Tag Archives: Max Breadner
The Best of The Best To Start the Meaford Summer Concert Series
Joey DiMarco has been the go-to drummer for decades for gigs and recordings, working from his home base in Burlington. He teamed up with Gabor Szepesi, who’s been providing keyboards for recordings and TV shows as well as live gigs since the 70’s. The pair decided to draw on talented friends from their many years in music to create a gigging band they called The Collective. The quality of their friends means The Collective is always on the money with a world class groove.
The Collective will be kicking off the Meaford Summer Concert Series on Friday, July 13th. The band is made up of the best players you’ll hear anywhere. When Chris Scerri says they have played with the Who’s Who of rock and R & B, movies and pop music, he means names like Iron Butterfly, Better Midler, Jack Dekeyser, Greg Godovitz, Grant Smith & the Power, Long John Baldry, Daniel Lanois, Etta James, Sharon, Lois and Bram as a small random sampling.
Guitarist Danny Weis co-founded Iron Butterfly but quit after their first album to co-found Rhinoceros. After an album and a tour with Lou Reed, he was tapped to provide the sound track music (and hit song) for Bette Midler’s movie The Rose.
Danny had been born into music, the son of Johnny Weis, the famous Western Swing guitarist who once played with the Spade Cooley band.
“I fondly remember the years I would go see my dad, Johnny Weis, play guitar, backing people from the Grand Ole Opry at Bostonia Ballroom in El Cajon,” says Danny on his website, “I was age 9 to 12, and I used to stand right in front of the stage and lean on it with my elbows. I wasn’t too tall then, I guess. I remember Johnny Cash playing right in front of me with my dad backing him on guitar with the band. [Cash] always remembered me and would stoop right in front of me, saying, ‘Folsom Prison?’ I said yes with joy.”
In 2005 Danny Weis released a beautiful jazz album called “Sweet Spot”, about as far from Iron Butterfly as you can get. Like the other players in The Collective, his wide ranging musical taste and pedigree can take you in any direction.
A common thread among the players in The Collective is that most of them played at one time or another in a legendary blues band called Sweet Blindness. Lead singer of The Collective, Donnie Meeker rotated as lead singer in Sweet Blindness with the late Bobbi Dupont.
“The Toronto sound was the original Bluenote,” Michael Williams told Cashbox magazine, “we always had a soul thing going on because we were so close to Buffalo and Detroit…The big time for Sweet Blindness was opening for Kool and the Gang.”
In addition to touring with Sweet Blindness, Donnie Meeker becomes “Downtown Donnie” when he does a Blues Brothers thing with his own blues brother “Dirty Bertie”.
Max Breadner opens the show
Bring a camp chair and something for the food bank in time for the show to start at 7 pm with Max Breadner. Max is a notable young local talent who has progressed from performing to song writing. He’s played the Meaford Summer Concert Series before, and last year he opened for John Brownlow at The Red Door.
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.”
