Sunday, February 04, 2024

February newsletter

 Hey, the sun came out! Hope you are enjoying the blue sky.


I have a few shows that I feel really lucky to be part of this month. I have a trio called Banjo: Drum + Bass that I have been performing with that features Aidan McConnell on drums and Brandon Davis on the bass. (I play banjo)  We are back at our favourite venue/bookstore Sellers and Newel (672 College St.) on Tuesday February 20 at 8pm. If you haven't been; this is the coolest place in town to hear music these days. Great sound and intimate vibes. Advance tickets are the way to go. Email: sellers@sellersandnewel.com

Another exciting concert is the return of Cluttertones. This is the music of my dear pal Rob Clutton. Cluttertones have been making music together for more than a decade and the group features Rob on Bass and compositions, Ryan Driver on analog synth and Lina Allemano on trumpet. This concert will also feature a couple pieces from Lina's latest critically acclaimed CD Canons that you can purchase here: https://linaallemano.bandcamp.com/album/canons (I will be playing banjo and guitar) This concert is on February 16 at the Arrayspace 155 Walnut Ave, Toronto. 

February 28 is the day that Ronley Teper and the Lipliners will be collectively freaking out at the Tranzac. We start at 930pm and play two sets. Every show is different with this amazing artist. I look forward to it and hope you can make it. 

The second friday of every month (this month it is the 9th of February) I rock it up on the electric guitar with Collette Savard and the Savants. 100% satisfied customers, great songs, great band, great friends! It is an early show too; 7-9pm. 

Thanks for reading my note. take care. -tim

Thursday, December 07, 2023

Sellers and Newel

 Having lived in the same house for more than 25 years now I have seen a lot of the great stores and restaurants come and go in Toronto's little Italy.  As sad as it is, nothing lasts forever. Twelve years ago I walked into the bookstore almost across the street from me called Sellers and Newel. I had been in before but this time I struck up a conversation with a nice fella name Peter. (Wow...Peter Sellers...how cool!)

Around the same time, Andrew Downing and I had been lamenting that we no longer had a venue to perform our banjo/cello duo in the hood. We both started playing our second instruments (he is actually a bassist and I have always been a guitarist) around the same time. We had a weekly gig on Ossington before it become fancy as it is today, at a little place called Todo. Those were special times and great memories (including the amazing special guests we would have). I thought we would never find another cool place like that to play in our hood. 

Back to my conversation with Peter; I don't remember it clearly but I think I told him about Todo and Andrew and the banjo/cello duo. He seemed inspired and said we should play at his bookstore. I asked Andrew and the rest is history. 

Fast forward twelve years and 200 plus concerts and Peter has one of the coolest and most popular music venues in the city. People contact him from all around the world now to play at his intimate bookstore with the magic live-music vibe. If you haven't been yet it is a thing you must experience. One of those things that makes our neighbourhood and city so special. It is still a little bit of a secret (ie. there is no marketing budget) but you should probably buy your ticket in advance to make sure you get a chair. (what are there...maybe 25 chairs?) 

Yes, you can shop for books at night too before the concert or on the set break. You can hear a pin drop at every concert and it is quite likely you will leave knowing some new people and maybe seeing people there you haven't seen in a long time. 

This coming Tuesday, December 12,  I am performing there with my trio Banjo: Drum + Bass. It features Aidan McConnell on drums and Brandon Davis on the bass. We play a repertoire that included some very old and some very new tunes I wrote. Also, some unusual cover tunes and maybe even a tiny splash of holiday spirit.  

To reserve your tickets please email Peter at: sellers@sellersandnewel.com

If you can't make it to the show please check out his list of upcoming shows here and try to make it to the store to buy some books as gifts and maybe a couple for yourself :-)



Thursday, August 03, 2023

TIM (This is Music) Adult Music School!

I have been having some fun of late learning how to run a little business. It is about time since I have have been running many of them for decades. My wife Julie has had great success with her latest business/art venture with is https://shawstreetpottery.ca/  She has been very helpful with helping me get my latest venture up and running. TIM! 

It is truly amazing what you can do with social media and little businesses now. When I started booking tours for my groups in the 90s there was no world wide web for the common person and email was brand new. I still managed to book gigs all over Canada and we got there somehow too without google maps :-)

TIM (This is Music) is and adult music school where I will be teaching group guitar classes for beginners, Rockband, Intro to theory classes and more. It is best to sign up for the email list on the TIM website as there will be limited spots opening and those on the list will be the first to hear about it. 

I have focused on teaching kids for a long time but I enjoyed teaching the one year at Mohawk College in Hamilton so much I have been trying to continue in that direction. It is hard to find a teaching job these days so I finally decided to start my own school. It will be way more fun here. Trust me! I will still teach kids music as I have a bunch of good students and there is still something very rewarding about teaching someone their first guitar lesson. 

I still have my Guildwood Records website. It's not the prettiest website but it is still probably the best way to keep up with my local shows and touring in the future. (I am not the best at keeping it up to date)




Labels: , , , ,

Thursday, June 15, 2023

Process

 Process is everything. Process is boring. Process is hard work. Process is all you have sometimes. 

Lately, I have been thinking about what I do. I play music. I play banjo. I play guitar. I play music. Sometimes I play fiddle and mandolin. Sometimes I sing. I love to sing. Actually I love all of it. 

I play folk music. I play jazz. I play bluegrass. I play rock music. I play Irish music. I love playing all these types of music. Sometimes I wish I just played music. All kinds of music but mixed together in a big stew. Sometimes I wish I could play more than one instrument at a time. 

I was reading about gratitude earlier today. I am grateful to have friends that I can play music with. I am grateful that people are interested in the music I record and perform live. 

Last month I played a weekly gig (5 shows!) at the Rex with my Jazz Banjo group. It features Aline Homzy, Andrew Downing and Kelsley Grant. These people are fantastic musicians but also really fun to play with. They were so supportive of my ideas, experiments, new tunes, old tunes etc. I was listening back to our fifth show and I think we really found some great moments within the tunes I had chosen. It is challenging to know what our roles are in this group. There are not a lot of banjo, bass, trombone and violin records to study or borrow ideas from. I certainly try to use other groups with different orchestration for direction but it is a challenge. 

Even my approach on the banjo. I don't really know what I am striving for. As a jazz guitarist (my former life?) there is a history and a groundwork; actually many different groundworks or paths you can learn from, emulate and try to master. On the banjo, I don't really have these options. Bela Fleck has recorded some great records and has taken the banjo down many paths. I am grateful to have those records to listen to. 

So Long Seven, the world music group that I have played banjo in for ten years has been a great learning experience. I am grateful for that. (great friends and great musicians!) We all compose in SL7 so I have had to find ways to make the 5-string banjo sound good in our music. Sometimes the guys write things that are really hard to play on the banjo and I love the challenge. 

It is interesting how much easier it can still be for me to play guitar. I guess the challenge is what keeps me coming back to the banjo. 

One in every three people in North America play guitar. I don't blame them. It is fun. 

Sunday, May 21, 2023

Jazz Banjo

 I have been having so much fun with my friends on monday nights at the Rex this month. These three musicians are so skilled and so open to trying new things it is a real treat. 

Aline Homzy on violin surprises me every week. I have had to stop playing a couple times I was so excited by what she was playing. If you don't know bassist Andrew Downing you may live under a rock. He is a multiple Juno winner, incredible bassist and fantastic composer, arranger, bandleader (and teacher!) Kelsley Grant might be the least obvious person to have in a string-band since he plays trombone however he is so good on that instrument and so fun to play music with he is certainly one of the great things about this group. 

Finding five mondays in a row where we were all available is quite something. I have not taken any of it for granted and I keep bringing new tunes every week and tweaking the arrangements of others. tommmorw, May 22 will be no exception as I am bringing a new chart inspired by Irish traditional music that I have written as well as a re-write of an old tune called Gamesroom and a slight variation on the Zappa riffs we improvised on last week. 

5-string banjo is not the.  banjo that was around when banjo was big at the beginning of jazz with the Louis Armstrong Hot Five, Fletcher Henderson, Jelly Roll Morton etc. but it is basically the same. Interestingly, Johnny St. Cyr played a 6 string banjo with Louis Armstrong. Did you know that he died the same year I was born. (kinda cool right!?)

I am considering naming this group Bonestrung! I think it is a better name than Jazz Banjo. Especially since a lot of what we play might be a stretch to call jazz. Some of it is most certainly jazz. Shout out to Tom Tytel at the Rex for booking us. I am a believer in an eclectic calendar at a jazz club or festival and eclectic we are! Go Jazz! Go Rex! Go Canada!

Saturday, April 29, 2023

lost my banjo thumb pick

Every since I started playing the banjo seriously I have been obsessed with all the details of how the machine actually works and what it takes to make a great banjo tone.

 A bit of an explanation for non-banjo players is that being an acoustic instrument, a lot the banjo's tone (or quality of sound) is created by all the elements that are required to make the actual sound. An example would be the tension of the banjo head (mine is tuned to G#) or the tightness of the screws and making sure there are no gaps where one part of the instrument joins the other.

 When I started playing I knew much less about this and would often get some of the local banjo gurus to guide me. The excellent bluegrass banjoist Chris Quinn was helpful and I continue to visit Grant at the 12th fret ocassionally. These guys know banjo.

 However, after close to 20 years of working on my banjo playing as one of my main musical focuses I have come to give less blame or credit to the instrument. That is not to say that it isn't important but a lot of things are as or more important and those can only be gained by hours of practise every day. For example, left hand technique is important on any stringed instrument but on the banjo, one's right hand technique is paramount to having good tone. This is also true on acoustic guitar. I remember hearing one of my favourite Toronto electric guitarists play the acoustic and sound so much less beautiful than their fine electric playing. (it is common for electric players to dabble in acoustic playing and I can usually tell after about ten seconds if they have worked on their acoustic playing)

 Anyways, one of the things I have always found somewhat mystical about five-string bluegrass banjo style playing is the picks. It was the closeups of Bela Fleck's picks on a concert DVD of him playin duo with Edgar Myer that opened the door for this joyous path for me decades ago. Since walking almost in a trance up to Long and McQuade that day and buying my first picks I have changed my picks a few times here and there. Generally the finger picks have stayed the same and are just the standard metal Dunlop banjo picks. However, the plastic thumb pick has been an ongoing experiment. (not everyone uses plastic thumb picks) Early on I read the the great Earl Scruggs filed down his thumb pick so I did that too. I liked the results and have had probably four or five main picks over the last ten years or so.

 It seems important to talk about tone again here. If you play a flat plastic pick against a string (banjo, mandolin or guitar) in a perpendiculr angle to the string it sounds quite thin and and you lose the low and low mid frequencies in your playing. There is a certain angle that needs to be achieved which is hard to describe in words. I don't think about this too much any more as I have spent many years working on it and have many other things in my playing that need work. However, I was forced to think about it too much this week as I lost my favourite (and only good) banjo pick. Of course it happened the day before I was to play a duo concert with my pal; bassist Andrew Downing. I was a mess.

 I had two thumb picks that were essentially identical and one of them broke right before a concert with the group So Long Seven this year. Of course I should have made sure to replace it but I did not. I keep my picks in a very specific place and rarely put them elsewhere. This time I put them in my pocket and the thumbpick went missing. I was scouring through my backup picks trying to find one that felt and sounded good with no luck. I spent much time practising, sanding, filing all to no avail. I couldn't believe how bad these picks sounded and felt. Was it all in my mind? Could these slight differences in angle, thickness etc. really make that much of a difference? I suppose it has to do with playing with only this one pick (or its near identical backup) for so many hours over the last number of years. I no longer thought about how I was attacking the string. There is a great Alan Munde quote; something like...if you your thumbpick doesn't hurt you are doing it wrong and I know what he meant for sure as my fave pick was not necessarily completely comfortable.

 Anyways, for days I looked everywhere for that pick and my mood was low. (It is bit sad that this affected me so but the Maple Leaf's playoff loss didn't help either). The duo concert with Andrew ended up being post-poned for various reasons and I kept searching for a pick that sounded good.

 Yesterday evening my wife Julie and I were going out for dinner and there it was, on our front walk up to our house. My little plastic banjo pick. Oh my god was I happy! I couldn't stop looking at it and then touching it in my pocket as we walked to a neighbourhood Korean restaurant. When I got home I played the banjo for hours with much joy. It felt and sounded so much better than any notes I had played in days.

 If you live in Toronto I will be playing every monday in May at the Rex Hotel from 530-730pm with my Jazz Banjo group featuring Andrew Downing (bass), Aline Homzy (violin) and Kelsely Grant (trombone)

Tuesday, April 25, 2023

Posgate Love Letter #34

Hi folks, exciting times with all this music and hockey going on. I hope you are enjoying it too! If you are not a hockey fan; this Thursday night, April 27, simultaneously with the Leafs Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Playoffs I will be performing at my favourite venue Sellers and Newel with Andrew Downing. (banjo + bass) We have a very special list of tunes for this gig and we will be playing "double-shots" by composers including Ornette Coleman, Bela Bartok, Neil Young and more. We play two sets starting at 8pm Sharp! (If you can make it; please don't tell me the score of the game as I will be sneaking home after the show to watch it on my pvr) You can call to reserve tickets: 672 College Street 647-778-6345 (or there may be tickets at the door) If you just can't get enough Andrew Downing; he will be playing bass with my Jazz Banjo project at the Rex Hotel (Queen st. W at University) for all five Mondays in May! We are on from 530-730pm. Also featuring Aline Homzy on violin and Kelsley Grant on trombone. This is a fun band. Here is a video from the last time we played at the Rex: https://youtu.be/EHnAIQ3oIL8 Another really fun show at Sellers and Newel is May 6 (my late Mother's Birthday) with Ronley Teper and the Lipliners. Her energy is so big and the place is so small that it may just explode with joy. Can't wait! Dafydd Hughes will be opening with a solo piano set that will be really interesting. (there may be some electronics involved with the lovely piano at Sellers and Newel) Here we are from one of our visits to Berlin (pre Covid) https://youtu.be/YopdisPUiho Here is another one from the great Something Else music festival in Hamilton: https://youtu.be/ObRoWOYTpLc (his tenth annual festival is coming up in June https://somethingelsefestival.com/) Friday May 12 I have my monthly gig at the Tranzac with Collette Savard and the Savants. 7-9pm (I play only electric guitar and love to rock it up!) Hope to see you. Please add me to your mailing list too. I love hearing what people are up to. sincerely, tim p.s. this took me so long to do I have no time left to update my website. Maybe tommorrow. Ha!


Free Counter