Edmonton folk singer on a roll
Maria Dunn will use some of the $8,000 she won for the Edmonton Music Prize to travel to Ottawa in April for the Juno Awards – where her album Gathering is nominated for Traditional Roots Album of the Year. “It warms my heart,” Dunn says of the recent double honour, and this is no faint […]
AGLC lifts ban on underage musicians
Coming soon to a bar near you – younger bands. The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission announced on Friday that the regulation prohibiting minors from performing in licensed taverns has been removed, effective immediately – and after only 10 years of being the biggest pain-in-the ass rule for musicians not old enough to drink but […]
Walterdale cancels Othello over racial tempest
It’s clear that society isn’t ready to see a white woman play a black man on stage – if it ever will be. After an uproar that was said to include threats, the Walterdale Theatre has cancelled its upcoming production of Shakespeare’s Othello, which was to open Feb. 8. At the centre of the tempest […]
The lonely death of Ricky Jordahl
Whyte Avenue has lost one of its most beloved street characters. The body of homeless man Richard Lyle Jordahl was found early Thursday morning, on a pile of pallets in the alley behind a strip mall where he often slept. There was no report of the fatality on the Edmonton Police Service news release feed, […]
Edmonton Journal arts section gutted
Arts journalism in print form in this city has taken a terrible hit with the sudden departure of two of the Edmonton Journal’s veteran columnists. Theatre writer Liz Nicholls and music writer Sandra Sperounes and have both taken buyouts and will leave the paper on Dec. 2. The owners PostMedia announced in October it was […]
Thieves try to sell Alfie Myhre back his own instruments
This one is going into the Dumbest Crooks file. The home of Edmonton music legend Alfie Myhre was broken into last week. Among the items stolen was a fiddle worth $12,000 and his 1929 banjo worth about $7,000 – two of his favourite instruments. It was a devastating loss. Fortunately, in a stroke of brilliant […]
The Science of Guitar Face
Guys make the funniest faces. We gnash our teeth, knit our brows, purse our lips, let our mouths hang open, contort our jaws, scrunch our eyes shut, stick out our tongues, breathe heavily, grunt and groan and moan and generally look ridiculous. Yes, Guitar Face is an occupational hazard when you’re playing a really good […]
Sigmund Freud dissects the joke
In Sigmund Freud’s 1905 book Wit and Its Relation to the Unconscious, the father of modern psychiatry claimed there are only seven jokes that have ever been written – and that includes dick jokes. Hey, it’s Freud. Of course he meant there are seven types of wit. The popular interpretation boils down to these: Absurdity, […]
Video of racist incident in Edmonton goes viral
A video of a racist incident on the streets of Edmonton has gone viral – more than 200,000 views in less than 24 hours. The video, captured while local entrepreneur and actor Jesse Lipscombe was filming a PSA promoting downtown Edmonton, shows a car full of people pull up to an intersection. One of the […]
Folk Fest vs. LRT: A hill to die on
There’s a mild controversy literally surrounding the Edmonton Folk Music Festival this year. Like a lot of Edmonton gripes, it’s over a bridge. Folkies may have noticed they can’t walk over on the Cloverdale footbridge anymore. The City has already started breaking it down to make way for the new LRT Valley Line, to be […]
NDP MLA puts music to public service
The list of professional musicians elected to government office is very short indeed. In fact, David Shepherd – MLA for Edmonton-Centre – seems to be the only example in Alberta history. He performs Thursday at the Needle Vinyl Tavern: “Shepapalooza” – also featuring White Lightning and Ben Spencer – which turns out to be a […]