Tag Archives: Greg Smith
GBCS Battle of The Bands Becomes Music Madness
by Bill Monahan
The bi-annual showcase of musical talent from Georgian Bay Community School in Meaford, known in the past as GBSS Idol, and now Music Madness returns in a new form this year, with the first round of eliminations happening at the school this Friday.
All grades from nine to twelve will be represented in a range of styles that include trios, duos, solos, all-girl and all-boy bands. Featured performers will include Emma Wright, Mira Woodhouse, Max Breadner and Owen Kearns, and among several other acts adding up to sixteen competitors.
Bands like Tears For Ophelia and the Ted Brownlow Band, and solo artists like Abby Woodhouse and Greg Smith have emerged from past contests at the school. This year’s show includes performances from Sweet 16 and Elite 8 (the bands, not the basketball teams). It’s always exciting to see these young performers in their early stages.
This year’s competition has been organized by the students’ Music Council, which gets together every Monday at lunch time to plan events. It will follow a different format from past, a “bracket” system similar to sports tournaments. A pair of acts will face off in a series of rounds that eventually will come down to two acts. Each round is decided by the audience and the favourite will move on to the next round.
In a second show at the school on May 11th, the acts will be narrowed down to the Final 4 and the
Top 2 before the winner is decided.
The first round of competition starts at 7 p.m. on Friday Apr. 13 in the cafeteria at GBCS. Tickets are $5 at the door.
John Brownlow Previews The Summertime at The Red Door Tonight
John Brownlow’s homemade masterpiece, a 2-CD set called “The Summertime” is due out this fall, but he has some copies pressed and he will be offering them at a discount (!) to people who come tonight to see him at the Red Door Pub and Grille in Meaford. He is part of a three songwriter night again at the Red Door. His first introduction a few months ago to Red Door audiences was as one third of a three-parter that included Bill Monahan and Dave Hawkins. This time he shares the evening with young talents Greg Smith and Max Breadner.
If it seems strange to release an album called “The Summertime” as the season comes to an end, it’s actually a good fit. This album through all its meandering narrative, sounds like the summertime.
John Brownlow, who makes his living as a screen writer, has an abundance of talent (if not of time) left over for other projects. When he mixes his prodigious imagination with an appreciation of pop music that is part fan, part academic, he creates music that sounds like it was born in radio tubes. He’s put together this collection of 29 songs that would be impressive for the quantity of output alone but in fact each song in the bunch stands up like a pop gem that, given the right push, would find a comfortable niche on many a radio playlist.
“I went into this with no real ambition to do anything with it,” he says, “I was a bit taken aback that people liked it as well as they did.”
The Thursday Outlook – Sept 7 to 11, 2017
The Red Door Pub in Meaford is the place to be on Friday night when John Brownlow will be previewing and selling advance copies (at a discount) of his new double CD called “The Summertime”. He’s planning an official release party soon with a full band but on Friday he’ll be sharing the evening with a couple of our area’s coolest young performers, Greg Smith and Max Breadner.
“Iris” – 5 song EP from Greg Smith
Greg Smith’s EP “Lily” was produced by John at his Epping Studio. “He’s a really unique songwriter,” John says, “He’s got an old head on young shoulders.” Greg Smith writes songs that, taken collectively, tell a long form story and he delivers them with a complex rhythmic guitar and dramatic vocals. The Red Door will be an ideal setting to be able to follow the tale he weaves.
Max Breadner has impressed local audiences since he was quite young and now that he is a teenager he is getting around more to open stages and is writing his own songs. He is part of the upcoming youth talent wave in Meaford that includes performers like Emma Wright and John’s son Ted who has his own Ted Brownlow Band. This small room is also a perfect setting for Max’s talents.
John Brownlow is highly regarded by local musicians not only for his writing and producing skills but for a series of videos he created called The Epping Sessions.
Rob Elder, the subject of one of those videos will be playing this Saturday at Massie Hall, another great little venue to be able to really enjoy the music. It took just a single Sunday afternoon for Rob to create a multi-track recording of a song for his Epping Session, playing every instrument. On Saturday night at Massie Hall he promises to bring “smooth acoustic ballads about girls and things, to his ‘jump out of your seats and dance’ multi-layered, live-looping.”
Tom Barlow Stars in Final Meaford Summer Concert
On Friday, Aug. 25th Tom Barlow will be headlining the final concert in this year’s Meaford Summer Concert Series. This year’s series has been even more successful than last year’s and it is particularly fitting that Tom Barlow would headline the final show of the season.
Tom Barlow is a Canadian recording artist who has garnered four Juno Award nominations and has released three audio albums. His debut “Barlow” garnered three top ten radio hits and was nominated for two Juno Awards. His politically charged second album was also nominated for a Juno. Barlow has performed in virtually every corner of planet and writes and performs lyrically driven emotionally compelling rock and roll.
Last Monday Tom celebrated eleven years as host of the Monday night jam at The Shore Grille and Grotto in Port Credit. For over a decade this open mic has been important to developing musicians. At Tom Barlow’s jam night people can get up and play with the industry’s top musicians as their backing band, a band with a tight groove that can make them feel comfortable and allow them to showcase their talents.
“I love it!” he says, “That kind of mentorship and half butt-kicking that moves people from being terrible to okay, to good, to fantastic, to pro, and they go on to make gold records. All this stuff kind of feeds itself. You have to get out and play. It’s okay to be terrible at a jam night, that’s how you learn. You go and you meet other musicians and you develop.”
When he started the weekly jam a decade ago he had no idea that it would become so important to so many emerging talents. And he had no way of knowing that his Port Credit jam would become an important part of creating a live music scene three hours away in Meaford on a whole different Great Lake.
