Tag Archives: Shane Cloutier
Bringing In The New Year With Live Music
If you’re looking for live music to bring in the New Year with, here are some local options:
(many of them are sold out already, so check before you go)
Higher Funktion will be bringing in the new year at Heartwood Concert Hall. This is where you go to shake your booty and shake off the old year. They’ll have the party favours, snacks and the midnight bubbly but best of all they’ll have the music of this band with their mix of funk, pop and even reggae.
You can get a taste of funk as well at the Owen Sound Legion where The Honey Hammers ring in the new year with dancing to some great musicians. Led by the duo vocals of Sylvie Weir and Josie Elder, the band includes Kimmer T on bass, Mike Weir on drums and Trevor MacKenzie on lead guitar.
If you’re looking for a black tie gala to do it up right, join the Rat Pack at Gustav’s Chophouse at the Georgian Bay Hotel for a luxury dinner and dance. Chef Jeff Anderson and his team have created some culinary delights for a special menu and on stage is MEMORIES OF THE RAT PACK with a tribute to the three most famous members of The Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. in two 50 minute acts with stories and songs. As a bonus, everyone gets a $10 cab voucher for a ride home from Ace Cabs.
The party band Switchbeat will be celebrating New Year’s Eve at the Harbour Street Fish Bar. Take in the four-course dinner starting at 6 pm or come later just for the band, the party favours and the midnight champagne toast. Switchbeat underwent at slight lineup change a month ago when founding member Jennifer Little left the band.
She’s been replaced by Nikki Ponte. Born in Toronto, Nikki made a name for herself in Greece and Cyprus, where she came third in The X Factor, was signed to Sony, and competed in the Eurovision Song Contest. Now back in Canada, she brings considerable chops to fill the gap in Swichbeat.
The Beckett Family returns to the Roxy Theatre for two shows on New Year’s Eve, one in the afternoon and one in the evening. As a duo, Linsey and her brother Tyler have performed throughout Ontario with their blend of traditional country music, old time fiddling and step dancing. It’s a family tradition for The Beckett family who have been entertaining for three generations. The show at the Roxy also welcomes special guests Kelly Prescott, Devan Ballagh and Stan Beckett.
Canada Day Weekend of Live Music in Meaford
From Friday night to Sunday night, there is music almost non-stop in Meaford and most of it is free.
In addition to a whole lot of music, Canada Day in Meaford will be buzzing with activity including a pancake breakfast, a parade with a military display, the Golden Town Cruisers classic cars, the apple bin race on the river, and fireworks when it gets dark.
Romney Getty has toured he has Canada, USA, UK, Australia and New Zealand, garnering reviews like “Wow, can this girl deliver a song or what! Romney is a singer-songwriter from Canada and her very personal and soulful deliver of country and blues is totally spellbinding, ” from Guitar Techniques Magazine and “…Truly the complete package…With enough sheer guts and charisma to cross virtually any genre barrier, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if Getty became the next major breakthrough from the Canadian roots rock scene,” from Exclaim! Magazine. She’ll be at The Red Door Friday from 7 to 10, along with Tim Irvine. No Cover.
A triple bill, with Bry Webb, Fiver and Jiants happens at 118 Algonquin Drive, starting at 7 pm and running until around midnight, a unique backyard concert with three unique and intriguing folk artists. There’s no cover but they ask you to pay what you can, suggesting $10, and bring along a chair or a blanket, as well as the kids.
Two young bands that have made their mark both at the high school GBSS Idol and at last year’s Meaford Summer Concert Series will be playing at Market Square on Saturday afternoon. Cry For Ophelia and The Ted Brownlow Band will each be doing sets between 1 and 3 in the afternoon. No cover, bring a chair.
Tin Man and The Flying Monkeys, Meaford’s own supergroup, with Martin Rice on guitar and lead vocals, Stuart Narduzzo on lead guitar and harmonica, Johnny Roy on bass and Beaker Granger on drums. They’ll be playing in the tent beside Meaford Hall from 3 to 5 on Saturday afternoon, where the Rotary Club will be providing beer, wine and hot dogs. No cover and there are chairs provided.
Later in the afternoon at the Rotary beer tent, country music reigns with Scott Almond playing from 5 to 6 pm and Amanda Dorey from 6 to 7. Both of these local performers possess vocal talents that have the authenticity of classic country and their repertoires range over all the favourites from that era as well as more contemporary selections.
As evening of Canada Day arrives, you can enjoy another free concert by a great band, this time at the Rotary Pavillion down by the harbour. The great guitarist Shane Cloutier will be playing from 7 to 10 with his band that includes Johnny Roy and Clayton Skinner. There will be a licensed bar. Then head over to the Leeky Canoe for River and Rock from 9 to midnight, Beaker Granger‘s band that features a lot of his original songs.
On Sunday afternoon, for the first time in recent memory, there will be live music at Memorial Park to entertain campers and locals from 2 to 5 with some old-fashioned country. Bill Monahan has a special set of songs that include songs from Hank Williams, Lefty Frizzell, and Patsy Cline with some Elvis and Carl Perkins thrown in, while Amanda Dorey is back with her beautiful renditions of a spectrum of country songs from the past to the present. It’s another free concert, bring a chair or a blanket.
Cap off your weekend on Sunday evening back at the Rotary Pavilion at the harbour where the second in the annual Friends of The Library summer series features the sentimental sounds of The Browns Music Time Machine starting at 7. There is no admission but they’ll be passing the hat to collect donations that go toward Meaford’s library.
Mike McCarthy Duo at Gustav’s This Week
The Mike McCarthy duo, consisting of Mike and his wife Erica Prinn-McCarthy, will be playing at Gustav’s in Collingwood this Saturday, April 8th.
Erica and Mike have been performing together since 1991, when they met. Erica was a manager at The Montreal Bistro and Jazz Club in Toronto when Mike’s band was booked there. She joined the band on vocals shortly afterward and they became a couple in life as well, soon starting a family.
“I missed the interview when I was expecting,”notes Erica, “and that’s how it became The Mike McCarthy Band.”
They had a couple of bands in Toronto, but the present band came into being not long after they moved to Collingwood in 1993. With a number of corporate gigs in Toronto, they lived here but went to the big smoke to play. It wasn’t until they were asked to open the annual Ride For Sight show that they began to play in Collingwood. The annual concert ran for years with Collingwood as the destination for five or six thousand bikers who rode out of the International Centre in Mississauga and converged on the grounds of the Great Northern Exhibition after cruising along the lakeshore. Along with special events for bikers, the weekend always featured big name performers and The Mike McCarthy band was the opener for six years. It broke the ice for them in the area and they have played a number of local venues ever since with some regularity. Their three kids grew up with mom and dad playing in the band and their youngest son, Austin McCarthy, has become the focus of their attention as he has developed into a songwriter and guitarist with a fast growing reputation.
Rising Singer-songwriter Austin McCarthy plays with the family band when he can
Erica encouraged Austin to get formal music instruction on the piano when he was young and, when he said he wanted to switch to guitar she enrolled him in Shane Cloutier’s music school. By the time he turned sixteen, Shane had asked him to teach as well. In 2014 Austin won the Collingwood Idol contest and when he was seventeen the first song he wrote, “If You Look” finished Top 5 in the CBC/Canada Trust Rock You Campus contest. He is in his final year of the Finance Program at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University and while on campus he plays regularly performing his original material. When he comes home for the summer, he joins his parents’ band.
The Mike McCarthy Band is a six-piece known for their ability to excite audiences with their roots-rock and blues repertoire. Mike and Erica McCarthy are co-leaders of the band. Bruce Campbell on drums, has been with the band since 1995. Len Fligg on bass is a long-standing member of the band and Austin has taken on lead guitar when he’s home. Steve Hanmore is the band’s regular lead guitarist. John Panchyshyn has added saxophone off and on but Dennis McAndrew has been the band’s mainstay on sax and/or keys this year. Local talents Mike Giles and Nick Liefl sometimes sit in on drums and bass . The full complement will be on hand this Canada Day when the band headlines Collingwood’s big Canada 150 party at Millenium Park.
Between now and then a family pilgrimage to Nashville is planned for May. Austin already had a songwriters’ workshop lined up and they are hoping to his a few open stages while there, and make some new friends.
Between band gigs, Mike and Erica will be showing up here and there as a duo, and they are looking forward to making new friends this Saturday night at Gustav’s.
The Thursday Outlook – March 23 to 26, 2017
There’s a special event at The Heartwood in Owen Sound tonight with a showing of a film called Spirit Unforgettable. It was filmed in 2015, following the band Spirit of The West as they prepared to their concert at Massey Hall, part of their farewell tour necessitated by lead singer John Mann being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s disease. The film was screened at the Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival in April 2016. Adding resonance to the evening, the film will be preceded by a performance by Larry Andreas Jensen, a songwriter who is particularly known for his poignant evocations of people in struggle.
Extraordinary guitarist and singer-songwriter Shane Cloutier will be bringing his original songs and energies to The Red Door Grille and Pub in Meaford on Friday night.
The dinner shows at Bruce Wine Bar on Friday feature the former frontman for Harlan Pepper, Dan Edmonds, making his solo reputation on the strength of his modern take on retro sounds and sources.
There are too many good things to choose from on Saturday night in our area.
At The Leeky Canoe in Meaford, WKRP is a small group that features some of our area’s most impressive talents: Jaret Koop will front the band on lead vocals and bass. On guitar is the legendary Trevor MacKenzie with Mike Weir on drums, both from Maple Blues Award winning band The MacKenzie Blues Band.
Another Meaford talent, newly arrived to the area, is singer-songwriter Michael O’Connell. He’ll be performing with his impressive little band Culture Reject at The Bicycle Café in Flesherton.
And a phenomenal blues player, Conor Gains, with his band Ramblin’ Moon, will be rocking the Marsh Street Centre in Clarksburg on Saturday night, another fund raiser for the volunteer run organization. A Saturday night at Marsh Street is loads of fun.
Check the listings on the right of this page for other great options to help you celebrate the first spring weekend of 2017.
