Special Release!!!

Owen Pallett from the Toronto band Final Fantasy is putting out some new songs, except he wants his songs to be exclusive to different blogs. He's asked me to post some of those songs onto this blog!

Here is the song, The Butcher by Final Fantasy (it may take a couple minutes, but it's worth it!!!):

http://isaac.wurmann.googlepages.com/03_The_Butcher.mp3

You will also be able to listen to the song FOREVER if you click the link on the right hand side of this page.

If you like this song and you want to check out other songs by Final Fantasy, go to: http://www.finalfantasyeternal.com/

"I'm a Pessimistic, Dark Thinking Kind of Person"

Try to guess who might describe themselves as that. You probably wouldn't guess Canadian singer-songwriter Hawksley Workman, at least I wouldn't. But for me, he always defies my expectations, and this is yet another example of that.
Growing up in a small town, beginning to play music was easy. "As soon as you woke up, music was there until you went to sleep" he explains, and calls his childhood idyllic. This has something to do with growing up in mid-northern rural Ontario without televisions, only their imaginations.
The night before, Hawksley Workman gave everyone on the folk fest hill a great concert. It was his "rock cover show" where he played covers of his favourite rock 'n roll songs such as Record Body Count by the Rheostatics, mixed with his music. "We thought, let's just have fun, it's kind of like when we'd play in our basement along with Led Zeppelin records."
Hawksley Workman can also be known as one of the many Canadian artists who have lived in Paris, along with Buck 65 and Wendy McNeil. " They [the French] are a lot like Americans, except they're in Europe and I think for some people, Paris is just like a safer America" he explains. "You gotta go there" he says.
Off his new CD "Between the Beautifuls" has a song called The City's a Drag which he also played at his concert the night before. "I feel that a lot of my songs are about the way society's interact with themselves it just doesn't feel good to me. When I wrote The City's a Drag, there's times when I would land in Toronto and I would get parking tickets and people would be breaking into my apartment and you get an overdose of the city and you just feel like, I hate this! Please let me go to where life is peaceful."
At a session at the Edmonton Folk Fest, Hawksley Workman said an interesting thing, he said that sometimes listening to the radio just makes him feel sick. And that was the inspiration to his song Goodbye to the Radio. "If you listen to CBC like I do, you get the news spoon fed to you every hour, like about the poor kid who was murdered on the bus in Winnipeg and the body count in Afghanistan and Iraq and it just like, I think we need sometimes to embrace the goodness of humanity."
I was not able to put the whole interview on here but if you have a specific questions that you knew I asked Hawksley Workman, just please ask me about it.
Stay tuned for some highlights of the interview on the next ZeitCast.

"Canada, Please Invade America"

Those were the words of Folk Fest performer Jim White at his concert on Sunday. He said that because he thinks that Canada is really great and if we invaded America then they would be more like us. Oh, and we have Health Care.
Many great artists were at the Edmonton Folk Festival last weekend, including Jim White. Others were Brett Dennen, Michael Franti, Luke Doucet, Broken Social Scene and Hawksley Workman.
I am very excited to say that I was able to interview four of those great artists last weekend with my media pass.
I will be posting portions of the interviews on my blog over the next week but will also be showing highlights on the August ZeitCast.
I have already posted my interview with Luke Doucet but stay tuned to read interviews with Hawksley Workman, Brendan Canning (Broken Social Scene) and and exclusive interview with Michael Franti.

Chances are you are Playing Music because you Love it or You’re Not Good at Anything Else

Hundreds of artists come to the Edmonton Folk Fest every year. Some years you don’t really know the people who are performing but you leave with a new favourite, that’s what you will always be guaranteed, to leave with a new favourite.
I had heard of Luke Doucet before and had listened to a bit of his music, but I had never heard a lot of his music, until yesterday at a workshop. Just before the workshop I got a call from the Edmonton Folk Fest Media Tent to say that right after the workshop, I would be interviewing Luke Doucet. I spent the whole workshop preparing questions for him, until finally at 9:00 pm, the interview actually happened.

And the result was an interesting interview and a lot of fun!
At the festival he was performing with his band the White Falcon and with his wife Melissa McLelland, though most of his albums are technically solo albums, in that it’s his name on the cover and he writes all the music.
Luke Doucet himself though is all from over the place, he’s lived everywhere. He grew up in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but after 12 years there he moved to Vancouver, after that he’s lived in Nashville, Toronto, Halifax and Hamilton. After living in so many cities, they each must have a different influence on an artist’s music. “In cities where there’s a large music industry like Toronto or Los Angeles or New York, it’s very easy for people to play music in those places for the wrong reason because they want to be stars and they see stars. Where as if you were living in Edmonton or Hamilton, chances are you are playing music because you love it or you’re not good at anything else” explains Luke.
For those of you who are familiar with the Weakerthans, you will know that they are also from Winnipeg. They have a song called One Great City, where they sing in the chorus: “I hate Winnipeg.”
“It’s difficult not to hate that city sometimes but it’s also difficult not to love it” says Luke Doucet in response to the Weakerthans quote. He explains that Winnipeg is in the middle of nowhere, and it’s hard to find work and, of course, that it’s really cold.
Luke Doucet’s music has influences from all over the place, so it’s really hard to categorize it. But categorizing music might be a bad thing, says Luke, “You know back in the day, people said rock ‘n roll was a combination of country and blues and folk, therefore I guess by an old definition, that’s what [my music] would be. But if you ask people what rock music is today, they don’t think of country, blues and folk.”
For more of the interview, please listen to a ZeitCast edition that will be coming out over the next few months.

ZeitCast #7

Here is a special July edition of ZeitCast which is actually a music podcast the features only the best Winnipeg Folk Festival music.

Permission to use the music on this podcast was granted to me by John. K. Samson of The Weakerthans, Geoff Berner, Hayden, and Forro in the Dark.

ZeitCast July Edition Part 1

ZeitCast July Edition Part 2

I will also be doing a special August podcast with all Edmonton Folk Festival music.

Thank you for listening.

Outside the Blog

The Edmonton Folk Festival is coming up in a couple of weeks and I'll be sure to write on the blog about it. But I will also be writing about the folk fest outside the blog. The Edmonton Journal has asked me to write two articles about the folk fest for them. One article will be in the Wednesday newspaper and the other will be out the day after I write it.
So, because of this I wont be able to write as much as I will be writing my articles for the paper.

New Blogs

I have a couple new blogs for everyone to enjoy.
This time they are not written by other people but by me and my friends.
My friend Becca started a blog called The Circle of Music which recommends different songs and artists for people to listen to and enjoy. I will write on it sometimes too.
Becca and me have started a blog called Viewpoint '96 that talks about topics like politics and the environment but from a younger point of view than is usually expressed. We are looking for other kids who are interested to write for it too.
I hope you enjoy!
I also made a googlepages site for ZeitCasts. Here is the url for the home page: http://zeitcasts.googlepages.com/zeitcasthome
On the site you can listen to past episodes and see al the artists who have let me use their music.

On a Continuing Theme...

More about music festivals:

Next weekend in the small town of Pemberton, BC (there are about 2,000 people), there will be the biggest music festival in BC this year.

Somehow the festival has been able to bring huge names to the festival like Coldplay, The Tragically Hip, The Flaming Lips, Death Cab for Cutie, Wintersleep, Buck 65, METRIC and Kathleen Edwards. For me, the big question is: "how in the world can a small town like Pemberton get a band like Coldplay to play at one of their festivals?"

The answer: selling very, very large amounts of tickets. They have so far sold over 40,000 tickets to this year's festival. But the tickets of course are very expensive for a show like this. A 3 day pass is $260 and even a one day pass is still $150!

For more information about the Pemberton 2008 Festival visit: http://www.pembertonfestival.com/home/index.aspx

More about the Vancouver/Whistler 2010 Olympic Games:

People are now being tested to be volunteers for the games. The Olympics will have 25, 000 volunteers to deal with all sorts of things. From random drug testings and telling people where to go. Each person is first tested alone, and then in a group.

So when the Olympics come around in 2 years, we will be very prepared.

Geoff Berner's Folk Fest Controversy

I was at the Winnipeg Folk Fest last weekend to listen to and watch many of my favourite musicians such as The Weakerthans, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Calexico, and Geoff Berner. The Folk Festival was rainy, but great.
The Mainstage on Thursday night featured 3 of my favourite artists, including Geoff Berner as a "tweener". Though his set may only have been 15 minutes it still stirred up a lot of conversation a nervous laughter. Both the songs that he played I had heard already but for many people they were new. He kicked it off with the song that he claimed was the "Official Theme Song for the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games". Before playing he told the audience of near 10,000 people that to fund for the Olympic Games, the government was cutting a lot of money from different government organizations. He said that an organization that got lots of money cut from it was the organization that investigated children's deaths. With that, he started the song, saying it was a sing-along. He wanted everyone to sing along with the chorus which was: "The dead, dead children were worth it! The dead, dead children were worth it!" That brought up many disgusted faces and nervous laughter as the lyrics held graphic depictions of what the cuts from the organization entailed. To listen to the song, click The Official Theme Song for the 2010 Vancouver/Whistler Olympic Games (The Dead Children were Worth it).
Once this song was over, he pointed behind him, noticing that one of that nights biggest sponsors was Volkswagon, and that there was even a big Volkswagon logo plastered up behind him. He then stated that Volkswagon was sponsoring and agreed with every word that he said tonight. And with that he started another sing-along, this time called: "Maginot Line" which is a song about the French and the Germans in the 1st world war. When the line came in the song that talked about Hitler coming to call, Geoff Berner stopped and pointed again to the Volkswagon sign and reminded everyone that the Nazis were the ones who first made Volkswagon: "the peoples car." To listen to this song click: Maginot Line.
With that, the set was over and the nervous laughter died down to hear Michael Franti and Spearhead.
After the show, Geoff Berner said that this was an example of the clashes between protest singers and songwriters like himself and big advertising.
I think this is a good point and I congratulate Geoff Berner for his braveness.

Public Events for July 13, 2008

Urgg - I wish I was there, don't you?:

Public events for July 13, 2008


July 12, 2008
Ottawa, Ontario

Public event for Prime Minister Stephen Harper for Sunday, July 13th is:

7:00 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will host the Calgary Southwest BBQ. He will be joined by members of the Conservative Caucus.

Heritage Park
1900 Heritage Drive SW
Chautauqua Tent
Calgary, AB
T2V 2X3

*Open to media*

NOTE: Members of the media should be onsite no later than 6:30 and will be accredited at the main gate.