capital Ukrainian Festival
Remember when we suggested you get some dancing shoes you’re okay with wearing out for when the Capital Ukrainian Festival returns July 20-22 with that huge selection of musicians who are eager to get you moving? Now, those unfamiliar with Ukrainian dance may be thinking to yourself just how do you fill that space in front of the main stage and get your groove going, anyway? Thankfully, the festival has brought in a bountiful bevy of inspiration in the form of nearly a dozen dance troupes to show you how it’s done! All you have to do is be amazed and maybe try and keep up.
Plan your Canada Day Celebrations in Canada’s Capital Region
Back-to-back Canada Day celebrations and performances await you and your family!
Cadillac Three going on a Canadian Vacation!
After wooing Canadian country fans on their recent cross Canada tour with Dallas Smith the Cadillac Three are coming back for another round!
JOHN MELLENCAMP TO EMBARK ON CANADIAN “SAD CLOWNS & HILLBILLIES TOUR”
FOLLOWING 100+ SOLD-OUT U.S. SHOWS , CRITICALLY-ACCLAIMED SINGERSONGWRITER
WILL SET OUT ON 20+ NEW CANADIAN DATES
TICKETS ON- SALE FRIDAY, JUNE 1
Getting Honey Suite with The Lifers
Liv and Anita Cazzola lead Guelph’s art-folk/rock collective The Lifers. So, what’s in a name? Well, for starters, the two have a partnership that seems tightly fastened together for life with needle, thread, some welding, a smattering of duct-tape and a bit of super glue for good measure. Oh yeah, and blood. They’re sisters.
