Tag Archives: The Leeky Canoe
The Thursday Outlook – Aug. 24 to 28, 2017
Terrace Thursdays finishes up this summer’s series tonight with Brian Miessner and Melinda Camplin. This series offers a unique opportunity to enjoy an evening on the terrace being entertained by the best of our local talents, and fed by the best of our restauranteurs. For tonight’s meal, Red Hot Catering offers up Moroccan spice rubbed chicken while Melinda helps Brian create a musical serving that is bound to include a fair seasoning of The Beatles given that Brian toured in the original Beatles cover band, Liverpool, before going on to make hits as Aerial. Brian also plays bass with Bored of Education. He has promised to give to each diner tonight a copy of his latest EP, “Windows and Walls”
Another exciting Friday in Market Square is lined up as the Meaford Summer Concert Series comes to an end for another year. The headliner for this concert is pop songwriter Tom Barlow who has a special connection with Meaford live music through Chris Scerri. Chris got his start as a singer at Tom’s weekly open stage in Port Credit and many of the great talents that he has brought to Meaford in the past year are people he discovered at Tom’s Monday night jam. Needless to say, Chris has also discovered a lot of talent here locally at the many open stages that music fans are blessed with here, and he has formed a band called Horseshoes and Hand Grenades which features some of the best musicians to be found around Georgian Bay. They will be opening for Tom Barlow, and carrying on at The Leeky Canoe later in the evening. Opening for program outside will be the impressive young singer-songwriter Greg Smith.
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.
Austin McCarthy Made The Most Of A Collingwood Summer
In the next few weeks Austin McCarthy will be finishing up his summer job and returning to school. As a young singer-songwriter with an eye on a future career, his summer job has been to perform as often as possible in his home town of Collingwood.
“That was the goal for the summer,” he says, “to get comfortable performing for people in a variety of settings. In all, it’s been 36 shows this summer.”
In the second week of May he returned from Nashville where he’d played an open stage at Bobby’s Idle Hour just to get a taste of performing in Nashville. He’d gone there on a family pilgrimage with his parents Mike McCarthy and Erica Prinn-McCarthy, a duo that plays often locally, alternating between just the two of them and full gigs with their band. Austin grew up in this musical family and they are behind him all the way, with Erica acting as his manager and booking agent. Since his early teens, Austin has honed his musical skills locally, winning the Collingwood Idol Contest in 2014 and finishing that same year in the Top 5 finalists of the CBC Searchlight contest.
Since returning from Nashville in May, Austin has played almost every day locally. He’s played at The Huron Club, Lounge 26, Gustav’s, Brisges, Doneleigh’s, the Leeky Canoe, and through the remainder of the month he is the musician in residence at Crow Bar and Variety, a venue that didn’t even exist at the beginning of the summer. He’s been part of the Port Music Festival, the Georgian Triangle Music Festival, the Music Market, Park It, and at the Blue Mountain Village mainstage. While honing his performing skills, he has also been gaining fans. “It’s been a great summer. I have people coming up to me and saying ‘I saw you at such-and-such.’”
Last week he played a sold out concert at the Simcoe Street Theatre, which was both a showcase and a fundraiser.
“All that money raised is going toward my upcoming EP” he says, “I’m going into the studio at the end of August. It’s also a great send-off.”
In addition to joining his parents’ band on stage occasionally, he has been “playing with a band that has given the songs new life.” It includes Mike Giles on drums, Dave Giles on guitar, and Trevor Robertson on bass. He’ll be recording with engineer Adam Fair at Tim Thorney’s studio, Villa Sound, in Singhampton.
“I’m not sure which style I’m going to fall into yet,” he says, “It’s mainly just where I’m at at twenty-one.” He’ll be using the band and suggests, “I’d like to get some horns in there too.”
The recording is another step in the progress of someone who has clearly decided on music as a career. He realizes that he needs a good studio recording in order to move on to the next step. “An EP or a small album is like a business card,” he says.
Austin still has a year-and-a-half left in his studies at the Finance Program at the John Molson School of Business at Concordia University, and he’ll be returning to Montreal after his current residence at CROW ends on August 30th, but his home is clearly Collingwood and we can expect that he will be back playing local spots whenever he gets a break from school. It will give all his local fans an opportunity to follow his progress as he moves forward in his career. And before long the EP will give them something to listen to when he’s not around.
The Thursday Outlook – August 10 to 14, 2017
The Travelling Thornburys are featured this Saturday night at The Leeky Canoe in Meaford. This is a duo consisting of Jon Zaslow and Kevin Campbell. They offer up some great harmonies and tunes that range from The Beatles to The Everly Brothers. Jon as also an accomplished guitarist that has become a regular accompanist for Chris Scerri and has co-hosted many Thursday night jams with him at The Leeky.
At The Barn Coop on Saturday night, it’s a rare chance to see Culture Reject in concert. This is part of a concert series put together at The Barn by Greg Smith, in which he pairs more established artists with up-and-comers. Culture Reject, featuring Michael O’Connell and Karri North, is a band that has a unique and mesmerizing sound. Michael evolved this band out of the popular band Black Cabbage, with which he toured for several years. He now tours annually in Europe to a growing following there. The opener for this concert is Jake Feeney, a young singer-songwriter who seems much more mature than he is. Having been a songwriter since he was six or seven, Jake has a voice similar to John Maher and a beautiful style of guitar picking. This is a show well worth checking out.
