Monday, 13 February: preview performance; tix $15

Tuesday 14 February: opening night

Wednesday 15 February

Thursday 16 February

Friday 17 February

Saturday 18 February

Tickets $20, available at:

pommeisfrenchforapple.com

David Essig with special guest Abigail Lapell

At The TRANZAC, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto

Sunday, February 12

Door: 7:00 p.m., Starts: 7:30 p.m.

Tickets: $20.00 / $18.00 Flying Cloud and TRANZAC members

David Essig was introduced to Canadian audiences in 1971 as a “talented newcomer” at the legendary Mariposa Folk Festival. Now, nearly 40 years later, he has an international career as one of Canada’s finest interpreters of original, contemporary folk music. Always paying homage to his roots in Bluegrass and Country Blues, David uses these traditions to create timeless new songs.

David is highly respected as a thoughtful and intelligent songwriter, with Canadian folk standards like “Albert’s Cove” and “High Ground” to his credit. His work moves from pieces as contemporary as today’s news, to songs that sound as if they were rediscovered from old country blues 78′s.

Equally renowned as an instrumentalist and traditional performer, David is a master of the blues and slide guitar. Whether on the lap-style Weissenborn or the electric slide guitar, his spontaneous style crosses all the borders between country, blues and the avant-garde. With his 5/8″ socket and a sound that could peel  the petunias off your mother’s porcelain, he is considered one of Canada’s finest slide guitarists.

In 2007, a collective of alt-country Winnipeg musicians, led by Romi Mayes, Jaxon Haldane, and the D-Rangers, recorded the acclaimed CD Beverly Street: an album of their new performances of some of the best of David’s original songs. David joined in for cameo appearances on the CD and contributed the title song for the project.

In 2011, David released Rolling Fork to Gallows Point, a landmark CD of Delta Blues  that Roots Music Canada has hailed as “a beautiful, rough and tumble blues record —passionately played and lovingly recorded.” This new CD features the magnificent Chris Whiteley on blues harp and steel guitar, along with Tobin Frank (Spirit of the West) on bass and Alan Cameron on drums.

David is touring solo in 2011-12. In the Spring of 2011 he toured in Europe, doing festivals and concerts in Italy and Austria, including a headline performance at the prestigious Acoustic Guitar Meeting in Sarzana. This Fall David completed his first Home Routes Tour, with concerts in Northern BC and Alberta. He is currently working on a new CD of original songs, set for release in the Spring of 2012.

Abigail Lapell

Drawing from a deep well of folk, indie and traditional influences, Abigail Lapell has made music her whole life. The Toronto singer has won over audiences of all musical stripes with her contagious melodies, evocative lyrics and heart-stopping voice—a combination that draws comparisons to early Cat Power, Sandy Denny or a stormier Natalie Merchant.

For more information on David Essig please visit www.davidessig.com.

TRANZAC information and tickets: www.tranzac.org or 416-923-8137

View video here.

http://www.dontspendithoney.com/?page_id=10

Doors 7:30pm

$15 advance; $18/door $25 both nights.

G’Day Mate! The Tranzac is holding its annual Australia Day fundraising Concert Thursday January 26th. This year some of the most beloved and diverse acts to grace the Tranzac space have agreed to take part. In honour of Australia Day, they will reinterpret some of Australia’s most well known and not so well known artists. Think rip roarin’ bluegrass AC/DC. Please come and celebrate all things Tranzac in the Main Hall at 8pm. The event is Pay What You Can with a suggested donation of $10.

Some of the artists participating include:

Sandro Perri www.sandroperri.com/ & Andre Ethier www.mypsace.com/andreethier
Bob Wiseman www.bobwiseman.ca
Amanda Mabro www.amandamabro.com/main/
Ronley Teper www.ronleyteper.com/
THOMAS www.myspace.com/isthisthomas
This is Awesome! Christine Bougie and Dafydd Hughes www.thisisawesome.ca/
Hugh Oliver www.hugholiver.com/
Isla Craig www.myspace.com/islacraig
Houndstooth (Tranzac bluegrass all-stars)
Stacey McLeod www.myspace.com/storytellinliarsmusic
The Rutherford Sisters www.myspace.com/willowrutherford www.myspace.com/calamityroyale
Hotcha! www.hotcha.ca/
The Bilge Rats www.tfmm.ca/
Jamzac http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5yMAUgPaPg
& More!

The Tranzac is a non-profit member supported community organization with a focus on promoting arts, music and theatre. The TRANZAC (an abbreviation of the Toronto Australia New Zealand Club) also works to support Australia and New Zealand cuture in Toronto.

TRANZAC NEW YEAR’S EVE
Featuring:

The Elwins
Maylee Todd
Drumheller
Rouge
Moon King
Dr. EW
Kite Hill
The Weather Station
Lisa Bozikovic
DJ Craig Dunsmuir

$13 in advance / $15 at the door – Tickets available at Rotate This, Soundscapes & The Tranzac

Doors 8 PM. 19+

Halloween dance party at the Tranzac Main Hall!
Monday 31 October
8pm
NO COVER!

This is one of their last concerts in North America in 2011. Do not miss your chance to see this incredible band headlining live.

Tickets can be purchased at Rotate This, 801 Queen Street West or directly at Tranzac for $15.

For inquiries or questions, please email at:
annick@ludyeventmanagement.com or
andy@ludyeventmanagement.com

Visit Sun Domingo at:
https://www.facebook.com/sundomingo
http://www.sundomingo.com

Supported by HUNTER EVES (EMORIE)
https://www.facebook.com/EMORIEBAND

Wednesday 26 October, 7:30pm
PWYC
Read about Myke and the Mod Villains and listen to their music on Bandcamp here.

“The finest, most impressive folk poet in years” -The Village Voice

With a mesmerizing intensity, a unique voice, vision, guitar style and persona, Malawi born songman Tony Bird is a complete original. Growing up in southern Africa in the era of colonialism and Apartheid, Bird developed a sharp, conscious universal eye. His expansive repertoire ranges from topical and historical commentary to love songs, musical tone poems and exotic travelogues and stories that roam from bushmen to bicycles. Tony Bird has been called “The Father of African Folk-Rock,” yet he is even more. He’s an inventive, passionate, theatrical performer who delivers the moving, searching anthems of a mature poet.

Bird had two early vinyl albums released on Columbia in the ’70s, “Tony Bird” and “Tony Bird of Paradise.” The latter garnered acclaim in a 1986 People Magazine critics’ poll as one of the top 10 albums of all time. “Sorry Africa,” his 1990 Philo/Rounder release, features fellow southern African musicians who have supported a line of African roots and world music stars from Hugh Masekela to Miriam Makeba and Harry Belafonte, as well as Paul Simon’s South African-influenced “Graceland.” Bird’s early releases pre-dated Simon’s by at least a decade and more.

Bird’s rich geographic and cultural background has spawned a music of diverse influences. Drawing from the southern African mbaqanga and kwela rhythms, Afrikaans boeremusiek and even calypso, along with western traditions of folk, blues, country and rock, his music is an original amalgamation of all these styles, which he loosely describes as “African Folk-Rock.” He creates the sound of a full band with his unique slapping, percussive guitar picking, a clicking mouth and an energetic stomping left foot. With a raw organic quality, his grainy voice breaks into growls, whispers and falsettos contrasted against sophisticated painterly lyrics.

A new CD is in the works which will feature the same “name” musicians, including one song with Ladysmith Black Mambazo, who became enamoured with Tony’s music when he toured with them in the ’80s. In the early ’90s, he also toured with South African stars, the late Simon Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens. After a six year hiatus due to hand problems, Bird returned to performing and touring in 2003.

For more information on Tony Bird please visit www.mangotime.net.

What is folk music? In 1954, Edith Fulton Fowke published “Folksongs of Canada”, the until-now, definitive collection of Canadian folk tunes.

Henry Adam Svec, one of Canada’s foremost musicologists, has updated Fowke’s seminal oeuvre for all you post-structural folkies. He does tend to ramble on a bit (hey it’s folk music – if you don’t spend 10 minutes explaining what your song is all about then you’re not doing your job) so, I’d recommend you come to the show after the lecture is over.

As far as the musical component of the evening shall unfold, Mr. Svec has assured us that it will be all a part of the contemporary folk process.

But let our expert speak for himself:

“I have listed the names of the performers I have documented. I have even attributed authorship of these songs to their respective singers. This will seem like an error to those who are familiar with the work of the late Staunton R. Livingston, who has made it obvious that music is an immanent plane of anonymous communion (see The CFL Sessions; The Lost Stompin’ Tom Songs). It is a sin, Livingston has taught us, to write about or to write upon music, and it is a sin to tie Music to an individual source.

I am not sure if Fowke would have been aware of Livingston’s methods, nor am I certain that she would have approved of my own contribution to the field of Canadian folklore. But I forgive her and acknowledge the role she has played in this project. In some ways, Folk Songs of Canada Now can be read as a synthesis of Staunton R. Livingston’s avant-garde methods with the traces of Edith Fulton Fowke’s journey across the territory of the Folk. Yet, faint traces can be just as vivid as broad, strong strokes, and I wish to privilege neither one of the two giants on whose shoulders I stand.”
Henry Adam Svec

Wow!