Sweet sounds of summer

My recommendations for outdoor concerts this summer is this week's WEVancouver cover story.

Gillian Welch hits the Vancouver Folk Festival this summer.

MUSIC: Sweet sounds of summer

Posted By: Andrea Warner

Whether under the stars or beneath a sunny sky, there are plenty of reasons to venture outside this
summer for your music fix.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings
May 27 at Malkin Bowl, 5:30pm. $32.50 from Ticketmaster

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings are the modern titans of retro-soul/R&B. Jones has sass to spare and knows her way around the most soulful of songs, and backing band the Dap-Kings offer bold bursts of brass and woodwind and down and dirty guitar flourishes. Plus, this is one of those rare concerts where everyone will definitely show up on time, since it’s pretty much a fact that opening acts don’t get more awesome than Austin-based vintage-blues/soul group Black Joe Lewis & the Honeybears. A sweet double bill.

Sam Roberts Band
May 28 at Malkin Bowl, 5:30pm. $35 from Ticketmaster

The Juno Award-winning indie rocker made Canadian music history with his best-selling independent 2001 release, The Inhuman Condition. Since then, he’s continued to woo fans thanks to songs that range the spectrum from social commentary to relationship stuff. His most recent album, Collider, hits stores this week, and has already received enthusiastic praise from critics across the country.

8th Annual In the House Festival
June 3-5 at various venues. Single tickets: $8-$13; 4-show pass: $25-$45; weekend pass: $65-$85

This unique and intimate festival transforms a selection of Commercial Drive houses and backyards into unlikely stages for cabaret, film, puppets, poets, theatre, and, yes, live music. So much live music — including local acts Company B Jazz Band, Aaron Malkin and folk-blues musician Buckman Coe.

TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival
June 24-July 3 at various venues. Outdoor shows are free.

The 26th annual festival features over 400 concerts at 40 venues around town, and a bonanza of outdoor options for jazz, blues, funk, Latin, world and electronica lovers. There are over 150 free concerts, and plenty of outdoor options, including the opening weekend party in Gastown, which features local favourites Jasper Sloan Yip and Five Alarm Funk and the closing weekend party at David Lam Park, where you can catch Will Campa y su Gran Union, Jaffa Road, The Crackling and Gypsophilia.

Kid Cudi
June 16 at Deer Lake Park, 5:30pm. $49.50 from Zulu Records, Red Cat Records, Highlife, Ticketmaster

One of Rolling Stone magazine’s favourite rappers — seriously — Kid Cudi has made a name for himself thanks to his hit song “Day ‘n’ Night” and smart collaborations with Kanye West, Common and Chip Tha Rapper. He’s also turned his attention towards the small screen, starring in former rapper Mark Wahlberg’s new HBO comedy series, How to Make it in America. Plus, the prolific rhymer has promised he’ll be venturing into rock soon, so who could say no to a possible sneak preview of what that will sound like?

Black Keys
June 27 at Deer Lake Park, 5:30pm. SOLD OUT.

The Grammy Award-winning garage rock duo’s show sold out fast,and there’s a good reason for that: they are a damn good band and even better live. Apparently there won’t be any tickets made available the day of the show, so start scouring Craigslist now.

Vancouver Folk Music Festival
July 15-17 at Jericho Beach. $40-$165 from TheFestival.bc.ca

The 34th annual folk festival has gotten decidedly more modern in recent years, but with over 50 artists and bands over three days, there is still something for everyone. Among the highlights: remarkable alt-country singer-songwriter Gillian Welch; famed singer-songwriters in their own right Roseanne Cash (daughter of John) and Justin Townes Earle (son of Steve); local solo artist and New Pornographer Kathryn Calder; and beloved Canadian alt-country super-group Jim Bryson and the Weakerthans. All of this amazing music against the backdrop of beautiful Jericho Beach? Well, even better.

Harmony Arts Festival
July 29-Aug. 7 at John Lawson Park, West Vancouver. Free.

West Vancouver’s 21st annual festival features art, cinema and nightly sunset concert series with some of the province’s best local bands. Among the main stage acts are the uncanny tribute band Nearly Neil & The Solitary Band; bluegrass/Celtic favourites The Paperboys; Afro-Latin dance band Tanga; and acoustic rockers Headwater. If booze helps you groove, the garden stage offers an expanded lineup with local alt-country rock band Dustin Bentall Outfit; Spirit of the West lead singer John Mann; and JunoAward-winning bluesman Jim Byrnes.

Burnaby Blues & Roots Festival
Aug. 13 at Deer Lake Park, 1pm. $55-$70 from Ticketmaster

The 12th annual festival makes it worth the trek to Burnaby by garnering some superstar wattage with alt-country Canadian crooner k.d. lang, who reminded us just how much we missed her last year with her haunting rendition of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” at the Olympics opening ceremony.

MusicFest Vancouver
Aug. 5-14 at various venues. $32-$42 from MusicFestVancouver.ca

The annual MusicFest features big name draws like Sarah MacLachlan and runs Aug. 5-14, but organizers have saved the best for last: the closing night concert at the beautifully sculpted VanDusen Botanical Garden. It’s a world music extravaganza with acclaimed Cuban jazz pianist Ernán López-Nussa and his trio, and 14-piece Danish outfit, Touché Vocal Jazz, which explores big band arrangements and swing with equal aplomb.

LIVE at Squamish
Aug. 20-21 at Logger Sports Grounds (39503 Loggers Lane, Squamish)
$79-$199 from LiveAtSquamish.com

The outdoor festival promises to have found its feet in its second year, with on-site camping, better parking and a strong lineup with some local and international favourites, among them ’90s stalwarts Weezer; Canadian indie rock acts Metric and Stars; Australian roots-jam band John Butler Trio; and mash-up maestro Girl Talk. Plus, it’s a terrific venue to catch beloved local acts including Hey Ocean, Bend Sinister, The Zolas and Black Mountain.

Stars new piece for Exclaim.ca

My online interview with Stars' Torq Campbell is a tasty precursor to my full piece in the July Exclaim issue.

Stars’ Torq Campbell Talks The Five Ghosts, “a Return to the Core” and “Spooky Shit” 6/23/2010 By Andrea Warner The new Stars album, The Five Ghosts, dropped yesterday (June 22), marking a return to the band's original sound: dancing in the dark. "That's actually a great description of it, because that's literally what we were trying to achieve: a sad dance record," Torq Campbell, co-lead singer of the Montreal-based dream pop/rock group, says of the new album in a recent phone interview with Exclaim! Campbell is excited about Stars' return to form, saying from his temporary summer home in Stratford, ON, "Stars has always seen itself as a sad dance band. We'd kind of gone up this alleyway of writing multi-part dynamic songs, but this feels like a return to the core of what we want to be writing about." Ghosts caps the band's first decade together. It recalls the group's breakthrough 2004 album, Set Yourself on Fire, but the songs are more propulsive and leaner, though no less lyrically dense; the sonic equivalent of seeing a former flame who looks even better and younger than when you were together. Ghosts is also a veritable haunted mansion of moody, macabre images, which Campbell attributes to a "heavy year and some painful shit" the band went through together, including the death of his father and a few other romantic heartbreaks (none his own, though). Even the album's title is the stuff of slightly eerie campfire stories. "I got an obsession with the number five for a while," Campbell says. "I find it a spooky number... oh, and I'm now getting attacked by a wasp!" He puts down the phone for a few seconds. "See, spooky shit, as soon as I say five, a wasp attacks me. That's the kind of flaky shit I say." He laughs and then launches into how he uncovered that the Five Ghosts is actually a phrase from Chinese feng shui that refers to the energy in the house after a loved one died. "I didn't know that and it seemed very uncanny... [the album] just named itself." Five Ghosts is out now on Soft Revolution in Canada and on Vagrant in the U.S. In support of the record, Stars will be embarking on an extensive U.S./Canada tour. You can see all the band’s dates here.

Amy Millan

My interview with Stars' Amy Millan runs this week in WE.

“What, me morbid?”: Amy Millan dismisses accusations of death obsession in her songs.

Lone Star
By Andrea Warner

The glass of wine in Amy Millan’s hand is as trademark as the sexy coo that is her singing voice — that of a little girl who’s seen too much, who grew up too fast. The Montreal-based Millan, in addition to her best-known role as singer and co-songwriter in Stars, seemingly has her hand in every major indie act in the country, from a permanent guest spot with Broken Social Scene to occasional backing vocals for Apostle of Hustle.

But right now, the 35-year-old is deep in the midst of the first round of publicity for her second solo album, Masters of the Burial, a gorgeously moody collection of pop songs that takes plenty of detours into folk and alt-country territory, and even finds Millan crafting an uptempo cover of Death Cab for Cutie’s evocative downer, “I Will Follow You Into the Dark.”

WE spoke with Millan over the phone just as she was melting into a chair with a bottle of vino, after a long day that started before the sun rose.

You’ve had back-to-back interviews all day, I hear.
Millan: It’s been quite a day, but coffee and wine make it all better now.

Just alternating mouthfuls? Double-fisting?
You know, start out with a coffee to jack you back up, and then even it up with a nice glass of red wine.

I’ve been listening to Masters of the Burial pretty much non-stop, and a lot of the songs seem to be quite hopeful, even when they’re incredibly sad.
I appreciate that you got that. I definitely never want to be maudlin about anything. I think it’s importance to have a balance of everything. And it’s funny: With Masters of the Burial and Honey from the Tombs [her first solo album], everybody’s like, “What’s with the whole death thing, man?” And it’s not. Honey from the Tombs is from a Tom Waits song about how the mummies were buried with honey, and [the honey] preserved and still tasted as sweet as when it was buried. And Masters of the Burial is a comment on the human condition, and that in our lives we all suffer horrible embarrassment and betrayals and tragedies and loss, and in order to continue living and seeking out hope, we have to bury a lot of things we’ve been through. It’s kind of a tip of the hat to the human, really, and about being alive and not being dead. With these songs, I’m trying to poke at these places that maybe people are trying to forget, and liberate them in a way that maybe won’t lead them down a road of depression, but feel comfort that everyone’s going through similar things.

I should be asking, then, what your most embarrassing moment is...
Oh, I could never tell! (laughs)

So, instead I’ll invite you to talk a bit about what your influences were when you were writing the album.
Welllll... Uhhhhh.... I saw some people suffer in their relationships, who were close to me. That really broke my heart to watch somebody who had been in a relationship for quite a long time and have it dissolve in front of their eyes, and then not really knowing how to maintain it, but knowing that it can’t be maintained... It’s so difficult sometimes to cut the cord when you’ve been in a relationship for a really long time. I just find it so sad to watch, something turning into ash that was a big fire at one point.

I heard Stars is recording, and you’re obviously in the midst of promoting Burial. How are you coping?
It’s busy. On top of everything, I’m doing a complete gut of my house. (laughs) I just thought it wasn’t enough, you know? But as busy as I am, it’s the longest period of time I’ve gone without touring, because Broken [Social Scene]’s been recording, and Stars are recording, and my record’s just come out now. Stars hasn’t played a show since February. It’s been one of the calmest times of my life, actually, because when you’re travelling every day, your soul is kind of far behind, and it takes a while to catch up to you. I’ve been literally around the globe in a six-week period at one point. The fact that I’ve been still and enjoying my city and really discovering Montreal — because I hadn’t been able to do that, I’ve just been on tour since I’ve moved there.

Do you have a fair bit of anonymity in Montreal?
Oh, they don’t care about indie-rock in Montreal. The French people could care less about Arcade Fire, even. It’s really refreshing, you know, and I think that’s why so much good music comes out of Montreal. There isn’t the industry there, and the pressure.

Amy Millan performs Saturday, Oct. 24 at Biltmore Cabaret (395 Kingsway), 8 pm. Tickets $13 from Ticketmaster, Zulu, and Red Cat.

Stars

This is a review I've written as a sample piece for Beyond Robson (www.beyondrobson.com), as I might see some shows for them and then tell everyone about them.

And, here's a link to Carlos Hernandez Fisher's awesome photography that will accompany this piece and future concert reviews: http://flickr.com/photos/hernandezfisher/sets/72157603732218532/

Stars Shine Bright in Vancouver
By Andrea Warner

Stars brought down the Commodore last night, and it wasn't because of some cataclysmic astronomical event. It was simply awesome indie pop and an audience that kept the show going well past the band's requisite first encore.

Stars are back on tour supporting their newest CD, In Our Bedroom After The War, and they sound better than ever. Lead singer Torquil Campbell, who now resides in Vancouver, made the Commodore shake with newer numbers like the Michael-Jackson-by-way-of

-Justin-Timberlake-infused "Genova Heights".

Stars co-lead singer Amy Millan seduced the audience with her little girl voice and her boozy, seductive take on "Calendar Girl". About three quarters of the way into the show, feeling the rapturous love all around her, she actually fell backwards onto the raised arms of the adoring public and crowd-surfed.

After a lengthy four-song encore, Stars attempted to head home for the night but the audience pulled them back out on stage for a second encore. Campbell laughingly asked "What more do you want from us?" It was pretty obvious: they didn't want the Stars to go out.

xx
178 words