Guitar Night at the Folk Fest
The first four acts of the 37th annual Edmonton Folk Music Festival have set the tone – for rocking out. Opening night contained at least twice the recommended daily dosage of electric guitar, and the folk fans didn’t mind a bit. After all, the folks know this weekend will be filled with fiddles, bouzoukis, dobros […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: What the Folk
Folk music is bleeding into the pop charts in record quantities. At this rate, it’ll be Bob Dylan at Newport all over again. So who is the next Bob Dylan? (Or Joni Mitchell, or Fairport Convention, depending.) The stars of tomorrow may well be found at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival Thursday through Sunday. Headliners […]
The Tragically Hip’s heartbreaking goodbye
Gord Downie is wrong about one thing: Courage does matter, and it couldn’t come at a better time. Without courage, he could never have mounted what may well be the last Tragically Hip tour ever – in the face of a devastating diagnosis of terminal brain cancer. The 52-year-old singer is obviously feeling well enough […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: The Courage of the Tragically Hip
The Tragically Hip comes to Edmonton for likely the last time Thursday and Saturday – and rave reviews have been pouring in since the tour opened in Vancouver last week. That’s rather unsurprising given the nature of this tour. In May, singer Gord Downie was diagnosed with one of the deadliest forms of brain cancer. […]
Women rule at Interstellar Rodeo
The theme for the whole weekend at Interstellar Rodeo has been about broken hearts – or maybe that’s just what indie folk is all about. To paraphrase Donovan Wood during his musical interlude: All the best songs are about a couple mad at each other while coming home from a party. “I ain’t nothin’ but […]
Peter Gabriel and Sting make magic
This was a match made in heaven – and the result was a religious experience. So it works out. Two British rock Gods, Sting and Peter Gabriel, have put their own great music above rock star ego to perform together in what will surely go down as the best collaboration of the decade. At their […]
Chris Cornell unplugs grunge at the Jube
It’s official: Generation X has entered middle age. No better proof could be found than the fact that one of its rock ‘n’ roll heroes was playing the Jubilee Auditorium on Saturday night. The Jube! Where Engelbert Humperdinck played. It turned out to be the perfect venue for Chris Cornell, the 52-year-old former frontman of […]
REVIEW: Whitehorse divine at Interstellar Rodeo
Interstellar Rodeo is a deliciously Edmonton festival. A warm Saturday in Hawrelak Park boasted everything you could want from a music festival: Kids played football, people lounged on blankets; a woman gyrated to the music with an iridescent hula hoop, another lady rocked a tutu and a cowboy hat; babies were wearing Led Zeppelin T-shirts. […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Festival GO
There are sure to be plenty of Rattatas, Magikarps, Diglets, Zubats, Pidgeys, Jigglypuffs, and various Lickitungs lurking between Pokestops and Battle Gyms at Edmonton attractions this weekend. They’re everywhere, these Pokemon. Who knew? The best part of Pokemon Go isn’t the game itself – a long walk for a scavenger hunt – but the distractions […]
Edmonton Radio a flippers free for all
Don’t take free radio for granted. It remains an easy connection to an exciting world of music and culture outside your own. You might even imagine the person speaking on the radio is your only friend in the world, that he or she is talking directly to YOU, selecting good songs they think you might […]
NEWSIES: Weak story, amazing dance
NEWSIES has certainly had a checkered career. It began its life as a Disney live action film in 1992 and immediately laid an egg, ranking as one of the lowest grossing films ever released by the company. But in its eternal attempts to mine its film canon after the astonishing stage success of Beauty and […]
MUSIC PREVIEW: Golden age of music venues
It seems like not all that long ago the local music scene was in disarray, with venue after venue closing within a very short span. And now here we are in the middle of 2016 and there’s a plethora of new and cool stages around the city to check out the rich tapestry that makes […]
