Performing in 2007 at Falconneti's East Side Grill in Vancouver, B.C.
Featuring Jaron Freeman-Fox on fiddle and Colin Cowan on bass prior to the recording of The Drunken Priest 2007-2008.
Working out new songs. The entire set was recorded by sound engineer Neal Miskin of Red Light Sound and Commercial Drive Records, however, sadly lost to the mists of time (read: accidental deletion).
We hadjust pulled into North Country Fair in a place called, get this, Driftpile, Alberta.
Three-some hours north of Edmonton,
in b&% -f$@k nowhere, our car hurtled into a massive field with stages and vendors, down an earthen trail with a warning sign!
We tore up to the stage at 5:30 (having been delayed by a $70 speeding ticket), just in time for our 6pm Main Stage time slot.
I would like to say we blew the crowd away, but it was the second slot of the show, and the crowd was very thin. Thin, that is, for folk fest of some 6,000 odd people. So, there were still a few hundred listeners.
The real problem was the sound. We have no idea how it sounded to the audience, but feedback troubled us on stage. Most sound guys still don*t seem to know how to mix vocals, with effects, and often don*t take the advice that would make a difference. Then there is the cardinal rule:
Do not anger your sound tech!
So, we often keep our mouths shut and let the techs skill or incompetence speak for itself. (Sadly, a listener rarely thinks: *Wow! That show had a bad sound tech.* No, rather, listeners think, *that band didn*t sound very good.*)
The stage was good though, and the stage crew were very tight and efficient, even on the Friday evening. North Country Fair was a well-organized, and altogether awesome event to be part of. Here is a pic of the main stage!
The side stages were also fun. There were two:
1. The Firefly Ranch
and
2. Shady Grove
(which we decided to call Shady Thicket, lovingly after the Christopher Walken sketch *Colonol Angus.*)
We have some video footage of our mainstage show, and two camera angle of nearly our entire Shady Thicket show. And a brief, low quality, but very demonstrative bit of footage of our 3am Sunday night volunteer party show. A great version of Jethro Tull*s Acres Wild came together that intoxicated night!
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Thursday, March 29, 2012
Kristen!People like you keep my music flowing. Thanks for sending me money for something you could have downloaded free!
Wednesday, March 28, 2012
So, there should be more information here soon as re-recording of the 2nd studio album finishes pre-production and gets under way.
As some of you know, the previous tracks were "lost"...I was less than happy with them anyway, then Dan Meery -- the sound engineer -- deleted them all while in Toronto and I couldn't stop him nor save them.
What a guy. However, he did do a whole bunch of work that you can perhaps still here if you search around online about it.
Of course this was very frustrating for me, Lucas Ross, the drummer and co-producer with me on the album.
Lucas and I went on to record the steampunk rock Corset material, which yielded a fully finished glossy hard rock album featuring lyrics of Victorian poetics and narrative, including The Ballad Of Dorian Gray.
you can download this stuff on my site: elegwen.com
Or become a fan and maybe get it free. There's that option.
Money should never be a reason not to
1) Make
and
2) Enjoy
Driving away from the Main Stage at North Country Fair, Matt (our bass player for all the shows in Alberta this summer, we still have yet to find a permanent replacement for Colin Cowan) pulled to the side of the dirt road to give an oncoming mini-van a little extra room.
Well, he gave it too much room, as we gracefully glided down into a ditch. It took a second for everyone in the car to register that we were, in fact, in a ditch. Trying to back out, it was clear the tires were also stuck in the mud. Todd slid out the window, I snapped a pic of him as he shimmied, and then I opened the door and jumped into the briers.
Just then a guy on a bike went by, saw us, and said he would fetch the tractor to pull us out. We laughed, thinking how funny it was that some random old guy on a bike would just know where to get a tractor to tow us out of our dilemma!
Car kept passing us, and one slowed. I thought I recognized the lads in the car as the band The Deep Dark Woods (who I had read about in Penguin Eggs as a big up and coming Saskatchewan group.) To be sure I asked who they were and I was right. After chatting we planned to meet, drink and jam with them later at their far-off campsite.
Just as they pulled away, a car passed them and slowed. The driver, an Asian man with sunglasses and a stylish hat asked if we wanted a push. We chatted and discovered he was the Ory No*Man Band (www.orynoman.ca)
It was 3am Sunday morning (Saturday night in the common speech), and I was in the sídhe as you might say, and came upon the Family Stage in the middle of the vast North Country field. There was a psychedelic site. A man with his black tied back, wearing a wife beater and hammering on the guitar belted melody to the famous In My Time of Dying song, covered by Dylan and Zeppelin, most famously, but of far older origin. Beside him a man with a mushroom like hat played the double bass which lay almost on its side. I think someone was on drums and there may have been another singer doing back-up, it is hard to remember through the haze of the experience. All I know is this...
I stood spellbound. For probably two hours as this changeling-like man and his faerie host played spellbinding aubades as the sunrise breached the midsummer night and the cheers of the listeners continued to inspire the band to keep playing. *You all better buy our last 15 cds,* the singer cried, as he launched into In My Time of Dying for possibly the 5th time.
THIS was Ory No*Man.
Well, watch our 6 minute debut video blog and see and hear for yourself: a little snippet of what this all was like.
