No Fun City premiere starts important dialogue
By Kristina Mameli, the Skinny
I first heard about No Fun City when filmmakers Melissa James and Kate Kroll were guests on CBC Radio 3’s Lanarama last year. The show was about the vanishing venue and their local and in depth spin on the issue immediately struck me as important. Instead of sitting idly by as the number of venues in Vancouver quickly dwindled, they decided to try and do something about it.
The sold out world premier Monday at the Pacific Cinémathèque made much of what you might think apparent about running a venue in Vancouver, but also illuminated a lot of underlying issues.
The film chronicles the struggles of promoters in the city, four in particular: the Cobalt’s Wendy13, the Sweatshop’s Malice, the Rickshaw’s David Duprey and the E.R.’s Justin Gradin and Keith Wecker as they, and many others, fight to find a home for local live music within the stringent legal parameters imposed by the city.
Wrought with red tape and bureaucracy, acquiring and maintaining a venue in Vancouver has become nearly impossible. And as venues close, few, if any crop up to replace them. Not for lack of trying, simply by lack of opportunity. The reality is that a venue without a permanent liquor license likely won’t survive.
James and Kroll offer a myriad of perspectives from Vancouver City Councillor Heather Deal to an outraged condo resident, but still manage to maintain a strong story line surrounding the main characters as they try to help foster a community. In fact, that’s what really became really clear in the film: while these venues may not always be the most luxurious, they have heart. They mean something to their patrons. And it’s the drive of people like those whose journeys are chronicled that are at the centre of that.
All in all, the film showed a realistic picture of what it takes to get a venue off the ground and the passion needed to even fathom doing so. It also showed that the loss of a venue such as the Cobalt (Vancouver’s CBGB’s) is devastating to the community, aken away by a piece of paper.
The message and bottom line of the film is that venues will continue to be lost unless people start supporting them—it’s as simple as getting out to a show.
Mixed in with raw concert footage and thorough interviews, was really beautiful cinematography capturing the Vancouver skyline and providing a nice contrast to the edgier venue shots. Elements of humour humanize an otherwise serious look at the situation as well. A lot of love and hard work clearly went into this.
The crowd laughed along when it was appropriate, nodded in agreement, shook its collective head in disbelief and even let out the occasional ‘boo’ as the story progressed offering a glimmer of hope with the opening of the Rickshaw.
During the Q and A with James and Kroll following the screening, Heather Deal addressed concerns saying essentially that the city only hears from those against venues, but rarely those for. Thus, their concerns must first be addressed. She encouraged the opposing side to write letters so that their views may also be heard.
The film will screen in LA, Calgary and hopefully in Montreal and is slated for an eventual DVD launch—if James and Kroll can find a venue that is. A vinyl soundtrack may also be on the horizon.
Advance tickets to the second screening May 16th at 4pm at the Pacific Cinémathèque are sold out, however tickets may still be available at the door.
http://www.nofuncity.org/
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
Monday, March 15, 2010
HOT PANDA AT HIVE 3 MARCH 12 2010
Alright who wants to get their crunk on?” inquired lead vocalist and guitarist Chris Connelly. “Three people… cool.”
Quirky Edmonton quartet Hot Panda started off the Cultural Olympiad portion of the Paralympic Games with a modestly short set at Hive 3, an experimental theatre showcase. The band, which used to rehearse in a coffin factory and tour in a ’77 ambulance, is in town recording the follow-up to 2009’s Volcano… Bloody Volcano before heading off to SXSW...
For the rest of the review and pictures check out Guttersnipe.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
D.B. Buxton
By Kristina Mameli, the Skinny.
Transplanted from Edmonton, D.B. Buxton is probably the single most dedicated and hardworking musician in the biz. Not only has he actually been successful in making a living busking for 15 years, but aside from maintaining a solo project complete with forthcoming album, he also does time in three other bands: the Orpheans, the D.B. Buxton Revue and Adults Contemporary. On top of all of that, he moonlights as a producer, plays seven instruments and is one hell of a dancer. In fact, you’ve probably even seen him busking along Granville on particularly busy nights wielding a boxy red guitar. He has paid his dues and then some and, if there is any justice in the world, he will be the next big thing.
An enthralling and multi-talented Buxton recently sat down with the Skinny at a Broadway coffee shop to discuss the enigma that is D.B. Buxton.
“Things were real messed up,” Buxton candidly admitted of his restless childhood. “It’s cliché to say, but it was an exceptionally bad version of a working broken home. My mother was very physically and mentally disabled and my father was having some kind of mid-life crisis, so I was kind of left to my own devices and what resulted from that was me getting into a lot of trouble.”
His father had a musical background, playing with a band early in Buxton’s life. To support his growing family, he took on a job at CBC Radio Edmonton putting music on the backburner until Buxton was in his teens. “There wasn’t really any music around the house,” he said, “but after my parents split up, my dad starting getting into music more and at that time I started playing piano a little and awhile after that I started playing guitar.”
Buxton was in trouble with the law and consequently kicked out of school at fourteen. That was the crux, the moment he decided to start playing full time.
“I started playing music as my main thing because it was kind of the alternative to selling drugs or anything I could have done as a teenager,” he qualified. “In my hometown, there was a strip that was very much the Bohemian-artsy-neighborhood where people busked on the street and I was able to figure out how to make a living doing that. It was also a very good place to put my energy.”
At sixteen, he moved in with a friend whose dad had been an avid roots record collector and had passed his collection to his son. “Living with him, I got very much into that and I learned how to play those styles and listened to a lot of that music.”
His strong blues influence, particularly electric blues and Chicago blues, comes from listening to a CBC show hosted by Canadian blues icon and owner of Stony Plain Records, Holger Petersen. “Everything I love about music kind of ties back to the Blues,” said Buxton. “It’s the most stripped down, most simple, most emotive style of singing, style of music, of all popular genres.”
“I don’t care what it is,” he said of his preferred genre, “it has to have a lot of soul. And that kind of soul you hear in rock, soul and R and B, it all comes straight from blues, so I always feel a serious connection to blues, no matter what I’m doing.”
For Buxton, out of necessity and in answer to promoters throwing money at a burgeoning rave scene, busking on Edmonton streets came down to making a living. “There really wasn’t any music scene to speak of,” he said. “I didn’t really have the skills or the education, so I didn’t have a lot of career options and I was a very stubborn independent minded kid. And I sort of by random chance found a way to be my own boss and live my own life.”
Eight years in, very little was falling into place. “I was always so poor, and so in my own world...outside of busking, all I was doing was reading books, just sort of trying to find my own inspiration—so self-involved in a sense. And because there was nothing going on, no one ever asked me to do anything.”
In 2000, Buxton decided that he would never again live anywhere he couldn’t play music 24/7. And in 2002/2003, he found a place that would facilitate that chosen lifestyle—and others followed. He found an empty building and converted it into a living space, making a deal with the absentee landlord in exchange for a break on the rent. Classic slum lord tactics worked in Buxton’s favour and would unexpectedly benefit his career.
“Slowly, one by one, groups of people started moving into that building, groups of other musicians and artists and that’s when I started playing with people,” said Buxton. “For the first time since I was a teenager, I started being a little more proactive and my attitude became ‘I need to do ‘something.’ Obviously playing on the street was going nowhere; I’d been doing it for so long—I’m the best busker in Edmonton. But what does that mean? On a resume not much.”
He soon started playing with an extremely eccentric hip hop collective called Eshod Ibn Wyza, as well as DJing and producing hip hop. “The underground hip hop people were the most interesting because they didn’t care if it was weird as long as it had a good beat; as long as it was cool then they wanted to get on it.”
Following in his father’s radio footsteps, he started working at CJSR hosting his own show, doing sound design and producing ads. And slowly, he started to gain momentum.
In 2006, he was offered a show for the first time in his life. The woman who owned a hipster bar on the decline just around the corner from where busked believed in him, fronting money for a photo shoot and ads in the paper. “I’d been doing music for twelve years at that point and never had I had anyone put any kind of faith like that into what I was doing, so it was huge…I felt like okay, maybe there is something happening. After all these years, maybe it’s gonna happen for me.”
And were it not for a CD, nothing would have. Buxton admits that the only people he usually gave CD’s to were women he was trying to impress. “If I was trying to get with a girl then I’d give her a CD of my songs,” he said coyly. “Other than that I was kind of very protective.”
The great success of that show would become the incentive for Buxton to finally start a project of his own: the D.B. Buxton Revue. And for two years following, he kept extremely busy with two radio shows, writing and producing music, rehearsing and playing shows and eventually recording a full length record entitled No Refund. The band also toured across Canada and back, leaving Buxton feeling discontent with going back to a life of busking in minus thirty.
“I got frost-bite numerous times the last winter that I played,” he revealed. “I just…I couldn’t do it. I’d told myself over the last three winters that I couldn’t do it, and that last winter, I really couldn’t.”
The answer came in the form of a friend who offered Buxton a place in Vancouver in exchange for his in Edmonton. “A good friend of mine who was a big supporter of my music, said ‘come, I have a place in Vancouver. It’s cheap rent. I’ll take over your place ‘cause I have a good job offer in Edmonton.’ So we traded places and that’s how I ended up here. And this seemed like a great place because it’s warm in the winter so I knew I wasn’t going to freeze to death…”
Once in Vancouver, the Orpheans came together very organically out of the ashes of the Green Hour Band. Nick Eccleston and Randy Kramer were looking for a new project after their singer, Thomas Rowe, moved. “He left to go to Spain and chill out there for awhile,” said Buxton. “So I played a show opening for them and because Thomas left and these guys weren’t doing anything, I asked them to form a band. And now, I feel like the material we’re writing is getting better and better. And it’s obviously old-fashioned and it’s kind of anachronistic, but it feels truthful.”
The band has been playing regularly around Vancouver and is developing a steady following with plans to release a 7-inch featuring two songs shortly. “We recorded some demos and there’s something about them that everyone’s super happy with, so rather than scrapping those and trying to rerecord and do a whole full-length album it seems like it’d be a really great thing to put out at least a couple of songs the way they are now. We think that would be a good first step.”
The connections Buxton made while in Eshod Ibn Wyza has led him to a myriad of interesting opportunities, including producing Cadence Weapon, aka Rollie Pemberton. “I remember my first professional contact with him was him insisting that I was going to be in his first music video as a dancer,” recalled Buxton. “Dance is something that I’ve done for a pretty long time, something that’s been an important part of me. It didn’t really work out, but we stayed in semi-close contact.”
A remix of Buxton’s song “Sex With My Ex” appears on Pemberton’s latest collection Separation Anxiety, which is available on a pay-what-you-will scale on his website. Buxton sent Pemberton his music knowing he’d want to remix it. “So he did and his record company got very excited about that song because it’s a very good song and so that ended up being the single off of his mix tape.”
Buxton also contributed to a forthcoming project of Pemberton’s. Pemberton currently serves as Edmonton’s Poet Laureate.
Buxton is also working on a project called Adult Contemporary with his former DJing partner turned roommate Jake Swanson. “We started that project pretty much because we have similar tastes in very kind of dated sounding pop music,” he said of the project designed to get Swanson back in the game and his music out there. “I write so much music so it’s just another outlet for that.”
Buxton is just finishing the artwork for his forthcoming solo project called Dirty Dance Party. The album, which has been on the shelf the last few months, features a duet by Buxton and Pemberton. But he’s not happy with the album cover yet, but he plans to throw a wild dance party to remedy the situation. “I think the only way I’m going to come up with something I like is to throw a dirty dance party and have some photographers there just shooting the randomness,” he laughed. “It’s just such a good excuse to have a sleazy party—and people can actually be listening to the music while participating.”
Look for several new D.B. Buxton projects including Dirty Dance Party and an Orpheans EP soon.
Adults Contemporary play the Railway March 3rd 2010.
The Orpheans play March 10th at the Biltmore.
Transplanted from Edmonton, D.B. Buxton is probably the single most dedicated and hardworking musician in the biz. Not only has he actually been successful in making a living busking for 15 years, but aside from maintaining a solo project complete with forthcoming album, he also does time in three other bands: the Orpheans, the D.B. Buxton Revue and Adults Contemporary. On top of all of that, he moonlights as a producer, plays seven instruments and is one hell of a dancer. In fact, you’ve probably even seen him busking along Granville on particularly busy nights wielding a boxy red guitar. He has paid his dues and then some and, if there is any justice in the world, he will be the next big thing.
An enthralling and multi-talented Buxton recently sat down with the Skinny at a Broadway coffee shop to discuss the enigma that is D.B. Buxton.
“Things were real messed up,” Buxton candidly admitted of his restless childhood. “It’s cliché to say, but it was an exceptionally bad version of a working broken home. My mother was very physically and mentally disabled and my father was having some kind of mid-life crisis, so I was kind of left to my own devices and what resulted from that was me getting into a lot of trouble.”
His father had a musical background, playing with a band early in Buxton’s life. To support his growing family, he took on a job at CBC Radio Edmonton putting music on the backburner until Buxton was in his teens. “There wasn’t really any music around the house,” he said, “but after my parents split up, my dad starting getting into music more and at that time I started playing piano a little and awhile after that I started playing guitar.”
Buxton was in trouble with the law and consequently kicked out of school at fourteen. That was the crux, the moment he decided to start playing full time.
“I started playing music as my main thing because it was kind of the alternative to selling drugs or anything I could have done as a teenager,” he qualified. “In my hometown, there was a strip that was very much the Bohemian-artsy-neighborhood where people busked on the street and I was able to figure out how to make a living doing that. It was also a very good place to put my energy.”
At sixteen, he moved in with a friend whose dad had been an avid roots record collector and had passed his collection to his son. “Living with him, I got very much into that and I learned how to play those styles and listened to a lot of that music.”
His strong blues influence, particularly electric blues and Chicago blues, comes from listening to a CBC show hosted by Canadian blues icon and owner of Stony Plain Records, Holger Petersen. “Everything I love about music kind of ties back to the Blues,” said Buxton. “It’s the most stripped down, most simple, most emotive style of singing, style of music, of all popular genres.”
“I don’t care what it is,” he said of his preferred genre, “it has to have a lot of soul. And that kind of soul you hear in rock, soul and R and B, it all comes straight from blues, so I always feel a serious connection to blues, no matter what I’m doing.”
For Buxton, out of necessity and in answer to promoters throwing money at a burgeoning rave scene, busking on Edmonton streets came down to making a living. “There really wasn’t any music scene to speak of,” he said. “I didn’t really have the skills or the education, so I didn’t have a lot of career options and I was a very stubborn independent minded kid. And I sort of by random chance found a way to be my own boss and live my own life.”
Eight years in, very little was falling into place. “I was always so poor, and so in my own world...outside of busking, all I was doing was reading books, just sort of trying to find my own inspiration—so self-involved in a sense. And because there was nothing going on, no one ever asked me to do anything.”
In 2000, Buxton decided that he would never again live anywhere he couldn’t play music 24/7. And in 2002/2003, he found a place that would facilitate that chosen lifestyle—and others followed. He found an empty building and converted it into a living space, making a deal with the absentee landlord in exchange for a break on the rent. Classic slum lord tactics worked in Buxton’s favour and would unexpectedly benefit his career.
“Slowly, one by one, groups of people started moving into that building, groups of other musicians and artists and that’s when I started playing with people,” said Buxton. “For the first time since I was a teenager, I started being a little more proactive and my attitude became ‘I need to do ‘something.’ Obviously playing on the street was going nowhere; I’d been doing it for so long—I’m the best busker in Edmonton. But what does that mean? On a resume not much.”
He soon started playing with an extremely eccentric hip hop collective called Eshod Ibn Wyza, as well as DJing and producing hip hop. “The underground hip hop people were the most interesting because they didn’t care if it was weird as long as it had a good beat; as long as it was cool then they wanted to get on it.”
Following in his father’s radio footsteps, he started working at CJSR hosting his own show, doing sound design and producing ads. And slowly, he started to gain momentum.
In 2006, he was offered a show for the first time in his life. The woman who owned a hipster bar on the decline just around the corner from where busked believed in him, fronting money for a photo shoot and ads in the paper. “I’d been doing music for twelve years at that point and never had I had anyone put any kind of faith like that into what I was doing, so it was huge…I felt like okay, maybe there is something happening. After all these years, maybe it’s gonna happen for me.”
And were it not for a CD, nothing would have. Buxton admits that the only people he usually gave CD’s to were women he was trying to impress. “If I was trying to get with a girl then I’d give her a CD of my songs,” he said coyly. “Other than that I was kind of very protective.”
The great success of that show would become the incentive for Buxton to finally start a project of his own: the D.B. Buxton Revue. And for two years following, he kept extremely busy with two radio shows, writing and producing music, rehearsing and playing shows and eventually recording a full length record entitled No Refund. The band also toured across Canada and back, leaving Buxton feeling discontent with going back to a life of busking in minus thirty.
“I got frost-bite numerous times the last winter that I played,” he revealed. “I just…I couldn’t do it. I’d told myself over the last three winters that I couldn’t do it, and that last winter, I really couldn’t.”
The answer came in the form of a friend who offered Buxton a place in Vancouver in exchange for his in Edmonton. “A good friend of mine who was a big supporter of my music, said ‘come, I have a place in Vancouver. It’s cheap rent. I’ll take over your place ‘cause I have a good job offer in Edmonton.’ So we traded places and that’s how I ended up here. And this seemed like a great place because it’s warm in the winter so I knew I wasn’t going to freeze to death…”
Once in Vancouver, the Orpheans came together very organically out of the ashes of the Green Hour Band. Nick Eccleston and Randy Kramer were looking for a new project after their singer, Thomas Rowe, moved. “He left to go to Spain and chill out there for awhile,” said Buxton. “So I played a show opening for them and because Thomas left and these guys weren’t doing anything, I asked them to form a band. And now, I feel like the material we’re writing is getting better and better. And it’s obviously old-fashioned and it’s kind of anachronistic, but it feels truthful.”
The band has been playing regularly around Vancouver and is developing a steady following with plans to release a 7-inch featuring two songs shortly. “We recorded some demos and there’s something about them that everyone’s super happy with, so rather than scrapping those and trying to rerecord and do a whole full-length album it seems like it’d be a really great thing to put out at least a couple of songs the way they are now. We think that would be a good first step.”
The connections Buxton made while in Eshod Ibn Wyza has led him to a myriad of interesting opportunities, including producing Cadence Weapon, aka Rollie Pemberton. “I remember my first professional contact with him was him insisting that I was going to be in his first music video as a dancer,” recalled Buxton. “Dance is something that I’ve done for a pretty long time, something that’s been an important part of me. It didn’t really work out, but we stayed in semi-close contact.”
A remix of Buxton’s song “Sex With My Ex” appears on Pemberton’s latest collection Separation Anxiety, which is available on a pay-what-you-will scale on his website. Buxton sent Pemberton his music knowing he’d want to remix it. “So he did and his record company got very excited about that song because it’s a very good song and so that ended up being the single off of his mix tape.”
Buxton also contributed to a forthcoming project of Pemberton’s. Pemberton currently serves as Edmonton’s Poet Laureate.
Buxton is also working on a project called Adult Contemporary with his former DJing partner turned roommate Jake Swanson. “We started that project pretty much because we have similar tastes in very kind of dated sounding pop music,” he said of the project designed to get Swanson back in the game and his music out there. “I write so much music so it’s just another outlet for that.”
Buxton is just finishing the artwork for his forthcoming solo project called Dirty Dance Party. The album, which has been on the shelf the last few months, features a duet by Buxton and Pemberton. But he’s not happy with the album cover yet, but he plans to throw a wild dance party to remedy the situation. “I think the only way I’m going to come up with something I like is to throw a dirty dance party and have some photographers there just shooting the randomness,” he laughed. “It’s just such a good excuse to have a sleazy party—and people can actually be listening to the music while participating.”
Look for several new D.B. Buxton projects including Dirty Dance Party and an Orpheans EP soon.
Adults Contemporary play the Railway March 3rd 2010.
The Orpheans play March 10th at the Biltmore.
Black Wizard: making magic happen
By Kristina Mameli, the Skinny.
With the release of its shredding debut self-titled, the young rockers of New Westminster’s Black Wizard have already managed to cast some sort of dark spell on the concert going public that will inevitably poise the seven track gem as a strong contender for the top of any year end list.
The quartet released the impressive DIY effort at a packed Railway Club near the end of January. If it wasn’t a sold out room, it was certainly damn close, the line steadily spilling onto the street well into the band’s ferocious set.
The Skinny caught up with lead guitarist and vocalist John De Courcy and bassist Kyle Fee in the somewhat secret storage room behind the bustling bar just before the show.
In a surreal coincidence, it turns out that we went to the same middle school. Indeed, Glenbrook was the breeding ground for many things, but never would anyone have suspected rock and roll.
“It’s kind of cool though,” laughed De Courcy of the testament to the small world that is New Westminster. “I like it.”
“That’s where we all started our first bands too,” said Fee, sitting on a coffee can. “Nothing too serious in Glenbrook; everything got rolling in high school.”
As De Courcy explained, Black Wizard has been in existence on and off for the last two years. The band, which also includes drummer Eugene Parkemenko and lead vocalist and guitarist Adam Grant, embraced him into the fold after he moved back to Vancouver from Toronto about a year ago.
“They were thinking about starting up Black Wizard again and they were like, ‘do you want to come and jam?’ And I was like, ‘yeah for sure,’” De Courcy recalled. “I mean, I’ve been playing with these guys since we were 14, so it’s just really, really tight. We just went for it. We just started writing and then recorded and here we are.”
Though the members of Black Wizard have been close friends for years, they are truly diverse, ranging significantly in both influences and musical backgrounds. De Courcy, Parkemenko and Fee’s first band, Onslaught, was a metal band along similar lines as the UK thrashers of the same name.
“That was the first band where we actually started playing shows,” said Fee, shifting from coffee can to amp. “We got our shit together there.”
Hilariously, Onslaught’s infamous first show at Queen’s Park Annex, presented by the City of New Westminster as part of Youth Week, also happened to be Second Nature (my best friend’s now mercifully defunct high school band)’s first gig. “That was the show that they got really pissed off,” said De Courcy, fondly recalling the event. “Our singer brought an axe on stage and then we smashed a computer screen...”
Aside from the brief flirtation with metal, De Courcy also did a stint with Skull Fist out east, and with Parkemenko in the Vancouver based Whyte Hott. Parkemenko later moved on to play with SpreadEagle and Fee did time with the Dead Lees and the Prescription Aviators.
But De Courcy is happy to be where he is now with Black Wizard. “We’re just having a good time writing songs now that people can hopefully relate to and listen to and have a good time.”
As far as influences go, Fee does admit to having more than just a passing fondness for Clutch. “I know these guys aren’t the biggest fans, but I love them.”
Whereas De Courcy veers off into a completely different direction, pledging allegiance to the song writing of Neil Young and Elliot Smith.
Over the last few years, naming trends amongst bands have gone in cycles from ‘animal’ inspired monikers such as Lions In the Street and No Horses to shock seeking titles like Fucked Up and Fuck the Facts; so, along with bands like White Wizard and Electric Wizard, could Black Wizard be the next in a new trend?
Almost serendipitously, the members of Black Wizard found a sticker amongst the assortment on the wall which read: “Sun Wizard.” Enough said.
Sound wise, the Sabbath-esque overtones of Black Wizard’s music mingles with duelling guitars and a heavy stoner rock vibe to create a sound reminiscent of an equally catchy, but less jazz inspired Pride Tiger.
The band’s self titled debut features seven blistering, instantly memorable and decidedly heavy tracks with a slower track designed to show diversity sandwiched right in the middle. The album was painstakingly recorded at Bully’s in New West where Parkemenko built his own recording studio.
“It was fucking three or four months of hell,” De Courcy said bluntly, then backtracking slightly. “Well it wasn’t that bad…but the whole process of recording and mastering from when we started tracking…it was pretty bad.”
It was produced by budding producer/engineer Michael Kraushaar.
“He really made that album what it is,” said De Courcy. “So I think such an amazing amount of credit has to go to him because he really put in the fucking time and he put in the energy and he just made it turn out really good.”
Mixed at Fadermaster Studios by Paul Boechlor and mastered by Stuart McKillope at the Hive, the whole process took from June until the day before the gig when the band picked up the finished CDs which feature artwork courtesy of Toronto artist Louis Durand of Broken Social Scene notoriety.
“Everything seemed to work out because everyone that worked on it seemed to really like it,” remarked Fee. “So it seemed like that definitely made the final product what it is.”
Despite the lengthy recording process, writing itself remains a very collective effort, all members contributing equally to the mix, something De Courcy attributes to strong personalities, passion and a healthy dose of creativity.
“We all love to write; we all have a good ear. When we write and we practise, nobody’s submissive, nobody just stands there. It’s really a group effort, so what you’re hearing is Black Wizard. It’s not like Kyle Fee and Black Wizard. It’s the band.”
“Though that was actually the first name for the band…” remarked Fee.
On stage is where the band feels most comfortable De Courcy explained. “You just transfer all your energy, because we’ve got a lot of fucking energy, and you just put it into the audience and you know make them feel. That’s what our point is when we play live.”
“You play a song and you hit a riff and it sends that chill up your spine,” said Fee.
Black Wizard continues to gain momentum, already writing new songs and gearing up for their first tour of Vancouver Island in the spring.
“We want to fucking drive and put all our gear in the back and never ever come back,” proclaimed De Courcy. “Any promoters, any bands that need an opening act—fuck, we’ll play; we’ll do it anywhere. We just want to play.”
The band’s giant yellow van, affectionately known as the “Wizard Wagon,” was recently stolen from outside of Bully’s while Parkemenko was recording locals Grass City. Though the vehicle, which could never be mistaken for safe or reliable—featuring a cage in the back instead of seatbelts—it holds sincere sentimental value. It was found the next day on a reserve in Langley completely vandalized.
“The whole dashboard was ripped out,” said De Courcy. “The grill was fucking ripped off there was like bloody Kleenex in it, broken wheelchairs in the back, children’s car seats…”
“It sounded like a hell of a party,” giggled Fee.
Keep an eye out for Black Wizard’s limited edition trading cards designed by De Courcy. They feature photos of band members with statistics and fun facts on the back.
“I really want to do a new line and instead of trading cards, do organ donor cards, so you can sign up. Right now we’re short of livers; we could use a couple of livers…”
Black Wizard’s debut album is available at local record stores.
With the release of its shredding debut self-titled, the young rockers of New Westminster’s Black Wizard have already managed to cast some sort of dark spell on the concert going public that will inevitably poise the seven track gem as a strong contender for the top of any year end list.
The quartet released the impressive DIY effort at a packed Railway Club near the end of January. If it wasn’t a sold out room, it was certainly damn close, the line steadily spilling onto the street well into the band’s ferocious set.
The Skinny caught up with lead guitarist and vocalist John De Courcy and bassist Kyle Fee in the somewhat secret storage room behind the bustling bar just before the show.
In a surreal coincidence, it turns out that we went to the same middle school. Indeed, Glenbrook was the breeding ground for many things, but never would anyone have suspected rock and roll.
“It’s kind of cool though,” laughed De Courcy of the testament to the small world that is New Westminster. “I like it.”
“That’s where we all started our first bands too,” said Fee, sitting on a coffee can. “Nothing too serious in Glenbrook; everything got rolling in high school.”
As De Courcy explained, Black Wizard has been in existence on and off for the last two years. The band, which also includes drummer Eugene Parkemenko and lead vocalist and guitarist Adam Grant, embraced him into the fold after he moved back to Vancouver from Toronto about a year ago.
“They were thinking about starting up Black Wizard again and they were like, ‘do you want to come and jam?’ And I was like, ‘yeah for sure,’” De Courcy recalled. “I mean, I’ve been playing with these guys since we were 14, so it’s just really, really tight. We just went for it. We just started writing and then recorded and here we are.”
Though the members of Black Wizard have been close friends for years, they are truly diverse, ranging significantly in both influences and musical backgrounds. De Courcy, Parkemenko and Fee’s first band, Onslaught, was a metal band along similar lines as the UK thrashers of the same name.
“That was the first band where we actually started playing shows,” said Fee, shifting from coffee can to amp. “We got our shit together there.”
Hilariously, Onslaught’s infamous first show at Queen’s Park Annex, presented by the City of New Westminster as part of Youth Week, also happened to be Second Nature (my best friend’s now mercifully defunct high school band)’s first gig. “That was the show that they got really pissed off,” said De Courcy, fondly recalling the event. “Our singer brought an axe on stage and then we smashed a computer screen...”
Aside from the brief flirtation with metal, De Courcy also did a stint with Skull Fist out east, and with Parkemenko in the Vancouver based Whyte Hott. Parkemenko later moved on to play with SpreadEagle and Fee did time with the Dead Lees and the Prescription Aviators.
But De Courcy is happy to be where he is now with Black Wizard. “We’re just having a good time writing songs now that people can hopefully relate to and listen to and have a good time.”
As far as influences go, Fee does admit to having more than just a passing fondness for Clutch. “I know these guys aren’t the biggest fans, but I love them.”
Whereas De Courcy veers off into a completely different direction, pledging allegiance to the song writing of Neil Young and Elliot Smith.
Over the last few years, naming trends amongst bands have gone in cycles from ‘animal’ inspired monikers such as Lions In the Street and No Horses to shock seeking titles like Fucked Up and Fuck the Facts; so, along with bands like White Wizard and Electric Wizard, could Black Wizard be the next in a new trend?
Almost serendipitously, the members of Black Wizard found a sticker amongst the assortment on the wall which read: “Sun Wizard.” Enough said.
Sound wise, the Sabbath-esque overtones of Black Wizard’s music mingles with duelling guitars and a heavy stoner rock vibe to create a sound reminiscent of an equally catchy, but less jazz inspired Pride Tiger.
The band’s self titled debut features seven blistering, instantly memorable and decidedly heavy tracks with a slower track designed to show diversity sandwiched right in the middle. The album was painstakingly recorded at Bully’s in New West where Parkemenko built his own recording studio.
“It was fucking three or four months of hell,” De Courcy said bluntly, then backtracking slightly. “Well it wasn’t that bad…but the whole process of recording and mastering from when we started tracking…it was pretty bad.”
It was produced by budding producer/engineer Michael Kraushaar.
“He really made that album what it is,” said De Courcy. “So I think such an amazing amount of credit has to go to him because he really put in the fucking time and he put in the energy and he just made it turn out really good.”
Mixed at Fadermaster Studios by Paul Boechlor and mastered by Stuart McKillope at the Hive, the whole process took from June until the day before the gig when the band picked up the finished CDs which feature artwork courtesy of Toronto artist Louis Durand of Broken Social Scene notoriety.
“Everything seemed to work out because everyone that worked on it seemed to really like it,” remarked Fee. “So it seemed like that definitely made the final product what it is.”
Despite the lengthy recording process, writing itself remains a very collective effort, all members contributing equally to the mix, something De Courcy attributes to strong personalities, passion and a healthy dose of creativity.
“We all love to write; we all have a good ear. When we write and we practise, nobody’s submissive, nobody just stands there. It’s really a group effort, so what you’re hearing is Black Wizard. It’s not like Kyle Fee and Black Wizard. It’s the band.”
“Though that was actually the first name for the band…” remarked Fee.
On stage is where the band feels most comfortable De Courcy explained. “You just transfer all your energy, because we’ve got a lot of fucking energy, and you just put it into the audience and you know make them feel. That’s what our point is when we play live.”
“You play a song and you hit a riff and it sends that chill up your spine,” said Fee.
Black Wizard continues to gain momentum, already writing new songs and gearing up for their first tour of Vancouver Island in the spring.
“We want to fucking drive and put all our gear in the back and never ever come back,” proclaimed De Courcy. “Any promoters, any bands that need an opening act—fuck, we’ll play; we’ll do it anywhere. We just want to play.”
The band’s giant yellow van, affectionately known as the “Wizard Wagon,” was recently stolen from outside of Bully’s while Parkemenko was recording locals Grass City. Though the vehicle, which could never be mistaken for safe or reliable—featuring a cage in the back instead of seatbelts—it holds sincere sentimental value. It was found the next day on a reserve in Langley completely vandalized.
“The whole dashboard was ripped out,” said De Courcy. “The grill was fucking ripped off there was like bloody Kleenex in it, broken wheelchairs in the back, children’s car seats…”
“It sounded like a hell of a party,” giggled Fee.
Keep an eye out for Black Wizard’s limited edition trading cards designed by De Courcy. They feature photos of band members with statistics and fun facts on the back.
“I really want to do a new line and instead of trading cards, do organ donor cards, so you can sign up. Right now we’re short of livers; we could use a couple of livers…”
Black Wizard’s debut album is available at local record stores.
Saturday, February 20, 2010
REVIEW – STARS AT THE ORPHEUM THEATRE, FEB 19 2010
“Captivating” is probably the best word to describe Stars’ spectacular performance as part of the Cultural Olympiad Friday at the Orpheum.
“It’s great to be here for Super Bowl weekend ladies and gentlemen,” exclaimed co-front man Torquil Campbell. “Oh no, wait…”
From the moment the Montreal quintet (complete with auxiliary guitarist) hit that stage, the crowd was on its feet. The stage was heavily laden with white roses which would become a focal point, periodically hurled into the audience leaving a shower of fluttering petals in their wake. Amy Millan described one particularly half-hearted effort as “not a gold medal throw.”
For the full review and pictures, check out the new and improved Gutternipe.
“It’s great to be here for Super Bowl weekend ladies and gentlemen,” exclaimed co-front man Torquil Campbell. “Oh no, wait…”
From the moment the Montreal quintet (complete with auxiliary guitarist) hit that stage, the crowd was on its feet. The stage was heavily laden with white roses which would become a focal point, periodically hurled into the audience leaving a shower of fluttering petals in their wake. Amy Millan described one particularly half-hearted effort as “not a gold medal throw.”
For the full review and pictures, check out the new and improved Gutternipe.
Thursday, February 18, 2010
Bell Orchestre at Great Northern Way Campus, Feb 18 2010
A haunting cello filled the chilly room at Great Northern Way Campus last night (Feb. 18) with a melancholic lament supplemented by psychedelic synth and harpsichord-like keys coupled with a drum machine precision backbone, the combination of which seemed to instantly drop the temperature by several degrees. Vancouver quartet Certain Breeds brought a decidedly creepy element to Code Live 1 as they opened the Cultural Olympiad showcase leaving its audience feeling a little uneasy, yet somehow mesmerized by the gloomy, almost tortured songs from the band’s debut self-titled. A description on the band’s Myspace page describes the sound perfectly: “Bauhaus” meets “Siouxsie and the Banshees.” Read: the Organ, but much moodier.
For the rest of the review and more pictures, visit Guttersnipe.
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