SPOT: Hillside Inside Performers Announced (click for video)
My favourite summer indie/folk festival of the year, Hillside Festival, have announced the performer list for their1-day winter event. Hillside Inside is celebrating its 3rd year, giving concert goers a winter music festival to boost them through the dark and gloomy winter months… and hold them over till the full 3-day festival in July.
This year’s event is held on Saturday, February 6th, 2010 at the Sleeman Centre in Downtown Guelph. Tickets on sale Nov 7th, 2009.
Performer list to date (more to be announced).
(her only Ontario appearance!)
Ani DiFranco has written hundreds of songs, played thousands of shows, captured the imaginations of legions of followers, and jammed with folkies, orchestras, rappers, rock and roll hall-of-famers, jazz musicians, poets, pop superstars, storytellers and a martial arts legend. She’s “fixed up a few old buildings” and minimized her carbon footprint before it was trendy – from installing a geothermal heating and cooling system in the renovated church that her label calls home to using organic inks on all the t-shirts she sells.
A musician of incredible velocity, Hawksley Workman is at the top of his game when he has the solitude and serenity to write and record his music in atomic bursts, focused into monastic postures, accessing grace and brilliance in fluid, sweeping motions. With his increasing rock triumphs, growing fan communities and formidable body mass, Workman has evolved from the slight, pin-striped oddball with a critically-acclaimed diamond voice, to the panoramic, guitar-punishing superstar with no performance limits.
Owen Pallett’s live violin-looping project was named Final Fantasy, in tribute to the melodramatic videogame series. His sophomore album He Poos Clouds, written and arranged for string quartet, is a satirical song cycle based on the eight schools of magic of Dungeons and Dragons. The Village Voice praised it as having “the best lyrics of the year”. Final Fantasy was awarded the inaugural Polaris Prize for best Canadian full length album.
(his only Ontario appearance!)
A native of Syracuse, New York, Martin Sexton grew up in the 80’s, uninterested in the sounds of the day, and fuelled his dreams on the timeless sounds of classic rock and roll. Sexton eventually migrated to Boston, where he began to build his following singing on the streets of Harvard Square and gradually working his way through the scene. His 1992 collection of self-produced demo recordings, In The Journey, was recorded on an old 8-track in a friend’s attic. He managed to sell 20,000 copies out of his guitar case busking. John Mayer raves that Sexton is “The best live performer I have ever seen”.
Since the age of three, Basia has been sitting on piano stools and trying to hammer things out. It started with her piano-teacher mum, but along the way Basia’s picked up guitar, autoharp, banjo, ukulele, sax and flute. In high-school her instrument was the upright bass a lone girl among “eight-foot-tall guys, goofing off with the tubas”. There’s a sense of play that still suffuses her music, jostling under the songs of regret and love, want and joy. When her brother began in his teens to play drums with punk bands, Basia would be there with her Demerara voice, joining happily in the jam. When she left for university in London, Ontario, musicians began to drop by her downtown apartment. Many nights were spent with these classically-trained friends, laughing and singing, and together they made a glad, bright noise.
Afie Jurvanen, aka Bahamas, spent two weeks in the winter of 2008 making his debut album, Pink Strat. It is named after his childhood guitar, which he still plays. In addition, he plays bass, drums, piano, various percussion, organ, slide, acoustic, and nylon string guitars on the album, and is joined by his friends from zeus, The Great Lake Swimmers, and Feist on a few of the tracks.
Woodhands is dirty electronic music. “We are interested in emotional, sweaty dance floors. We want to make you cry while you’re having sex, and it’ll be the best damn sex of your life. And you’ll be dancing”.
Woodhands started in a basement in Montreal, moved to Europe, and is now making love to Toronto and its environs.
Vancouver-based Delhi 2 Dublin is a group of five musicians who mash up electronica and world music, keeping it heavy on the Bhangra, Celtic and Dub flavours. Fusing tabla, fiddle, dhol, Punjabi vocals, and electric sitar with scorching electronic beats – ranging from reggae to drum and base – the crew takes listeners on a wild ride through global sounds and synchronicities.
HIGHLIGHTS FROM HILLSIDE INSIDE 2009
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-ROBB ENG
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