The June Bugs, five ladies blending voices and acoustic instruments in a fusion of folk, bluegrass, and gospel music, will be at The Hub tonight for a CD release concert.
Also at The Hub, member of the Canadian Country Music Hall of Fame Gary Fjellgaard performs with Saskia and Darrel on Dec. 1. Fjellgaard has a voice for the ages and this show should sell out quickly. Call 403-340-4869 for tickets.
Wil and Leeroy Stagger form the double bill at The Vat on Nov. 27. Stagger and Wil have been playing the Western Canadian roots circuit for quite some time and have built their reputations upon their live performances.
Rising stars of the Canadian folk scene, Juno award-winning vocal group The Good Lovelies return to The Matchbox Theatre on Nov. 28. Tickets are on sale at the box office.
This week’s disc reviews:
The Cooper Brothers
In From the Cold
Self-released
Rock ’n’ roll cowboys The Cooper Brothers — they of The Dream Never Dies — came back earlier this year with a powerful album of Canadian roots music replete with a stompin’ backbeat. In From the Cold is the southern Ontario group’s first album in almost 30 years.
Terry King, one of the voices of the band, passed away in 1998, but augmented by Jeff Rogers, Brian and Dick Cooper roar out of retirement with a very strong release produced by Colin Linden. The first five songs are standouts. Gunshy has the hook, Jukebox, with Delbert McClinton on harp, has the spirit (“I heard it on a jukebox, so its gotta be right!” goes the refrain), and ’62 Fairlane and Hard Luck Girl have the soul.
The Fats Kaplin fiddle touches to That’s What Makes Us Great are stellar. This ode to Canada wouldn’t be out of place beside Trooper’s Real Canadians and Mike Plume’s 8:30 Newfoundland.
Things get a little too soft mid-set before picking up again with the closers The Way She Shines and the memorable Little Blue Church; drop a five-string in that one and you are close to a bluegrass tune.
With just enough roots and country influences to keep it honest, In From the Cold is an enjoyable reintroduction to one of the most successful Canadian bands of the late 1970s.
Rodney DeCroo
Queen Mary Trash
Northern Electric
Hats off to Vancouver’s Rodney DeCroo for firing off an impressive 24-track missive entitled Queen Mary Trash.
DeCroo recorded this double album set in less than a week, and the intense nature of such a pace is obvious. Songs are captured here at their most organic level. Unlike his previous Mockingbird Bible, nothing is polished or even adorned. Select tracks (River Boat and Loser and the Tennessee Girl) have a Neil Young and Crazy Horse vibe, complete with shredded riffs and feedback. Elsewhere, as in Out of this World, fragmented and nearly indecipherable lyrics make references to Bob Dylan inevitable.
DeCroo turns his words toward himself on the (hopefully) exaggerated self-evisceration You Ain’t No One, singing “You ain’t Steve Earle, you ain’t Neil Young, you ain’t Bob Dylan, you ain’t no one.”
Not everything is heavy. The second disc swirls to a start thanks to Jon Wood’s retro organ flourishes introducing Paris Spleen; I’m not sure what it is about, but it sounds wonderful. The beautifully titled Mist in the Valley is a sparse, atmospheric interlude of calm amidst volleys of rock ’n’ roll bombast. Borderline similarly cleanses the palate.
The rhythm of aggression is much of DeCroo’s attraction, but when one focuses more closely on the words, nuggets of brilliance become obvious. Queen Mary Trash isn’t an easy listen — much like the artist who created this sprawling opus, it is challenging, brutal and at times terrifyingly poetic. There is much to digest across the nearly two hours of music, and DeCroo may have been wiser to have held back some of these tunes for his next project.
But for a writer this prolific and proficient, it is most likely we’ll have as equally impressive a set to consider in another 18 months.
Donald Teplyske is a local freelance writer who contributes a twice-monthly column on roots music; visit fervorcoulee.wordpress.com for additional reviews. If you know a roots music event of which he should be aware, contact him at fervorcoulee@shaw.ca