A few weeks ago, I stood in with one of my absolute favourite Toronto artists, Alanna J Brown, in a music video for her song, Accelerate, the first single off her upcoming album. The video was conveniently shot in the same building in which I work… command line by day, mask-wearing bassist by night!
Accelerate – Alanna J Brown from Alanna J Brown on Vimeo.
I’m playing with Alanna next week, on the U of T campus.
I’ve now been married for a year. I’ve been meaning to share more from the wedding. I’ve already posted my wedding speech, but there are also the wonderful wedding photos taken by my aunt, a few photos I took myself during the day, and a video clip of Robyn Dell’Unto playing her song, Dreams of Me, for our first dance (the song I fell in love with when I first met Robyn).
I’ve been playing violin with Dave Borins for two years now, and it’s been a blast. This April, we played an audition in Orillia, and secured ourselves a spot in the Mariposa Folk Festival this summer. Now that some of the audition videos are available online, I thought I’d share ours in anticipation of our upcoming showcase.
(We’ve got some other good videos on YouTube too.)
Details on the July 11th showcase are available on the the events calendar I’ve been hacking together recently, and the full Mariposa schedule has details on the other folk goodness happening throughout that weekend.
I’ve been in love with Robyn Dell’Unto from the moment I first heard her voice, and it’s been almost two years now since we became friends and she first introduced me as her secret weapon.
This past Thursday, we had the opportunity to perform at the Niagara Falls New Year’s Eve party on the main stage. Though our set was cut short, it was a fantastic experience. We made it onto the Global TV national broadcast for about a minute, and I’ve stumbled upon some great photos taken by Ed McAskill (including some outstanding shots of me).
Robyn has been taking off recently, getting signed with Orange Lounge and having her music featured on CBC’s Being Erica season finale and other TV shows. She’s started work on her first full-length album, and it’s only going to get more exciting from here… I hope she remembers me when she’s famous!
Last night, Victor Swift asked me to play a set at the first Hart House Open Stage event of the year at the U of T. As far as songwriting goes, I’ve been performing mostly solo lately, but last night was different: My good friend and co-writer, Alex Palmer, joined me. We used to play together in our band, Fishkiss, but we’ve been on indefinite hiatus since our last gig in June 2007.
Hiatus, no longer!
We have video of two songs: Cedars and Stars, and Bancroft County.
Expect to hear more soon… (I hope!).
Thursday night, I had a chance to speak at the government’s Copyright Consultation Toronto Townhall. I’ll post more detailed thoughts shortly, but in the meantime, Nick Dynice was kind enough to upload a video of my comments to YouTube.
I wasn’t expecting a chance to speak and hadn’t prepared much, but my name came up in the lottery in the last half hour or so. I’m not particularly happy with how I spoke — some parts felt awkward, and I had to cut other points due to time — but I’m glad could provide a different perspective compared to the ~80% of speakers who were folks from the music industry arguing for some combination of locks, levies and legislative responses to their business model problems.
This post originally appeared on the UofT Students for Life blog.
I’m not usually a fan of any pro-life arguments that focus on potentiality, because it tends to obscure the fact that from the moment of conception we’re dealing with actual life (and just potential growth)… but that caveat aside, this new ad from CatholicVote.org is amazing (via AmP):
This is the second ad they’ve produced (here’s the first). Can’t wait to see what else they come up with.
Almost every month for the past four years, I’ve performed at the St. Michael’s College open mic. at the University of Toronto. It has an extremely friendly atmosphere courtesy of the supportive community of friends, musicians and music lovers. It’s a great place to try something new, or to goof around. For my last performance, I played two songs: one of my own (The Limit) and an Emilaise + JP Diddy medley.
Beyonce, Jay-Z, Vitamin C Medley (honestly, not sure why I’ve uploaded this… I think I left my dignity at the door…)
Thanks Kelly’s Korner!
Last week, I attended the February #Twuneup — Covers Edition. #Twuneup is basically a monthly listening party (this was the second) run by a group of people in the Toronto Twitter community who share a love of music. There’s also lots of music sharing that happens on Twitter.
I found out about it too late to get a spot at the first one (space is limited), but this time I was quick to sign up. I was happy to learn that live performances were encouraged, so I busted out the T-Qualizer (perfect event) and played my cover of The Patient (Tool):
There were a couple other fun live performances too!
I also met lots of cool people. I first noticed @photojunkie last summer and I’d met him at #hohoTO, but the rest were new faces. @modernmod and @nicopop were the other organizers. I had a chance to meet @johnpapa, @alkerton, @rlangdon, @3rdparty, @pageby_paige, @zachaysan and lots of other cool people.
I had a great chat with @leilaboujnane (from Idée) and she gave me a Creative Commons sticker, before she even knew that I’m a CC BY-SA artist! I was going to put the sticker on my guitar case, but then I realized it had a clear background (black-on-black wouldn’t work to well). So… I put it on my guitar!
Rannie (@photojunkie) has photos on his site and Bev (@bev_w) has a Flickr set.
(Photo by bevw)
Lots of fun! I hope to make it back in March.
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