Steve's Blog
There's Plenty to Celebrate - with great music at The Rogue!
Friday February 5, 2016

Keep in Touch

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1. Old Man Luedecke, Friday February 5th, 8pm, St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue)
Congratulations to Old Man Luedecke (above) for his JUNO Award nomination for Traditional Roots Album of the Year! Let's help him celebrate this Friday at The Rogue
 
Here is a link to a live broadcast by Chris and his accompanist Joel Hunt at CKUA Radio in Alberta earlier this week. This should serve as a little appetizer for tomorrow's show! 
 
There will be a short opening set by sensational young songwriter Samantha Crain from Oklahoma.
 
This show is SOLD OUT, so get there early! There may still be one or two tickets left on sale at Highlife Records, Red Cat Records, Rufus' Guitar Shop, or Tapestry Music (formerly Prussin Music). 
 

 
2. Jeff Lang, Thursday February 11th, 8pm, St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue)

"Psychedelic, Sahara-swept solos, distorted natural harmonics and eye-poppingly virtuosic lap steel work. This is the real deal, folks." Rave Magazine
Australian singer-songwriter / guitar wizard Jeff Lang has built up a reputation for startlingly original performances, working without a set list, allowing the unique energy of each night to shape the songs. While Lang will talk of his admiration for the elemental blues of Skip James, the raw gospel of Blind Willie Johnson, the devastating guitar work of Jimi Hendrix, the masterful slide guitar of Ry Cooder, and the sublime songwriting of Bob Dylan and Richard Thompson, comparisons to these artists fail to paint an adequate picture. Come along and see for yourselves as The Rogue teams up once again with Capilano University's Global Roots series to bring you this extraordinary artist! Tickets and info can be found here.
 

 
3. Còig, Saturday February 13th, 8pm, St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue)

The BIG news, of course, is that St. James Community Square has been saved!! We still cannot give you the details about who or how, but all will be revealed on Saturday February 13th. There will be a major announcement at the Vancouver Youth Symphony Orchestra rehearsal in St. James Hall at 11am that morning, and in the evening we will have a big celebration at the Còig concert in the hall. Còig is one of the finest Celtic bands anywhere. Tickets and info on the show can be found here.
 
This excellent article appeared in the Georgia Straight when Còig made their Rogue debut in August 2014. It was written by Alexander Varty:
 
Having grown up in a family of fiddlers, Rachel Davis is well aware that there are some aspects of Cape Breton tradition that you mess with at your peril. And yet, with the whole world only a mouse click away, she and her colleagues in Còig have access to influences far beyond anything earlier generations of islanders could have imagined.

The lure of the new and the call of the past play out in occasionally surprising fashion on the quintet’s debut, Five, and Davis says this is a good and necessary thing.

“We really like to keep a bit of a mix,” she explains, on the phone from her home in scenic Baddeck, Nova Scotia. “We all have a lot of respect for the Cape Breton tradition, and we’d like to keep that as our base. But you need to keep everything fresh, and mix things up with your arrangements and your chords, and try to do things that maybe no one else has done.

“It’s a very fine line, I guess,” she continues. “You want audiences around the world to enjoy it, and you still want people at home in Cape Breton and in Nova Scotia to enjoy it as well—people who might be more along the lines of wanting to hear the more traditional stuff. Like my grandfather, who’s 91. I wasn’t really sure what he would think of the CD, but he actually really liked it! I was pretty glad to hear that.”

Davis’s grandfather, Clarence Long, is an acclaimed fiddler in his own right, and the younger musician learned the basics of her craft while hanging out in his Baddeck barbershop. There’s lots on Five that Long would presumably have no trouble assimilating, including “The Oracle”, the Scott Skinner strathspey that serves as an opener; “Nach Muladach Muladach Duine Leis Fhèin”, an ancient milling song that Davis sings in Gaelic; and “MSR”, an epic collection of marches and pipe tunes. Elsewhere, though, Davis and her colleagues Jason Roach, Chrissy Crowley, and Darren McMullen show that they’re well aware of what’s going on in other forms of traditional music—and beyond.

Davis explains that she and multi-instrumentalist McMullen are the band’s explorers; recently, they’ve been checking out high-energy Scottish renegades the Treacherous Orchestra as well as the avant-grass quintet Punch Brothers.

“All these groups that are taking the more traditional sounds of Scottish music or bluegrass and pushing them forward, we definitely have them as a big influence, for sure,” she explains. “We listen to a lot of that.”

That said, neither Davis nor Còig intends to move too far from the community-hall culture that they call home. “My favourite thing, still, is to play for step dancers and play for square dancers,” the fiddler relates, “and I know it’s something that Chrissy really likes to do as well. So, yeah, we always try to make the timing good and snappy so that people will enjoy dancing to us.”
 

 
4. Songwriter Sessions at The Yale (1300 Granville Street)

The Rogue is a proud sponsor of the The Yale Songwriter Sessions happening every Monday at the newly renovated Yale! The evening features local and touring songwriters playing 'in the round' and sharing the stories behind their songs. Come join us every Monday, from 8pm-10pm. This Monday February 8th we are very pleased to have Dominique Fricot, Harold Donnelly (Portage and Main) and Larissa Tandy (Australia) playing our curated set! The second set participants' names are drawn from a "hat" - with consolation prizes of tickets to shows at The Yale or The Vogue or The Biltmore for those who don't get to perform! Admission is $5 at the door, and The Yale serves excellent BBQ and beverages. No minors.
 

 
5. Radio Waves
On this week's edition of The Edge On Folk (Saturday 8am to noon on CiTR fm 101.9 and www.citr.ca  I'll focus on Black History Month with some Afro-Canadian-Cuban artists in the first hour, then move to Mardi Gras / Pancake Tuesday / Carnaval mode, with songs sprinkled throughout the show. I've also got some tasty new releases by Baaba Maal, Colin Linden, Rhiannon Giddens, Aoife O'Donovan, Tim O'Brien, Solas, Kathy Kallick, Show of Hands, etc. to share with you, and features on upcoming Vancouver visitors like Sharon Shannon, Coig, Jeff Lang, Alex Cuba, etc., and so much more! I hope you can join me!
 
Radio Rogue is broadcast 24/7 from Rogue Towers with a huge playlist of new releases and Rogues past, present & future. Just point your browser here to tune in!