Tag Archives: Bill Dickson
Three Songwriters Back For More In Meaford
Three local songwriters who have been putting on concerts together are enjoying it so much and getting such positive feedback that they are back for more. Dave Hawkins, Bill Dickson and Bill Monahan will be playing a special evening concert at The Barn Coop in Meaford on Thursday, Nov. 16th at 7:30.
The Thursday Outlook – Sept. 21 to 25, 2017
At Kimberley Hall, just down the road from Meaford, a special art show is running all weekend and on Saturday night it will include live music from some local favourites. East Back Line, with Paul Woolner, David Marshak, Beaker Granger, and Tom Thwaits, will be on hand along with Chris Scerri’s new band Horseshoes & Handgrenades with Jon Zaslow, Beaker Granger, Erik Vandeweerdhof and as a special guest, violinist Victoria Yeh. The music is just part of a weekend-long celebration of local visual artists billed as “Apple and Art”.
If you can time it right, be on Hurontario Street in Collingwood today at 12:30 and you’ll be treated to a special pop-up concert with Tyler Yarema and Chuck Jackson at one of the pianos that are set up on the sidewalk. This is part of the promotion for a show that these two blues veterans have planned at The Historic Gayety Theatre on Oct. 5th.
Saturday night on Hurontario street it’s the annual Collingwood Art Crawl which includes live music in the evening from the Mike McCarthy Band.
Songwriters Night at The Bleeding Carrot
There is another Songwriters’ evening planned this Thursday, starting at 7:30 pm at The Bleeding Carrot in Owen Sound, this one featuring songwriters, Dave Hawkins, Bill Monahan, and Bill Dickson. Although the styles of the three are quite different, each has a distinctive way of weaving a story into a song. The evening will be set up so that all three performers share the stage through the show, taking turns with their songs and stories, in a conversational setting that mirrors the famous Bluebird Café in Nashville.
Dave Hawkins from Owen Sound and Bill Monahan from Meaford have done these songwriters’ nights before, with John Brownlow. Their first one was at The Red Door Pub in Meaford and the second was at The Garafraxa Café in Durham. Both evenings turned out to be very rewarding for the performers as well as for the audience. The idea of three songwriters in a single show offers a variety and range of expression that adds extra value for the audience, and it is a lot of fun. With the setup of this performance, there should be a lot of entertaining comments back and forth between the performers.
The third songwriter this time out is Bill Dickson from Sauble Beach. An appealing, melodic singer, his songs, like those of the others, tell personal stories with some clever wordplay and insights. He has a collection of songs on a CD called “Isn’t Life Grand”.
With the Bluebird Café style of show, the audience will get a chance throughout the evening to compare the songs and performances of the three unique songwrites, enjoy some laughs and some heartfelt moments and go home with new tunes playing in their heads.
Tickets for this show are $15, available at the venue or from the performers.
Life is Grand For Bill Dickson
Bill Dickson’s smooth soothing vocals and classic folk rhythms carry his CD, “Isn’t Life Grand” along a dreamy road that’s full of wonder. It makes no sense standing there wondering why, we’re all just a bunch of monkeys and isn’t life grand (when compared to the alternative)?
The album really is about how grand life is. In Bill Dickson’s world, there is a zest for life that makes even the painful some sort of celebration. He sings about a long drunken night counting off the hours thinking about his wonder woman that can become every woman. He follows the lure of the sea in a light shanty about “taking my life where the wind may blow”. He’s created a classic campfire song in “This Moment” with the sage advice to “live in this moment. Forget about the future, it may not be here and that’s a fact,” because “if you’re watered and fed and you had your poop that’s all that matters.”
Click on album cover to preview the tunes
There are a couple of femme fatales lurking in the songs: the shape-shifting wonder woman who’s kept him up wandering all night and the girl across the street who’s “gonna, oh my, I don’t want to say, but you can feel her rhythm from a thousand miles away.” He can’t resist being pulled toward her but she would never be his, she likes choice too much. The way he puts it, “She’s got feet and she’ll dance.” As dangerous as they are, these women fill him with energy and the urge to dance his life away.
The urge to roam is evident in some songs. In “No Matter Where We Roam,” after fibbing about having been someplace he wasn’t, he claims to have been to “Oilberta”, to “Vancouver, they speak Chinese there” and “to Chicago, I got the blues there,” but “no matter where we roam we’re all going home”.
