Category: video

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Canadian Music Week: Two Songs From: Alex Lamoureux

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Alex Lamoureux is from Manitoba, and was ranked in the top 10 at the Grand Master Fiddle Championships in 2008-2009. Watch these videos, and you’ll see why.

By himself, with Old Reel of Eight, Métis style, at the Manitoba Fiddle Association Championships in 2012:

Alex Lamoureux - Metis Style - Manitoba Fiddle Association Championships

At the Manitoba Fiddle Association Championships, and joined by his mother, three-time Grand Master Fiddling Champion Patti Kusturok, also in 2012:

Alex & Patti Lamoureux - Twin Fiddles - Manitoba Fiddle Association Championships

For more recent activity, check out Kusturok’s YouTube page, where she’s doing a series entitled 365 Days of Fiddle Tunes.

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A Good Read A Good Listen and a Good Drink: Nick Morrison, Mumblr

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It’s a simple yet sublime pleasure, and just thinking about it can make you feel a little calmer, a little more content. Imagine: You bring out one of the good rocks glasses (or your favorite mug or a special occasion tea cup) and pour a couple fingers of amber liquid (or something dark and strong or just some whole milk). You drop the needle on the jazz platter (or pull up a blues album on your mp3 player or dig out that mixtape from college). Ensconcing yourself in the coziest seat in the house, you crack the spine on a classic (or find your place in that sci-fi paperback or pull up a biography on your e-book reader). And then, you go away for a while. Ah, bliss.

In this series, some of NTSIB’s friends share beloved albums, books and drinks to recommend or inspire.

Mumblr, scrappy little band of my heart (East Coast division), recently had the opportunity to be part of the Red Room Series, a new session series which is, like them, out of Philadelphia. My first reaction on seeing the videos was They’re playing in good light!!! What!!! because I may possibly have spent too much time in raggedy clubs. The sound is great, too. Here is an excerpt, selected on the grounds that this is one and only time something entitled Greyhound Station could reasonably be described as a visual and aural delight.

Sleepless Sound Red Room Series: Mumblr – Greyhound Station from James DuBourdieu on Vimeo.

They’re heading out on a month’s voyage through parts of the East Coast with some excursions into the Midwest with Soda Bomb starting on April 9, so if you liked what you just watched, stop by their Facebook and check their dates and go and see them if they’re stopping near you.

And now I turn the floor over to lead singer Nick Morrison, who joins us today to talk about a favorite book, record and drink.

A Good Read:

I used to read a lot when I was younger but going to college kind of destroyed my love of reading for fun. It takes me much longer to get through books now, haha. I did just finish Blood Meridian by Cormac McCarthy which was excellent. The book was an interesting mix of beauty and violence.

A Good Listen:

One of my favorite albums is the 1968 self-titled release by Os Mutantes. It’s an amazingly versatile album that hits every emotion. The band spearheaded the psychedelic rock movement in Brazil and, in my opinion, puts bands like Velvet Underground to shame. I’ve always admired the eclectic song-writing and complete mess of styles. The songs Panis et Circenses and Baby are hot tracks.

Os Mutantes- Panis Et Circensis & Bat Macumba (Complete French TV-1969)

A Good Drink:

I’m a big beer guy. I can never bring myself to make or buy a cocktail or mixed drink because I spend too much money on something I drink immediately. If I do drink liquor it’s usually Gin and water. 9 times out of 10 I’m drinking beer. Yuengling is the illest. A good lager really makes it happen for me. If I’m feeling extra fancy I’ll even add a little bit of OJ to it. Have you ever heard of class? Because I think I have it.

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Video: Ryan O’Reilly, Northern Lights

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And now, a return to regularly scheduled programming, in the form of a really lovely video for an awesome song.

This is Northern Lights by Ryan O’Reilly. The song is the title track for his upcoming EP; the video was shot in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada and my feelings about it are basically a series of animated gestures and the lingering desire to be able to walk around the place and find my own paths through the rusty cars and the snow.

It’s bleak, I guess, I mean, it’s a rust belt town, and the cinematography makes everything look beautiful, but that’s just movie magic and romanticizing a grim reality. But there’s a warmth and sweetness, too, a sense of having entered a secret world, of having found small joyful things to love amid the wreckage.

Ryan O'Reilly - Northern Lights

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CXCW Highlight: Water Tower, Town/Come Down Easy

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One of the many awesome things about CXCW is catching up with old favorites. I developed a deep fondness for Water Tower back when they were the Water Tower Bucket Boys and singing awesome bluegrass songs about acid tripping in San Francisco, and then I lost track of them a little bit. So I was super pleased when their video featuring their new song Town and a cover of Spaceman 3’s Come Down Easy popped up yesterday. They’ve evolved from their bluegrass roots, though not that far – just enough to settle into a psychedelic groove.

WATER TOWER "CXCW2015" TOWN/COME DOWN EASY

Water Tower will be at That Other Festival as well (multi-tasking! excellent!), and to follow their adventures, you may consult Facebook, here.

To follow CouchxCouchWest, you may consult Facebook, Twitter, or refresh the Festival page several times a day.

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Festival Alert: Couch x CouchWest 2015

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Now in its fifth year (!!!) Couch x CouchWest is once again coming to a screen near you. Very near you. Like, in your hand right now, if you’re reading this on your phone. Though if you want to make a YouTube playlist of the videos and project them on the nearest wall-like surface, YOU CAN. Such is the beauty of Couch x CouchWest!

Lineup: Anyone who sends in a video. Are you a musician? In a band? You should sit down on your couch / favorite chair / front porch / elevator shaft / etc and sing a song for in the internet. It will be awesome. DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS IS NOON EASTERN MARCH 21st.

Dates: March 15-21

Location: Anywhere you want. In bed, in the bath (Carefully! Make sure your device is well protected from the water!), on a train, on a plane, on the bus, you are all welcome, come join us, where-ever you are.

Survival guide: As with That Other Festival, you will probably want snacks and cold beverages and comfortable clothes. The major differences: Pants are optional, pets are encouraged, there are no lines, you’ll never be shut out of a show unless your internet falls apart, and the only hipster is you. Plus the beer is way cheaper and the odds of people talking through/over music you are trying to listen to are WAY lower.

Highlights: The entire festival is a special experience, and I urge all y’all to catch as many sets as you can. The following are some things I personally am looking forward to:

1) The Irish Showcase. Tony Fitz has once again rounded up some luminaries and persuaded them to record some videos, and I can’t wait to see them.

Here’s one he recorded last year, featuring Rónán Ó Snodaigh (Kila) & Kristina Aspeqvist (Stockholm Vodou Orchestra), who literally met 10 minutes before this was filmed and did not discuss or rehearse their performance:

Rónán Ó Snodaigh & Kristina Aspeqvist | Cara Liom (CXCW 2014)

2) Unexpected gems of cover songs. There were thirty-four last year, and this one, a wholesale reinvention of NIN’s Closer by The Tonk Honkys quite justifiably got Best In Show. Not going to lie, I dolphin-clapped and squeaked with joy.

The Tonk Honkys cover Closer by Nine Inch Nails - CXCW2014

3) Surprise special guests. Last year, Rosanne Cash (!!) joined in the fun. This year Glen Hansard is going to be part of the Irish Showcase. (Okay, that kind of ruins the surprise, but – there might be more. ONE NEVER KNOWS.)

Here’s Roseanne Cash and The Thread from last year:

Rosanne Cash & The Thread - A Feather's Not A Bird (CXCW2014)

4) Finding out what Two Mule Blues will blow up this year. Spoiler alert: it will probably be a couch. Last year it was a white couch, neatly matching the snow on the mountains behind them:

Two Mule Blues - Old Vinyl and Innocence CXCW 2014

To attend the festival, click here, starting on March 15!

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Video: Mumblr, Got It

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This is the video for Got It, by Mumblr, from Full of Snakes, and it contains: Philadelphia, wet, gray and grimy and somehow more dear for it; inexplicable pantslessness; joyous headbanging and moshing; and a chorus that will probably get lodged in your head.

Also, while I have only attended one of their shows so far, I can tell you those crowd shots are not the product of artful editing or careful staging, that is what it’s actually like, them going full throttle while the room winds up into an explosion of punk rock joy. That moment where everyone bangs their head at once? That is the sweet spot, and they know how to hit it.

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Video: Bethany Weimers and Merlin Porter, Winter Heart

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I always appreciate a good stop-motion video, and this one, for Winter Heart by Bethany Weimers, is especially delicious. The best part: she and her artist partner Merlin Porter created it with sets they built themselves, in their living room, and a borrowed camera.

The final result is wistful, whimsical, and really quite lovely. I’ve watched it twice and I already feel a little less Grinchy about both snow and Valentine’s Day.

Bethany Weimers - Winter Heart [OFFICIAL VIDEO]

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Video: T’dòz, Ogou

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After many years playing drums and producing with Boukman Eksperyans, the Haitian roots music group founded by his family, T’dòz (Ted G. Beaubrun) is striking out on his own. This is the video for Ogou from Lâcher Prise (“Letting Go”), his first solo record. The song is a call to Ogou, the spirit of fire and strength, and both it and the video are beautiful.

T'doz - Ogou [CLIP OFFICIEL]

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Video: New London Fire, For My Own

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For My Own is the first release from New London Fire‘s upcoming record Echoes in the Dark. Stylistically it picks up where The Dirt The Blood The Faith left off – Americana leavened with an indie rock sensibility – though tonally it’s a little darker. The first two times I listened to it I thought it was a mournful meditation on a lost relationship, the third time through I was like . . . hold on, is this a murder two-step?

Not a lot happens in the video, and I mean that literally, it’s a little under three and a half minutes of home-movie style footage of what appears to be the back of a dude sitting on a wooded hill and staring at a lake. I spent a little bit of time wondering which lake – Central Park? one in Jersey? Upstate? – before deciding that ultimately it doesn’t matter. The anonymous lake is a metaphor, for the time the lovelorn spend with their attention turned inwards. Or else it’s where the narrator dumped the body.

Well, whatever the lake means, or doesn’t, I definitely want to hear the rest of the record, and the story.

New London Fire - For My Own Official Video