The Horseshoe Tavern Archives

Julie Doiron is a talented and prolific singer, musician, and songwriter based in Sackville, New Brunswick. She first gained attention in the world-renowned band Eric’s Trip before going solo for a successful and busy trajectory of her own. Over the years she’s worked with many people and contributed to records by Daniel Romano, Mt. Eerie, Gord Downie, Shotgun & Jaybird, Herman Dune, Baby Eagle, and many more. Among her most notable collaborations was with the Wooden Stars; they released a self-titled record together in 1999, which was critically acclaimed and won a Juno Award, one of the first notable instances that Canada’s mainstream music industry acknowledged this country’s underground music community, which flourished in the 1990s. Many years later, Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars are playing a small run of shows together this summer at the Arboretum Festival in Ottawa on August 20, the Horseshoe in Toronto on August 21, La Sala Rosa in Montreal on August 22, and the Peterborough Folk Festival on August 23. Here, Julie and I talk about my soggy bike ride home, bad weather and the wind currents thing, the 15th anniversary of Julie Doiron and the Wooden Stars, the indefinite ‘indefinite hiatus’ that Wooden Stars have been on, just reboot it but don’t sit on the modem, Louis C.K.’s technology bit, the girls loved Michael Feuerstack, the Underdogs and skateboarding gangs, if it feels good do it, working with the Wooden Stars, Broken Girl, Sub Pop and Joyce Linehan, making the LP, three-os and G.E. Smith at CMJ, working with Eric’s Trip versus the Wooden Stars, fingerpicking, the Forest, receiving the reception for the album, the Juno Award, Josh Latour, running out of records, playing New Year’s Day at the Air Canada Centre, I pre-produce the next Julie and the Wooden Stars record, cover songs, almost retiring after the release of So Many Days, enjoying life, kids, and making music again, a new band Julie’s in called Weird Lines, making a duets record with Rick White, including questions in your answers, juliedoiron.ca not .com or .cl, Julie’s song “Life of Dreams” is in an iPhone commerical, the song “Gone Gone,” and then it’s goodnight nobody.

Related links: juliedoiron.ca vishkhanna.com

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Friendly Rich is a strange but great man who originally hails from Brampton just outside of Toronto, Ontario. He is a singer, songwriter, educator, impresario, and instigator who has released 10 albums to date, including his latest, Bountiful, which is out on June 24 via the Pumpkin Pie Corporation. Friendly Rich and his band will celebrate its release with a show at the Horseshoe Tavern in Toronto on July 24, which follows a sojourn across Europe in June and July. Friendly Rich recently visited me at my home where we had a spirited chat about prepping for a walk down to the Guelph Farmer’s Market, the joys of Eric the Baker, how my son doesn’t want to be on the show, how my wife and I don’t like carrying our son anymore, Goldie Hawn, John Cage, and Silence Guelph, living in Oakville, petunia spotting, the impact of the provincial election on Guelph, Rich gets self-conscious meeting the general public on our interview stroll, a firetruck at a crosswalk, the Regent Park School of Music and Saturday Night Live’s Hal Willner and Kevin Drew and Daniel Lanois, the Brampton Indie Arts Festival was a visionary thing, pranking bad mayors, my son the difficult interview subject, Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo and Marc Ribot, when the BIAF got different, slaughtering lambs in Brampton garages and filling blue boxes full of red blood, why is Friendly Rich so weird, Nudetella, infiltrating the system with subversive performance art, running into Charlie Cares busking, Raynaud’s syndrome, Rich drops a fiver inside Charlie’s case, Charlie sings us “Wildwood Flower,” locking things up, running into musician/NDP candidate/Hillside Festival founder James Gordon and peppering him with the tough questions, Arthur MacInnes has a nice shirt and is an old, Fugazi road-trip buddy, Meral the Turkish food chef whom I still owe a dollar, delicious böreks, the “Sausage Samba” saga, regulation sausage in Germany, combining the worlds of Star Trek: The Next Generation and sausage auditing for a music video that has been championed by Funny or Die and Team Coco, running into visual artist Gillian Wilson who should not be a stranger, my wife needs money, Gregory Pepper is cleaning out the eavestroughs, Art on the Street, goat’s milk, Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s death train, “Penis Suitcase” and the super strange funeral ritual of the king of Zambia, my son eats peppers like they’re apples, darkness and childlike innocence, running into Matt Collins formerly of Ninja High School and currently in the band Dutch, my former linemate Bruce Lynn, still clamouring for Eric the Baker, getting Rich a Guelph apple and talking to farmers about the apple-splitting trick, making our way to Eric the Baker, Friendly Rich is prolific, purple juice interruption, Adrian Celentano, sausage rolls and blueberry tarts, my guestlist, arriving at Eric’s, Rich buys a chocolate weiner, my son tries to steal some madeleine cookies, meeting Eric the Baker, the song “Penis Suitcase,” et en fin.

Related links: friendlyrich.com vishkhanna.com

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