If ‘You Know That You Want To’, there’s no sense going half-assed: Redhead Mack Band is rockin’ for fun!

Apparently Kevin Phillips, lead singer and songwriter for the newly minted rock quartet Redhead Mack Band, plays a custom electric guitar made by Northwood, a Canadian company that “normally makes acoustic but occasionally electric guitars.”

Given what Kevin tells me about his own musical development, he’s kinda like the guitarmaker, in that he normally makes acoustic but recently electric music. This comes up because their recent album release, You Know You Want To, is 4 on the floor rock without traditional rock lyrics: so we ask, of course, “How do you explain that?”
Continue Reading >If ‘You Know That You Want To’, there’s no sense going half-assed: Redhead Mack Band is rockin’ for fun!

‘Drumming is the Boss’: According to the powwow singer who started off dancing!

Firstly, I need to reinforce a bias I have for drummers, as more than one are mentioned in this article: drummers get *gold stars*. I can’t always manage the gold part, but that’s what’s happening. I mention this because both *Clarence M. Wolf Leg* and his father are drummers from Siksika. and because I ask him why powwow music is so powerful, you are about to learn a bunch of new stuff, I guarantee!

Just like Clarence did.

“Long story short, I asked a similar question. I asked n an elder and a long time singer, probably over 10 years … Continue Reading >‘Drumming is the Boss’: According to the powwow singer who started off dancing!

Sled Island 2023: Music from Siksika to Montreal, and everywhere else

Double Rider’s drummer, Lennon the Loomer (because he’s 6 foot something) finds me at the Palomino Smokehouse bar during Sled Island’s annual closing day Pig Roast.

I’m not at the bar because I’m weeping into my beer, but in fact I’m celebrating the cornucopia that is Sled Island’s week-long sensory romp (“Music & Arts Festival”), by tripping up and downstairs to catch the different bands playing simultaneously, because there’s just so much music! … Continue Reading >Sled Island 2023: Music from Siksika to Montreal, and everywhere else

The Jared Daniel Experience: Neo-soul with a hint of more

When MUSICAlive! reconnects with Jared Daniel, after a 6 year interval since our first interview about his Fireside Music events, we ask if he’s gotten married and divorced and had kids and now is starting up a rock band to express all that?

“Yeah,” he laughs. Like, how did you know?” HE DOES now have a 2 year old daughter! “And she’s the inspiration for a lot of my new music.” (we both laugh)

“Performance was always the intention (when he was running Fireside). I grew up the son of a musician, so music was … Continue Reading >The Jared Daniel Experience: Neo-soul with a hint of more

Cool Choir conversation: Don’t just sing in your car!

“I’m Jamie Serafi. I am the Founder and Creative Director of Cool Choir.”

MUSICAlive! notes the growth of “non-audition choirs” in the last couple of decades, and asks Jamie why did he choose this place (Calgary) and this genre (pop and rock music) to start this very successful local endeavour?

“Cool Choir is a British concept, reinventing the format of what a choir looks like in this day and age. When most people hear about a choir, their immediate idea is a load of people stuck in a church in robes, singing classical music. Or hymns, basically. And with all due respect to Canada, and everyone knows how much I love this country, … Continue Reading >Cool Choir conversation: Don’t just sing in your car!

The Magnettes attract: They’re like a Punk Pop experiment

The Magnettes sing about Go’ing Ugly, but their press photos are cutesy-psycho. does it work? It worked for Alice Cooper: though he used less cutesy in his psycho, it would reappear occasionally. The gendered difference between a man whisking these together and 2 women doing it are obvious upon listening, but we think they serve the same purpose. MUSICAlive! spoke with the founders, first Sanna and then Rebecka when they passed through Calgary during the Western Canada Music Association’s conference in late September this year: what’s with the expletive genre label?
Continue Reading >The Magnettes attract: They’re like a Punk Pop experiment

Blackie and The Rodeo Kings stretch the Roots rock envelope: They and their guitars sing ‘blood on blood’

Beyond 2040 and depending on the level of global warming, climate change will lead to numerous risks to natural and human systems (high confidence). For 127 identified key risks, assessed mid- and long- term impacts are up to multiple times higher than currently observed (high confidence). The magnitude and rate of climate change and associated risks depend strongly on near-term mitigation and adaptation actions, and projected adverse impacts and related losses and damages escalate with every increment of global warming (very high confidence). . . . Biodiversity loss, and degradation, damages to and transformation of ecosystems are already key risks for every region due to past global warming and will continue to escalate with every increment of global warming (very high confidence). In terrestrial ecosystems, 3 to 14% of species assessed will likely face very high risk of extinction at global warming levels of 1.5°C, increasing up to 3 to 18% at 2°C, 3 to 29% at 3°C, 3 to 39% at 4°C, and 3 to 48% at 5°C. In ocean and coastal ecosystems, risk of biodiversity loss ranges between moderate and very high by 1.5°C global warming level and is moderate to very high by 2°C but with more ecosystems at high and very high risk (high confidence), and increases to high to very high across most ocean and coastal ecosystems by 3°C (medium to high confidence, depending on ecosystem). Very high extinction risk for endemic species in biodiversity hotspots is projected to at least double from 2% between 1.5°C and 2°C global warming levels and to increase at least tenfold if warming rises from 1.5°C to 3°C (medium confidence).

IPCC, 2022: Summary for Policymakers [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, M. Tignor, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem (eds.)]. In: Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability. Contribution of Working Group II to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [H.-O. Pörtner, D.C. Roberts, M. Tignor, E.S. Poloczanska, K. Mintenbeck, A. Alegría, M. Craig, S. Langsdorf, S. Löschke, V. Möller, A. Okem, B. Rama (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA, pp. 3-33, doi:10.1017/9781009325844.001. … Continue Reading >Blackie and The Rodeo Kings stretch the Roots rock envelope: They and their guitars sing ‘blood on blood’

Sled Island returns to Calgary: A cornucopia of musical flavours!

Really, it’s not “Sled Island in Calgary” so much as “Calgary at Sled Island”. Because we are, finally (at Sled Island again), and there are (Calgarians listening and performing here), ecstatically! We’re happy to be talking to new Calgary musical adventures, as further proof of the fertility of the local musical garden; not just a reaction to our pandemic isolation, but a result of the cross-fertilization that we’ve somehow achieved out here on the prairies.
Continue Reading >Sled Island returns to Calgary: A cornucopia of musical flavours!

Crystal Shawanda isn’t bigger than the blues, but her voice might get close!!

Crystal Shawanda is driving fearlessly across Michigan while we speak: unlike earlier less-pragmatic musicians we’ve spoken with (I’m looking at you, Ms. Hou!) she’s a passenger in the Shawanda travelling revue, and the simple fact that this exists following the Dark Ages of the Covid Times is a delight!
Continue Reading >Crystal Shawanda isn’t bigger than the blues, but her voice might get close!!

John & I: These Rutherfords got the blues

On October 19th, 2021, after potentially crossing each other’s music trails since about 1985, John Rutherford and I sat down to have only the 2nd conversation we’ve ever had. the first was on the night of the 44th Canadian federal election a month ago, as I left the scrolling numbers to listen to his set in the hallowed Blues Can, and was finally able to break our dialogic silence.
Continue Reading >John & I: These Rutherfords got the blues

Kurt Loewen and Folk friends: A human touch despite social distancing

Listen to an excerpt of this interview on Apple Podcasts

Kurt Loewen has been to Calgary before: in fact, his parents still live here, as evidenced by them sitting just behind us when he and other locals performed at an outdoor concert in Ramsay in mid-September. It was a very folky, friendly, family event with other young adults and some parents and acquaintances wandering through the shared 2-yard space
Continue Reading >Kurt Loewen and Folk friends: A human touch despite social distancing

Keep the fire Burning Part 4: In front of an audience with the Mountain View Festival!

When I start complaining about my insistent cat, and how she’s determined to have her own opinions shared during my interview with the Mountain View Festival Artistic Director, her dog very quickly decides to voice his own remonstrations for the recording as well.

Arn’t we here to talk about the first live performance with an audience in over a year for the International Festival of Song and Chamber Music Society? Or are we here to complain about pets? The … Continue Reading >Keep the fire Burning Part 4: In front of an audience with the Mountain View Festival!

Keep the fire Burning Part 3: When pop met jazz at the proArts Society

When MUSICAlive! first gets Mark Limacher on the phone after listening to his most recent collection of piano improvisations, Things That Seemed Important At The Time, we were left wondering how this interesting assemblage of “quiet, slow, boring” works related to the boundary between pop and jazz music of the 1910’s that he would present online Wednesday.
Continue Reading >Keep the fire Burning Part 3: When pop met jazz at the proArts Society

Keep the fire burning Part 1: The Blues Can Survives!

I’ve got a briefcase over my shoulder, a white cane in my hand, and three layers over my head and covering my ears and shoulders in something that isn’t quite enough. My legs already hurt from the cold, and I’m not even at the bus stop yet!

Fortunately, the driver knows where the Blues Can is, probably because he drives past it daily in Inglewood along 9th Avenue at 14th St. He looks longingly at the curved roof with its promise of fresh as live music, and fresh as local beer.
Continue Reading >Keep the fire burning Part 1: The Blues Can Survives!

Andrea Koziol: ‘Let’s just make a record!’ Folk? Jazz? Improvise!!

As to where she’s been geographically, Andrea Koziol has performed from the east to the west coast of Canada, and up north and down in the prairies as well. Musically, though, the trail has been less clear.

“Both of (my most recent) albums I worked on with my husband, Tom Neuspiel, who … Continue Reading >Andrea Koziol: ‘Let’s just make a record!’ Folk? Jazz? Improvise!!

Gabrielle Papillon not just a Troubadour Singer/songwriting while Social distancing

When we originally contacted Gabrielle Papillon through her Pigeon row Records promoters, she was completely thrown by the phone call.

We had arranged to give her a day’s breather after arriving home in Canada from songwriting work in England, as it seemed likely she’d want some time to recover from the jet lag. Then the pandemic caught fire! Given that the tour she was returning home for was subsequently cancelled, and that there had been some question of her even managing to get on a flight with the Covid-19 wildfire sweeping across Europe, the last thing Gabrielle … Continue Reading >Gabrielle Papillon not just a Troubadour Singer/songwriting while Social distancing

A ‘Femme Wave’ brings art & music awareness in Festival form

When MUSICAlive! first hears about the 2019 Femm Wave Festival, it’s only a few days away! But it sounds too cool to miss, and fortunately both our photographer and the Board Member manning the front desk are willing to help us put it together for our fearless readers: we made it to Calgary’s Feminist Music & Arts Festival!
Continue Reading >A ‘Femme Wave’ brings art & music awareness in Festival form

Wicked Grin Believes the Blues Can Help Good People in Bad Times

When MUSICAlive! first learns about Murray Kinsley’s guitars for the blues-rock mix of Wicked Grin’s latest album, it’s pretty encouraging!
“I use a Fender Telecaster modified Thinline (and) I call it the ‘Frenken-Tele’ that’s the modified part); I have a 61 Strat that I used on it, and a … Continue Reading >Wicked Grin Believes the Blues Can Help Good People in Bad Times