Cape Bretoner Gordie Sampson now lives in Nashville, where he produces about 75 song demos a year, mostly in the country-pop vein. In a CBC Radio interview this morning, he reflected on what makes country music different: I write country song for the most part… The lyric is more important in this genre than really any genre I think. The lyric and the melody together really has to move the listener. In R&B or other types of modern music, the idea is to make people dance. In country music it’s, often times, its to hurt people’s feelings. To make them re-think that...

10 November, 2011

Country rock artist Steve Earle (center, in spotlight) played Dalhousie University's Rebecca Cohn Auditorium last night with his current band, The Dukes (and Duchesses), featuring Allison Moorer. She is Earle's sixth wife out of a total of seven marriages. The evening's highlight was Moorer's unusual rendition of the great Sam Cooke civil rights anthem, A Change is Gonna Come. The ensemble plays tonight at Membertou Trade and Convention Centre, Sydney....

08 September, 2011

(L to R) Damian Moynihan (drums), Larry Björnson (bass), Scott Macmillan (guitar), and Damian Moynihan (drums), and Rob Crowell (saxophone)  played the Economy Shoe Shops's Monday Night Jazz session to a an appreciative but subdued crowd. The bar's co-founder, David Henry, a Halifax fixture, died of cancer Saturday after a brief illness....

29 March, 2011

Contrarian reader Ritchie Simpson asks: What is it with civic politicians in the Maritimes? They’ve jumped on the concert bandwagon with abandon and are flinging money around the way Keith Moon used to fling furniture. The long serving and long suffering mayor of Summerside is a tad closer to the chopping block than HRM’s potentate but it’s troubling the ease with which processes are ignored and checks are written. The Roman circuses were used to keep the civic populace quiet, peaceful, and accommodating. Maybe it’s time we threw a few politicians to the lions....

24 March, 2011

Costas Halavrezos adds a Rube Goldberg twist to our antique engine percussion series (previous instalments here, here, and here.) with this unique James Taylor concert rendition of Slap Leather: As Costas points out, the song is 20 years old, but its bittersweet lyrics could have been written yesterday....

26 February, 2011

Contrarian friend Cliff White muses on tractor percussion (previously here and here): Not only is this just a wonderful piece, it's a nostalgic reminder of just how much rhythm and music there was in early machinery. Aside from the occasional pile driver, I can't think of anything today that carries on that tradition. Even the once ubiquitous make-and-break engine seems to have unfortunately gone completely from our shores....

21 February, 2011

And God love Contrarian readers. When Steve Hart sent me this video of a pretty good guitar trio using a slow-idling tractor for percussion on Sweet Georgia Brown and Bye Bye Blues, I wondered it it was a known Internet chestnut that had somehow escaped me. But the earliest copy of "the Saskatchewan Philharmonic" was posted last April and had only 8,000 hits. Turns out the video is neither philharmonic nor Saskatchewanian. It's Sweden's Olle Hemmingson Trio, featuring the eponymous Olle playing a Gibson Les Paul Signature guitar, with an antique Volvo tractor for percussion. Thanks to Brian Bonnar for setting...

20 February, 2011

It's got a backbeat, you can't lose it: Between the musicians and the marine make-n-breaks in this province, surely we could produce a Maritime rejoinder. Update: It ain't from Saskatchewan. Amplification and correction here. H/T: Steve Hart....

19 February, 2011
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