Category: Podcast

Ep. #73: Ame Henderson + Jennifer Castle

Post author By vish
Post date February 18, 2014

Ame Henderson is a world-renowned Toronto-based dance artist and Jennifer Castle is a very compelling, gifted singer, songwriter, and musician who also calls Toronto home. Together they’ve created a new work for the Toronto Dance Theatre called Henderson/Castle Voyager, which explores continuous movement, as a state of being. Voyager performances take place Feb. 20-22 & Feb. 26-March 1 at 8 PM and Feb. 23 at 2 PM at the Winchester Street Theatre (80 Winchester St.). After a rehearsal at the Toronto Dance Theatre, Ame, Jennifer, and I discussed rehearsing versus practicing and Mike Watt, how practice differs within dance and music, the conception of the Voyager piece, how dancing is related to general thoughts and feelings about moving, how Jen is participating in this project by writing an hour-long song for the piece, playing piano, and singing the aforementioned song that never repeats itself from performance to performance, the art of stream of consciousness, talking about outer space, how Jen’s earnest, edited persona might be impacted by this unguarded, humourous method of writing, how improvisation in music and dance demonstrates how ridiculous, funny, and surprising the human body is, restraint and instantaneous decision-making, the way heightened awareness in practice impacts one’s daily life, the efficacy of grassroots movements and how this relates to success, what keeps a world-renowned artist like Ame working in Canada where she’s relatively underappreciated, how Toronto enables things to happen and yet is a difficult place to galvanize people around contemporary art, livelihood versus art-making, Canada’s financial support system for the arts compared to other places, learning to live in the moment, work versus jobs, Ame’s plans to remount a project called Relay in Europe and Jen’s plans to release a new record tentatively called Pink City, the song “Sliced Bread,” and more.

Ep. #72: Marie LeBlanc Flanagan of Weird Canada

Post author By vish
Post date February 13, 2014

Marie LeBlanc Flanagan is the executive director of Weird Canada, a music site, whose mission statement is “to encourage, connect, and document creative expression across Canada.” It has earned renown for its curatorial acumen in promoting obscure, challenging music made across the country and for serving as a space for enthusiastic contributors to pay tribute to the artists who move them. Speaking of moving things, Weird Canada is launching Wyrd Distro, a means of distributing the physical manifestations of the music they love to people who want to buy or sell it. Wyrd Distro launch parties take place all across Canada on Saturday Feb. 15. Here, Marie and I discuss travelling across Canada, the wonders that are the people of Edmonton, what Wyrd Distro and Weird Canada are all about, how they serve musicians and music fans, why a Canadian music site like CBC Radio 3 would poll its users to name “Canada’s Best Music SIte” and what it means that its users voted for Weird Canada, how Weird Canada sustains itself with grants and an inheritance, why it needs to be volunteer-driven, a planned accessibility project in the works that aims to figure out who is and isn’t permitted in given spaces, how a capitalist ‘survival of the fittest’ mentality applies to outsider art and Weird Canada’s methodology, why it might not matter if Weird Canada is sustainable, how listsicles are impacting the coverage of artists and the consumption of art, how a change is coming, why mainstream media outlets seem less concerned about earning cultural capital these days, what the Wyrd Distro parties across Canada on Feb. 15 are going to be like and how people can best utilize the service, the song “Real Talk” by Dan Galway, and more.

Related links: weirdcanada.com vishkhanna.com

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Tags Aaron Levin, CBC Radio 3, Dan Galway, Edmonton, Marie Leblanc Flanagan, Weird Canada, Wyrd Distro

News Podcast

Ep. #71: Alden Penner

Alden Penner is a respected and idiosyncratic singer, songwriter, and musician based in Montreal. Penner was a key figure in the influential bands the Unicorns and Clues and went on to make heartfelt, enigmatic, and questioning music in a project called Hidden Words. On Feb. 11, he quietly released a lovely new album under his own name; it’s called Exegesis and has prompted him to play at the Silver Dollar in Toronto for the Wavelength festival on Thursday Feb. 13, Montreal’s Le Cagibi on Friday Feb. 14, and the Le Pantoum in Quebec City on Feb. 15. Here, Alden and I discuss my issue understanding release dates, the fact that Exegesis is a personal compilation of sorts with at least one song that was partially conceived by Nick Thorburn when the two were in high school, the self-reflexive nature of putting this record together, Penner’s evolution as a songwriter and the distinction between his simpler and more intricate work, his earliest days learning how to play music in his teens and the impact “I Love Rock ‘n’ Roll” had on him and his guitar playing, jamming with his geography teacher, meeting and collaborating with Thorburn for the first time, the influence that Jimi Hendrix, Reverend Gary Davis, Elizabeth Cotten, and Fugazi had on his guitar playing, interesting guitar teachers and Syd Barrett, playing every instrument on a record yourself, the importance of band chemistry and the Avengers, the multiple meanings of the album’s title, which came to Penner in a dream, how religion has impacted Penner’s ability to find his own voice and feel bolstered by his community, the importance of self-assertion in the face of confrontation, Laura Crapo’s role in producing Penner’s new album, the mysteries of mysticism and psychic surgery, having faith, his upcoming shows, why the Unicorns must reunite to play shows and maybe even reissue Who Will Cut Our Hair When We’re Gone? in 2014, the song “We Seek,” and more.

Related links: facebook.com/aldenpennermusic vishkhanna.com

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Tags Alden Penner, Clues, Elizabeth Cotten, Exegesis, Fugazi, Hidden Words, Islands, Jimi Hendrix, Joan Jett, Laura Crapo, Nick Thorburn, Reverend Gary Davis, Syd Barrett, The Unicorns, Wavelength Toronto, Who Will Cut Our Hair When We're Gone?