NEW MUSIC FROM THE MONOXIDES, PLUS CANADA DAY SHOW IN MONCTON

I'm thinking back to 1997, the first year that New Brunswick hosted the East Coast Music Awards in Moncton. As the local music watcher for CBC, I got elevated to the lofty post of guest analyst on Morningside, with Peter Gzowski broadcasting live from the festivities. And about halfway through the discussions of various fiddlers and songwriters, Gzowski threw me a curve ball, asking, "Now what's all this about The Monoxides?"

Luckily, I was fully informed of Moncton's hometown heroes. The Monoxides had played the night before at a showcase that I'd witnessed in a smallish club. Standing quite close to the front just before the show, I realized I was beside Chris Murphy of Sloan. He took a look at the lineup of amps and speakers buzzing away on the still-empty stage, pulled out a pair of earplugs, and advised me, "This is going to be really loud." Realizing I was talking to an expert, I quickly scuttled to the back to avoid serious hearing loss.

They were more than just loud, they were explosive and fun, where punk meets rawk.  1997 was the year of excitement for the Moncton outfit. The band was signed to BMG's Canadian label Vik Records, and had a debut album released, Galaxy Of Stooges featuring the favourites "(Can't Get) Excited" and "Little Bitta Rosie." It was produced by The Pursuit of Happiness leader Moe Berg, who still calls it one of the best experiences of his career. A follow-up, The Free Release Of Energy followed in 2000, but then things slowed down. Aside from occasional gigs and a rare tracks collection, there's been no new music in those 23 years.

Until now. What a great feeling it is to hear a brand-new Monoxides track, "Let Her Know." The song comes out Wednesday, June 28, and is fresh, exciting, and punchy, full of '70's guitar and hooks, a classic earworm for those wondering if real guitar bands still matter. Even better, it's just the start of a busy summer of activity for the group. On August 25, the classic debut Galaxy Of Stooges is getting a re-release, this time on vinyl. As for shows, the band will be part of the big Canada Day celebrations at Moncton's Riverfront Park, along with their old pals Sloan, Les Hay Babies, and the Elsipogtog Spirit Singers. They are also part of the big Area 506 Festival in Saint John, joining Billy Talent and others on Aug. 5. And for that up close and personal experience, the group is doing an in-store appearance in Saint John on Aug. 19 at Second Spin Records. 

More good news: There's another single scheduled for release later this year, and that's leading up to a full album planned for 2024. I can get excited!

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: JENN GRANT - CHAMPAGNE PROBLEMS

Jenn Grant has loads of charm both musically and personally, so it's no surprise she was able to rope in all sorts of top Canadian talent to guest on her latest. The 12 tracks each feature a famed collaborator, from national names (Basia Bulat, Dan Mangan) to local East Coast pals (Joel Plaskett, Tim Baker). This went far beyond the usual star turns, where names drop in quickly to add a vocal or instrumental part. The songs were true collaborations, The invited pals worked at length with Grant, choosing topics, considering the lyrics at length, and developing the tracks with Grant and co-producer/main partner Daniel Ledwell. 

The guests are allowed to bring their own style and influence to the table. The current single "One Hit Wonders" features Ria Mae in an old-school dance jam that looks at the pressures to conform that female artists face. "All Of This Time," featuring Bahamas, is a gentle duet over acoustic guitar, like a soft summer breeze. From the sublime to the celebratory, Halifax's Aquakultre helps turn "Nobody's Fool" into a big soul production. Despite all this star power and stylistic influence, the album becomes a surprisingly coherent and satisfying listen. Grant leads the way, her warm and assured vocals as expressive as ever, whether gentle like "Catch the Wind," with Iqaluit's Josh Quamariaq, or joyous, in the hit "Judy," with Kim Harris.

Grant is launching the disc with a cast featuring several of the album guests this Saturday, June 24, at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto. Joining her will be Amy Millan, Hannah Georgas, Aquakultre, Kim Harris, Tim Baker, and Kevin Drew. And home-town fans can see her along with Feist at this year's Halifax Jazz Festival on July 11.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: BRYCE CLIFFORD - BREWHA EAST HAMILTON E.P.

An artist I first saw last fall has returned to the East Coast for a series of dates, including a couple of slots at the Living Roots Festival in Fredericton. Bryce Clifford works out of Hamilton, as a roots[rock singer-songwriter. On disc, his songs have quite a punch, even a touch of punk influence and lots of drum power on cuts such as "TV Snow" from his recent Brewha East Hamilton E.P.  "Checkpoint Charlie" sounds like a much more together version of The Replacements. Let's hope he brings more of that cool blue vinyl release with him for sale at the shows.

Like last time, Clifford is joined for the live sets by Brother Brisco, a/k/a Greg Brisco, one of the stalwarts of the Hamilton music scene. The keyboard whiz first came to my attention in the Canadiana outfit The Dinner Belles with Terra Lightfoot, and with Clifford he takes on a significant role, always up for an impromptu lead vocal on a  classic cover when Clifford calls out something fun.  With the duo, the emphasis is placed on Clifford's strong lyrics and hooks at the heart of his songwriting. He has no trouble winning over audiences on the strength of his originals. With a second Downeast tour in less than a year, he's proving to be a road warrior as well. You gotta support that.

The Living Roots Festival runs Thursday, June 8 until Sunday, June 11 in Fredericton in various venues, and also features fine folks such as rising star Kellie Loder, Sherman Downey, and Joce Reyome. Bryce Clifford and Brother Brisco will be at The Ville Cooperative on Thursday at 7 pm, and at Southside Shake in the Hilton Gardens Inn Saturday at 3 pm. You'll also find them Friday, June 9 in St. Andrews at Char and Chowder, and Sunday in Hampton, NB at Gridiron Brewing.

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: JOE GRASS - FALCON'S HEART

Sonic experimenter Joe Grass is originally from Moncton, but for the past two decades has been the go-to collaborator for everyone from the Barr Brothers to Patrick Watson to Lhasa. He has a lush and lovely approach, working with rich melodies and lots of gorgeous sounds, many of them unconventional but always ear-pleasing. He coaxes delicate burbles and fragile textures out of his guitars and matches them with woodwinds, strings, harmonies, and more, to make simple tunes go to surprising places.

For Falcon's Heart, Grass wrote 10 basic folk-country numbers, and then let the magic take over when the rest of the players got involved. For a pretty standard country song like "E. Absolute," there's pedal steel, but it's far more ethereal than you'd hear from Nashville, the backing singers more angelic. And Grass has the emotional gravitas in his own voice that makes this tune, and all of them, touching and haunting. "Guadalupe" starts off as Appalachian folk, with a banjo-like plucking, but it goes full-on Peter Gabriel World music, with driving percussion, Caribbean, Indian and African flavours, and funky bass things happening. 

Each song is packed with such curious and fascinating combinations, for the most part melodic and comforting, except for some lead guitar squonking at the end of "Hart Island," to shake us briefly out of our reverie. Do you want a final, overall description? How about country songs played on rock and classical instruments with a jazz approach, featuring old-time melodies made with 21st-century recording techniques? It's all that, and a boatload of beautiful. 

DON ROSS BRINGS NEW ALBUM, TOUR TO MARITIMES

Guitar virtuoso Don Ross didn't have to look far to find inspiration for his latest album, Water. It was right outside his home. When he wrote the songs, Ross was living in tiny Seabright, Nova Scotia, just minutes north of famous Peggy's Cove. Of course, the ocean spoke to him.

"It's been a theme throughout a lot of my life," says Ross, "having grown up on an island in the middle of the river in Montreal, and now for the last many years living in the Maritimes and always being right by the water. And then coming out the other side of the pandemic, it felt like resurfacing, an allegory for the whole thing."

Ross has since moved and now resides in P.E.I., where his spouse, musician Brooke Miller, is from. But the time in Seabright was crucial to the current state of his career. For much of the pandemic, he was pursuing an M.A. in orchestration online from the University of Chichester in England, quite a departure for someone recognized as one the world's great solo guitar players. Having not made an album for six years, he wanted to incorporate this new interest into this work.

"I kinda wanted to make a big, sweeping gesture with this record," says Ross. "I decided that I wasn't going to worry about guitar pyrotechnics or anything like that, I just wanted to make an album that really reflected who I was musically at this point in my life. I've been studying orchestration, so I did one piece with a full orchestra, a real 70-piece orchestra, there's a couple of other pieces with a string quintet (P.E.I.'s Atlantic String Machine), and then there's another piece with sampled orchestration, but it sounds like a real orchestra."

Ross's new skills have led him into new fields, including composing for the film and video game industries, scoring documentaries, and even a series of silent movies. As heard on the new album, more than just adding strings to guitar pieces.

"One thing does feed the other. I've always thought orchestrally as a guitarist anyway. I'm not really about the guitar, I'm not a guitar head, I don't collect guitars, and I don't listen to much guitar. I started playing guitar as a kid, and I realized it had all these properties to it, it was capable of playing melodies, harmonies, and inner voices. I wanted to approach it almost like you would a piano or an orchestra. So I've always been keen about being conscious about what I was writing, so you could almost take the piece off the guitar, and play it on the piano. It's not just guitar music for the sake of being a guitar player, I've never found that very interesting anyway. When the guitar is used in a really effective compositional, musical way, then I get turned on."

Forced off the road by the pandemic, and without an album for six years, Ross found his fans hadn't moved on. A Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for the new recording met its goal in just 28 hours, and he eventually doubled the initial amount sought. That let him travel, hire the orchestra, and even bring one of his early heroes in for a session. Bruce Cockburn sings the lead vocals on his own composition, "Stained Glass," from his 1974 album Salt, Sun And Time.

"I used to play the album almost every night for about a year, as I was falling asleep," says Ross. "There was just something about that song, I would hear it as I was drifting off, I'd think to myself, what a beautiful song. I learned it from the record but never did anything with it, never performed it or anything. Then about six years ago, Bruce and I were at the same music festival in Alberta. I saw we were going to be sharing the same workshop stage, and I got in touch with him and said, 'Dude, can you do a bucket list favour for me, can we do a song together?' We bandied a few about, and I said, 'What about "Stained Glass," that's probably my favourite song of yours?' And he said, 'Oh my gosh, I pull that one out every once in a while, let's do that one,' and it worked out well."

Ross is back on the road, and about to bring the Water album home to the East Coast for shows. He's also bringing another guitar player he admires, Pipo Romero, who Ross first heard online, and subsequently worked with in Spain.  

"He's from the south of Spain, the heart of Flamenco country," says Ross. "He's terrific, people go nuts when they hear him. He's a cool young guy, he's so Spanish it hurts."

You can see Don Ross with Pipo Romero at the following:

May 18 The Guild, Charlottetown

May 19 Charlotte St. Arts Centre, Fredericton

May 20 The Fiddling Fisherman, Souris, PEI

May 21 The Carleton, Halifax

MUSIC REVIEW: JESSICA RHAYE and the RAMSHACKLE PARADE - SUNSHINE BABY

Backed by the same players (The Ramshackle Parade) who appeared on her popular 2019 Dylan covers album, Just Like A Woman, Rhaye has embraced that hybrid acoustic-electric sound. The rich instrumentation has potent and explosive moments throughout, giving the Saint John singer-songwriter a more powerful sound than on previous albums. That's letting her hit new vocal heights too, giving her songs lots of dynamic range. That's particularly effective, given her expressive voice. We knew she could charm, but on a cut such as "Snakes and Ladders," she shows she can punch too.

The title track might be a little misleading, given its sunny optimism and easy-going feel. It's more of an outlier on an album that features as much darkness as light, and lots of dramatic details. In a song like "Sunshine Baby," she can effortlessly make us feel relaxed and happy, so to hit us right after with "I Won't Break," with its unsettling atmosphere and intense emotions, is effectively jarring. She counters the heaviness with beautiful instrumentation and voices, a potent blend.

There is a series of four very high-quality, effective videos from the album out so far, which add a whole other element, seeing the group deliver these various moody moments. Rhaye, a professional visual designer herself, has an excellent way of presenting images and colours, so that is a big part of her appeal. She's planned a big fall tour for the album, so keep these dates in mind.

Thursday, Sept 28 - Charlottetown, PEI - Trailside Music Hall
Saturday, Sept 30 - Saint John, NB - Imperial Theatre
Thursday, October 19 - Halifax, NS - The Carleton
Friday, October 20 - Shelburne, NS - The Osprey Arts Centre
Saturday, October 21 - Fredericton, NB - Charlotte Street Arts Centre
Monday, October 23 - Montreal, QC - Casa Del Popolo
Tuesday, October 24 - Toronto, ON - The Dakota Tavern Presents: Four Play
Wednesday, October 25 - London, ON - Aeolian Hall
Thursday, October 26 - Hamilton, ON - Mills Hardware
Friday, October 27 - Ottawa, ON - The Redbird Live 

Saturday, October 28 - Smiths Falls, ON - Station Theatre

MUSIC REVIEW OF THE DAY: RYAN GAIO - THE BEST AIN'T HAPPENED YET

Gaio put out an EP ten years back, just out of his teens in Niagara-on-the-Lake, but then went off to school, including in Fredericton doing an MA in Creative Writing at UNB. It seems that his creative streak extended to music still, as he wrote some of the songs during those days. Once he moved to Toronto and started working, he found he still had the music bug and finished up these ten tracks for his first full album.

Right from the opening squelch of radio static and stations tuning in and out, the message is clear: he's inspired by the golden oldies stations he heard growing up, playing classic AM radio pop and rock singles. Opener "1949" contains shoo-wop backing vocals, lyrics about taking daddy's car to the beach, and lots of pumping piano and strumming guitars. 

These are light-hearted and loving takes on classic forms but combined with lots of 2023 energy. "Cry Over You" is doo-wop with a sloppy edge, Gaio getting overly dramatic for the break-up number, even yelling "I hate you!" instead of singing. There's a comfort food warmth to all these sounds, such as the sweet backing vocals and the catchy choruses, but those are camouflaging lots of smart rhymes and themes of nostalgia. Instead of mimicking 60s and 70s production, the songs are far more rough-and-ready instead of polished, along the lines of Joel Plaskett, or the Weezer-like soft-loud treatment on "Standing On Your Doorstep." 

There's a big blast of sunshine in most of the songs, particularly "So Much Younger Then," a great summertime, driving, and guitar tune. The whole album says it was a lot of fun back in the day, and it's still lots of fun now.