Doug Paisley joins John Showman & Chris Coole @ The Cameron House, Tuesday

Singer/songwriter Doug Paisley sits in with the banjo fiddle duo of John Showman & Chris Coole from 6pm-8pm.

John Showman & Chris Coole launch December residency @ The Cameron, Tuesday

Lonesome Ace's John Showman & Chris Coole kick off their Cameron House residency Tuesday from 6 pm to 8 pm.

Catch the Lonesome Ace Stringband at the Newmarket Legion (707 Shrigley St) on December 6 at 8 pm. Get tickets here.

Col. Tom Parker's Swinging Door w/ John Showman @ The Cameron House, Sunday

Col. Tom is joined by his old Lickin' Good Fried pal John Showman of Lonesome Ace String Band at the Cameron from 6-8 pm.   

LINKS

Col. Tom Parker / Lickin' Good Fried bandcamp page https://americanpour.bandcamp.com/

John Showman site https://www.johnshowman.com/

John Showman & Chris Coole @ The Cameron House, Monday

Lonesome Ace Stringers John Showman and Chris Coole put on a duo show at the Cameron starting at 6pm sharp tonight.  

Watch John Showman & Chris Coole play songs from their duets album Afield

Lonesome Ace Stringband's John Showman & Chris Coole knocked out a few tunes from their new recording at the Tranzac.

Here's the scoop...

John Showman and Chris Coole are known both on the planet and the internet as unique and skilled purveyors of a music that lurks around the fringes of old-time and bluegrass. Recently, they celebrated the release of their new album "Afield - 11 Fiddle and Banjo Duets Recorded in The Great Outdoors" with a performance at the venerable Tranzac Club in Toronto. Although they won't be outdoors for this performance, they will perform many of the tunes featured on the new album, as well as some new original songs, and some chestnuts thrown in for good measure. 

Watch their Tranzac performance right here. 

Check out a few other recent performances by John Showman & Chris Coole at Roncesvalles United Church below. For more information, or to get their new CD, go to: https://chriscoole.com/new-album-afield

Lonesome Ace String Band releasing new Lively Times album in November

John Showman, Max Malone & Chris Coole are putting out a 14-song live album recorded at Vancouver's Anza Club back in 2019. 

Here's the scoop...

"Lively Times - Live at the Anza Club – out November 26 – is a collection of 14 songs and tunes taken from a show we did in Vancouver in November 2019 for The Pacific Bluegrass & Old-Time Music Society Community Group. We had the show filmed by Approach Media, and luckily, we got Andrew Smith at Vancouver Live Sound to multi-track record the show so we had some mixing capability. 

"We weren't planning to do a live album and had sort of forgotten about the show until earlier this year. When we did get back to it, we loved what we heard and realized we'd captured a special night. We choose our favourite tracks from the two sets, John Showman mixed them, then Andrew Collins mastered the whole deal. Now, we have an album that we're really proud of, and we think you're going to like!

"The 14 tracks cover some of our favorite songs from our first 4 albums. Over the next 6 weeks we will release 6 videos of tracks from the album as they were played the night we recorded it!"

You can listen to a preview, read the liners, and pre-order the digital download here: https://lonesomeace.com/pre-order-lively-times. Check the track listing below. 

Lively Times: Live at the Anza Club 

1. The Hills of Mexico – We’ve been playing this tune since the very beginning. In fact, it’s the very first tune on our first album. There are many versions of this classic folk song, but this version owes its roots to the great KY banjo picker and singer Roscoe Holcomb. We first heard it on a recording by The Renegades which featured the wonderful singing of Carol Elizabeth Jones.

2. Laketown Blues - Richard Inman is one of Canada’s great contemporary songwriters. Everyone in the band is a big fan. Laketown Blues is just one in a vast catalogue of moving songs he’s written.  

3. Long Hot Summer Days – John Hartford’s style of stringband music, especially his “windows approach” has had a very big influence on the way we play as a band. We also love his songs, which has prompted us to record quite a few of them. Although Coole was utterly aghast to have flubbed one of the first words of this song (“towboats” should be “empties”), we thought the crazy spirit of the performance more than made up for it! Watch a performance of "Long Hot Summer Days" below.

4. The Only Other Person in the Room – Who says you can’t honky-tonk with just a banjo, fiddle, and bass? This song comes from the great Texas duo Noel Mckay and Brennen Leigh. It may not be that old, but it’s already a classic to be sure.

5. Black Lung – A moving piece from the great W.V. songwriter and singer Hazel Dickens about the trials and tribulations of life in the coal mines. This piece was originally recorded (by Hazel) as acapella, but we have taken some liberties and interpreted some chords. Watch a performance below.

6. Cluck Old Hen – This version is based on the playing of the great KY (or WV, depending on who you talk to) fiddler Ed Haley.

7. Stone Walls and Steel Bars – Originally recorded by The Stanley Brothers, this song was written by  Ray Pennington and Roy Marcum. We’ve changes the chords here a bit from the Stanley’s version to make it even more dark sounding. This is a great example of a song that paints a vivid picture with very few words! Watch a performance below. 

8. Highlander’s Farewell/Monroe’s Farewell to Long Hollow – The first tune in this medley comes from fiddler Emmet Lundy (1864-1953) from Galax, Virginia. The second tune is one that Bill Monroe wrote but never got around to recording. Thankfully, James Bryan save this amazing piece from obscurity by putting it on his album “Lookout Blues” back in the early 80s.

9. Damned Old Piney Mountain - Craig Johnson was an amazing fiddler and banjo player who performed with The Double Decker Stringband in the 80's and early 90's. He was obviously also a great songwriter as he wrote this song based on a conversation he had with an old logger he met in West Virginia. 

10. Going to German – This song comes from the repertoire of Gus Cannon who recorded widely in the 20s and 30s with his band “The Jug Stompers”. Apparently, the German in this song was referring to a prison.

11. Big Iron – It’s easy to overlook what an amazing songwriter Marty Robbins was. Even if he’d never sung a note, his catalogue of songs would still immortalize him. This is one from his classic 1959 album “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs”.

12. Too Much Water – Speaking of great songwriters whose singing overshadowed their songwriting ability, this under-known honky-tonk classic comes from George Jones.

13. Cherry River Live/Gauley Junction – The song in this medley comes from West Virginia banjo picker and singer Jenes Cottrell. Fun fact - apart from being a powerful singer and player, Mr. Cottrell was known for making banjo rims using the aluminum torque converter rings from 1956 Buicks. The second tune in the medley was written by John and named for the beautiful confluence of The Gauley River and the New River in Fayette County, West Virginia.

14. Mississippi Dew – We wind things up with another great John Hartford song played in high-gear!

Jake Xerxes Fussell vs. Lonesome Ace Stringband

Durham, NC's Jake Xerxes Fussell and Toronto's Lonesome Ace Stringband each owe a bit to Roscoe Holcomb's take of "Hills of Mexico"

Sez Jake Xerxes Fussell...

“Hills of Mexico” is one of many narrative ballads where the singer-narrator is approached by a stranger in transit with a business proposition that turns out to be not so great for singer-narrator. Many of the European ballads of this kind deal with highwaymen and their exploits, mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. In this particular (19th century) instance the proposition entails going to Mexico to work the cattle drive. Many regional variants from this family, alternately known as “The Trail of the Buffalo,” have been sung in a variety of musical contexts and communities. My version borrows heavily from Roscoe Holcomb’s narrative, which is mysterious in that it omits the Mexico part itself almost entirely. 

Thanks to Kevin McNamee-Tweed for the artwork: “Steamboat,” 2018, Glazed ceramic, 9.25” x 7”. 

— Jake Xerxes Fussell

www.paradiseofbachelors.com/jake-xerxes-fussell 

https://lonesomeace.com

Watch the Lonesome Ace Stringband live at the Deep End Ranch

In January, Toronto's Lonesome Ace Stringband raised the roof of the Deep End Ranch in Santa Paula which you can see below. Get their music right here. 

Lonesome Ace Stringband @ Imperial Pub, Wednesday

Max Heineman, Chris Coole and John Showman launch their Wednesday night residency tonight at 8 pm. 

Fiver presents Audible Songs From Rockwood @ St. Matthew's United Church on Friday; Array Space on Saturday

Simone Schmidt performs songs inspired by the stories of women inmates at Kingston's Rockwood Asylum. 

Simone Schmidt, aka Fiver, is a Toronto-based musician working within the frame of traditional North American folk music. Her latest album Audible Songs From Rockwood is a series of eleven fictional field recordings, gathered from case files of patients at the Rockwood Asylum for the Criminally Insane between 1854-1881.

The rigour of Schmidt’s writing process is shown through the work: Over the course of two years, Schmidt researched the asylum's primary documents – patient files, architectural diagrams, superintendents' diaries –  spinning her findings into historical fiction and, from there, into song. The voices on the record are crafty, witty, evasive, despondent, and lucid. Audible Songs From Rockwood shapes its subject matter with wit, optimism, sadness, and even joy. Using an acoustic sonic pallet and working with some local heavies in the old time folk tradition – John Showman, Max Heineman, Chris Coole, Kristine Schmidt – and highly skilled instrumentalists – cellist Cris Derksen and Blood Ceremony's Alia O’Brien  – the performances gives voice to  people living in the margins of history.

The album is accompanied by a book created by fictional ethnomusicologist, Simone Carver, written in the style of the liner notes of Smithsonian Folkways compilations.  It includes lyrics and supplemental information about the historical context of the inmates and their songs along with original artwork by Darby Milbraith, Geneva Hailey, Jennifer Castle, Jeff Bierk and Julianna Neufeld. The package carries questions about the archive as an apparatus of colonial power, definitions of sanity and criminality, and the early settler-colonial agenda foundational to those modes of thought still operating in today’s carceral system. Watch the mini-documentary shot by Colin Medley followed by Meg Remy's video for the song Mouser. Audible Songs From Rockwood is available in various formats from idée fixe records which you can get right here.

Fiver is at St. Matthew's United Church (729 St. Clair West) Friday at 7:30pm (now sold out);
also at Array Space (155 Walnut Ave) Saturday at 9:30pm, $15.

Foggy Hogtown Boys' CD Release Party @ Hugh's Room, tonight

Toronto's own Foggy Hogtown Boys launch their Animals, Insects and People album at Hugh's this evening. 

Foggy Hogtown Boys behaving badly?

Toronto's unstoppable bluegrass force, the Foggy Hogtown Boys, have always been better known for their super-tight ensemble play than their sense of humour but don't be fooled by the clean-cut stage presentation and all that ridiculously proficient picking. Once the house lights come up and their stringed companions are put to bed, Chris Quinn, Andrew Collins, John Showman, Chris Coole and Max Heineman are inveterate cut-ups and it's about time folks outside the group's small circle of elbow-bending buddies knew it.   

For their new self-released Scotch & Sofa disc – which they'll be unveiling at their release party on Friday (June 11) at Hugh's Room (2261 Dundas West) –  the typically neat 'n' tidy Foggy Five decided to get down 'n' dirty for their high concept CD sleeve photo shoot with hilarious results. It all fits perfectly with their chosen repertoire for the album which delves into the tried and true themes of drinking, gambling, rambling and cheating. It's just the sort of stuff that once made for classic country songs way back in the days before Nashville's finest left the honky tonks for hot tubs. But then, these hombres have made a career out of being more country than country.  

The great thing about the Foggy Hogtown Boys is that while they remain deeply immersed in old-school bluegrass tradition, enough to still have their Bill Monroe moments on Scotch & Sofa along with nods to the Stanley Brothers and Flatt & Scruggs, they're anything but bound by it. Listen closely  and you'll also hear the influence of Jimmie Rodgers and maybe a little Papa Charlie Jackson too. Over the course of making five albums without interference from producers or labels, they've developed a uniquely Canuck approach to playing the bluegrass and old-time music they love which is somehow simultaneously both rootsier and more adventurous than what's currently being done by their similarly banjo-driven Southern counterparts.

Each virtuosic member continues to have numerous simultaneous side-projects on the go but that hasn't undermined what they do together as the Foggy Hogtown Boys. In fact, just the opposite is true as demonstrated by the broad range of song styles and structures on Scotch & Sofa which you simply won't encounter on contemporary bluegrass recordings. And if the sleeve images are any indication, they're still having a great time doing it.

Get In Line Brother at the Almonte Old Town Hall on Feb 6, 2010



  
LINKS
site http://foggyhogtownboys.com
myspace http://www.myspace.com/thefoggyhogtownboys
Hugh's Room http://www.hughsroom.com