Halifax's The Stanfields are touring this month. (Photo by CHR!S SM!TH)

Readers of Halifax’s The Coast voted them the “Best Band to Get Trashed to” two years in a row, and listening to The Stanfields’ high energy rock-infused Celtic sound, it’s easy to see why.

Lead singer, guitarist and accordion player Jon Landry admits that accolade is his favourite the band has received in the two years or so since it formed.

“That was the one that got us the most work, definitely,” he says with a laugh.

On the five-piece’s debut record, the recently released Vanguard of the Young & Reckless, the band almost seems to burst from your stereo speakers.

And while the lead single is the band’s trademark tune, The Dirtiest Drunk (In The History of Liquor) (video below), there’s more to the loud party rock sound on the tune and the rest of the album when you put the bottle down and really listen.

“(Audiences) find it really funny,” says Landry of their popular tune. “And that’s great. That’s one layer of the onion for the song itself, but, you know, peel back the layers a bit and really the song is a huge disclaimer.”

On another track, Antics, Landry sings, “Pills, liquor and smoke, it makes a fella stop and wonder, ‘how much did I lose?’”

“Our tunes about partying and stuff, I think, are largely a huge disclaimer,” Landry admits. “In a sense, it’s one thing or the other. It’s the dangers of excess or it’s whimsical, fantastical stuff that we just kind of cook up.”

Whether you party to the record or sit back and enjoy, Vanguard… has continued to raise the profile of the band since landing in record stores in June.

Landry says the band has played live relentlessly since forming in 2008, and the fruits of their labour are paying off as bars are filling up more and more each time they return to a city. The band is currently eyeing its third tour out to Ontario just this year.

“We’ve been working at it pretty relentlessly since day one,” he tells East Coast Noise. “We knew exactly what we were going to do starting out as far as how many shows we were going to play, how ruthless we were going to be with our touring schedule, and we’re starting to see the fruits of it now, I think, a bit.

“It’s pretty encouraging … there’s a long ways to go. But it’s all part of the game, I guess.”

The Stanfields are Landry, his cousin Jason Wright (bouzouki and vocals), Jason MacIsaac (guitar and vocals), Craig Eugene Harris (bass and vocals) and Mark Murphy (drums).

The band mates knew each other from the Halifax music scene and decided to join forces in 2008. Vanguard of the Young & Reckless is their first album.

“When we were recording it, it was the longest damn process ever – hair-pulling, pain-staking at times,” Landry admits.

Having said that, he says it was an “incredible” experience – the band’s first time in a professional recording studio. He credits producer Darren Van Kiekerk for bringing some great ideas to the table.

“He let us be ourselves, and that was really key,” Landry says.

The album was all recorded by multi-tracking, but it has a real live-off-the-floor feel, which Landry says was the goal.

“We’ve played so many shows together,” he explains. We just know each other’s nuances, we know our sound. We went into the studio with a ton of live experience under our belts. Darren was really good at capturing that. We wanted that really funky, warts-and-all kind of approach where … We’re not the band that plays perfectly all the time. We’re not the best at anything, we’re just good players together … our kind of five-fingers-of-a-fist mentality, I think that was captured on our record, and I think that comes across in our live shows. And that was kind of an important thing we wanted to capture.”

Landry wasn’t sure about long-term plans when he spoke with East Coast Noise. A second music video to follow up Dirtiest Drunk is in the works, and he suggests it may be for the tune Ship To Shore, but that may change.

He said the band is trying to keep its collective head on straight with all the activity surrounding it.

“It’s what got us to this point was us being careful about what we do and we don’t.”

A national Stanfields tour is in the works, but for now, here are officially announced dates:

Aug. 6 – Glasgow Square Theatre, New Glasgow, N.S.
Aug. 7 – Toronto Festival of Beer, Toronto, Ont.
Aug. 18 – Quispamsis Concert Series, Quispamsis, N.B.
Aug. 20 – The Capital Bar, Fredericton, N.B.
Aug. 21 – Larlee Creek Hullabaloo Festival, Perth-Andover, N.B.
Aug. 28 – The Paragon Theatre, Halifax, N.S.

Video for The Dirtiest Drunk (In The History Of Liquor):

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After a few years of preparation, hard work and just honing her craft, tonight is Meaghan Smith’s big night.

The Halifax singer-songwriter, whose debut full-length record The Cricket’s Orchestra was released in early February, is celebrating the release of the album tonight at the Halifax Club, 1682 Hollis St.

Smith, her band and a horn and string section will perform at the 148-year-old club in a setting that should truly fit her music – a mix of old-timey folk and roots brought into 2010 with modern production techniques and a touch of sampling.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. The festivities get underway at 8 p.m. and wrap at 10 p.m. Opening act is Kim Dunn.

Smith spoke to East Coast Noise recently about her new album, which has been getting rave reviews since its release, and the learning experience her career has been for the last few years. Her happiness is palpable over the phone line from her home in Halifax. With a new record, her art being displayed in galleries and more tour dates coming, Smith has no complaints.

Plus, she’s already writing her next record. But more on that in a minute.

The Cricket’s Orchestra was actually finished two years ago. Smith funded the record herself and had no expectations for it.

“Essentially, I made it for myself,” Smith explains. “I didn’t have any management, I had no contacts anywhere with anybody. This record was just me leaving my day job just to see what would happen and just making a record that I wanted to listen to. I think that’s what I mean when I say I really did not know what was going to happen because I really wasn’t making it setting out to get ‘X’ amount of radio play or get a management deal or get a major label deal. That was kind of the furthest thing from my mind.”

But Smith’s “modern vintage” sound, as she calls it, was quickly snapped up by Sire/Warner, and the major label has been nurturing her career since.

Since finishing the recording of The Cricket’s Orchestra with producer Les Cooper, Smith released a sampler EP, The Cricket’s Quartet, she’s worked with legendary producer T-Bone Burnett on a cover of The Pixie’s Here Comes Your Man (available on the 500 Days of Summer soundtrack), toured with kd lang and done gigs with Sarah McLachlan and Ron Sexsmith.

Her album was put on the back burner while changes were taking place at her record label, but she’s grateful for the wait.

“They’ve been playing it really slow with me, gradually introducing me into marketplaces, and I feel like it’s exactly what I need,” she says. “I needed that time to get used to the fact that so many things were happening with my music and life personally and my record. I needed to catch up to it. I wasn’t mentally prepared for a lot of it.”

Smith says she learned a great deal during her two-month North American tour with kd lang last year.

“She started warming up first thing in the morning for a show that night. She’d kind of walk around soundcheck and through supper, you could hear her making these weird sounds … I’m not going to try to do them because she’s kd lang and I’m Meaghan Smith,” she explains with a laugh, “but it was like she was stretching her voice. And it sounded crazy at first.”

Smith says lang explained to her that she was just exercising her voice.

“I didn’t warm up ever,” Smith says. “I had no vocal training, I have no musical training, so I’ve never warmed up in my life. But after seeing her doing that, I started to do my own little warm-up exercises, and just the amazing difference that makes, being able to perform and just feeling confident that you’ve warmed up your voice, that does so much for you.”

Between playing with lang, McLachlan and Sexsmith, Smith has also learned about reading her audience and simply getting the most out of a performance.

Smith has come a long way. When she last spoke with East Coast Noise, she spoke of a debilitating stage fright she had to gradually get over in order to perform.

A little over a year later, she says she has it under control now, and on the odd occasion she feels that fright returning, she’s able to turn it into energy that she takes to the stage.

She’s ecstatic at the reviews The Cricket’s Orchestra has been getting, but she admits to also being a little shocked.

“I’m breathing a huge sigh of relief, and just feeling really, really thankful that they like what they’re hearing.”

Already, she’s working on material for her next record.

“I want to basically take what I did on the first record and that sound I found for myself, that modern/vintage sound that I found, and just exaggerate it and push the envelope as far as I can. I feel like I was kind of testing the waters with that record. I was seeing how people would react to various sounds and seeing how I felt about various sounds. I think that I played it kind of cautious in certain songs.”

On the next record, she says to expect more experimentation. Smith experimented on her current record with a collaboration with Kid Koala on the track A Little Love, and she says she’ll go further next time out, whether that means collaboration with country musicians, hip hop performers … she says she’s leaving her options open.

“(My music) is not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s a lot of people’s cup of tea, and I’m excited about that,” she says.

After tonight’s performance, Smith heads out to Toronto, Montreal and down into the U.S. over the next few months. Check out her tour dates on her website.

Tickets to tonight’s show are $25 at the door. Smith will have paintings and various items of artwork available for purchase at the venue along with her new album.

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(Jenocide, Photo by kelly clark fotography, typicalgirl.com)

Jen Clarke says she doesn’t want to appear preachy, but if you listen to what her alter-ego, Jenocide, is saying in her danceable, hook-filled songs, there is undoubtedly a feminist point of view coming through.

“I do have political ideologies about feminism as an undercurrent to all that I do, but I never want to alienate people,” Clarke says. “It’s more about inclusiveness and empowerment than alienating (anyone). I want everyone, you know, guys and girls, to dance and have a good time above anything political. I just want to have fun songs with fun hooks that people want to dance to.”

Jenocide, also featuring beatmaker Ed “Erenzi” Renzi, is bringing its dance party to New Brunswick and Nova Scotia over the coming few days (dates listed below) with Ruby Jean & The Thoughtful Bees and A/V.

Jenocide, which is touring in support of the full-length album Machines That Make Us Wet, was born out of Clarke’s five years of being the only girl in otherwise all-guy bands like HOTSHOTROBOT and Windom Earle.

“When I started going to shows and got involved in the indie scene probably like five or six years ago, there were no girls in rock bands, really; maybe a couple. There were no girls doing their own thing in terms of something that was more aggressive. There’s always been hordes of girls with guitars and stuff like that. I never identified with stuff like that.

“I would go out to punk shows and other kinds of shows, and there were no girls and it was so depressing.”

Finding no one she could relate to, Clarke says she was inspired to create a strong female character, taking elements from some of her role models like Madonna, Blondie’s Debbie Harry, Le Tigre and Peaches.

Her aim was to create “strong voice for women, something that women can identify with” while ensuring that the music was still fun. She says women are bombarded on the street, in magazines and other media with images of what they’re supposed to look or act like. She wanted to cut to the heart of those issues.

When asked about another current strong female musician and character, Lady Gaga, Clarke admits it’s not the first time she’s heard the comparison.

“I think like six months ago I would have told you that you were an idiot, because my initial, knee-jerk reaction to her was like, ‘Oh great, another one of these bullshit popstars that’s like content-less.’ But she’s a very smart woman, and I think she surrounds herself with very smart people. I’m intrigued as well with her image, and she definitely is a good woman, pop-culture figure right now. I don’t take offense to that, I think she has awesome style. And certainly she’s a performer just as much a musician.”

Clarke says “there’s a lot of bullshit” to deal with as a woman trying to do something different, particularly on the east coast, which has a wealth of more traditional folk, rock, metal and country acts, but a smaller scene of pop or dance music.

Clarke says she hasn’t met any resistance to the Jenocide project, but it has been a challenge to find peers to perform with.

Since debuting with her EP bikerides. barrettes. bruises. last summer, Jenocide has performed mostly in the Halifax area, bringing out men and woman alike to dance. She says women seem to really connect with what she’s doing, and she has no doubt she’s alienated a few men along the way.

“Jenocide has some strong opinions about girl power and getting rid of guys if they’re not good for you,” she says. “I’ve alienated a lot of guys, I’m sure, at shows because some people feel threatened by it because it’s a pretty aggressive, in-your-face mentality when I’m up on stage saying, ‘If your boyfriend sucks, then fucking dump him.’ I mean, it’s tongue-in-cheek, right? It’s not militant, but it can be interpreted that way I’m sure by some people who maybe feel defensive about who they are and they feel that they’re being pointed out.”

Clarke has two releases out now under the Jenocide banner. Her debut, she says, was a little more thrash while the follow-up LP was more dancey. Next, she’s aiming for a bit of a hip-hop feel. Expect another release from Jenocide in the not too distant future.

In the meantime, she wants everyone to come out and dance their asses off. Here’s when and where you can do just that:

Jan. 23 in Saint John @ Blue Olive
Jan. 24 in Fredericton @ The Capital
Jan. 27 in Charlottetown @ Hunter’s
Jan. 28 in Moncton @ The Paramount
Jan. 29 in Sackville @ George’s Roadhouse

Jenocide’s albums can be bought online, at her shows or on iTunes.

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(Gloryhound, left-right, Shaun Hanlon, Evan Meisner,  Jeremy MacPherson and David Casey.)

Recording its sophomore album Leave It Alone was a learning experience for the members of Halifax-based Gloryhound.

A year in the making, Leave It Alone was produced by former Matt Mays & El Torpedo member Robbie Crowell, who guided the band as it changed its sound from a roots-rock sound to more of a straight ahead, “four-on-the-floor” rock sound, as singer/guitarist Evan Meisner describes it.

Meisner spoke with EastCoastNoise recently around the same time the band  was launching the album with a show at The Seahorse in Halifax.

“It was a huge learning experience, more so than the (the band’s debut album),” he explains. “The other one we actually learned about recording and stuff, but this one was just about actually making a product that we really believed in, that we weren’t going to look back on and want to change anything.

“We actually learned to play a lot better, we learned to play together a lot better and we learned what kind of music we can make as a group a lot better.”

It was a year in the making, and while Meisner is happy to have it off the band’s shoulders, he describes the making of Leave It Alone as the best experience he’s ever had.

Gloryhound, also featuring David Casey on guitar and vocals, Shaun Hanton on drums and Jeremy MacPherson on bass, formed when the members were still in high school. Initially named Gloryhound & The Skyhawks, the band also featured Adam Baldwin (now a member of El Torpedo).

Once Baldwin left the group, they dropped the second half of the band’s name and set out to tweak their sound.

Meisner says they wanted to develop a more focused rock sound.

“I think for us it was more finding where we had to be,” he explains. “I think we were always a rock band, it just took a while for us to all work out in the band all our different parts. We all listen to rock music, and it kind of coincided with what we were listening to at the time. It’s the funnest kind of music to play, really.”

Crowell, producer of Leave It Alone, had a big hand in helping Gloryhound fine tune its music.

“He brought a very similar viewpoint, he just knew how to put everything into action,” Meisner says. “His ears are incredible. And his experience in music is far beyond ours. He was kind of like a mentor, really.”

The album was recorded in The Sonic Temple and Echo Chamber, both in Halifax, and it was engineered by Charles Austin, Dave Ewenson and Darren Van Niekerk and mixed by Lil Thomas.

The album was released late last month and track Best I Can is the single currently at radio.

The band is planning a Maritime tour in January, before it heads back to Toronto in spring.

MNB holds membership drive Thursday

Music New Brunswick will hold its first ever membership drive this week. In the spirit of this campaign, MNB will present a night of local music with the goal of educating New Brunswick-based musicians about the role the organization plays, as well as its 2010 educational component line-up.

Since May, the association, under the leadership of executive director Jean Surette, has developed an educational component that offers free seminars on music industry related topics. For the past year, MNB has also helped artists showcase at the 2009’s East Coast Music Awards & Festival, as well as Contact East and Francofête.

MNB is a non-profit association that works to foster and support the New Brunswick music industry and relies on the support of its membership to run these programs and events.

The membership drive and concert featuring Escola de Samba Acadia, Fayo, Phil Flowers, Morse Code Alphabet and Les Païens takes place this Thursday at The Manhattan Bar & Grill, 125 Westmorland St., Moncton.

People interested in the association will have the opportunity to sign up as members or simply receive information regarding its events and activities. Admission to the event is $8.

My buddy Ken Kelley recently spoke with Surette regarding this event and more for his own website, so check that out here.

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(Dave Gunning recently released his seventh album, We’re All Leaving.)

We’re All Leaving is folk singer Dave Gunning’s seventh album and the first he can honestly say he enjoys from start to finish.

The Pictou County, N.S. native says he’s never a fan of his records once they’re finished, but We’re All Leaving is the exception.

“I usually only hear the mistakes,” he tells EastCoastNoise, adding that his latest record, released a few weeks ago, features better writing and production than his earlier work.

Gunning worked once again with producer Jamie Robinson, and the singer-songwriter is happy with the result.

“We’re done that first-date awkwardness,” Gunning says with a laugh.

Robinson also co-wrote some of the 11 tunes on We’re All Leaving. Other writing partners this time around included David Francey, Matt Andersen and Rose Cousins.

It’s a star-studded affair, but at the centre of it all is Gunning with his sparse folk sound and crystal clear lyrics that have made him a popular name along the east coast and into the U.S. and Europe over the last few years.

While most of the record features Gunning’s familiar storytelling and folk sound, the first single is a country rocker called Made on a Monday. Inspired by the idea that cars produced midweek are likely to be better than cars made just before or after a weekend, it describes how we all feel at different times in our lives.

With the economy still trying to rebound from a recession, the tune really hits home.

“It’s certainly how I feel sometimes,” Gunning says, “when nothing’s going right, and the pieces just don’t fit. Writing the song was a lot of fun, coming up with different ways to describe that disjointed feeling.”

Gunning got his start in 1994 playing pubs and soon he was gigging with other musicians. His first album was released in 1997, but it wasn’t until 2003 that he really began focusing on his original material.

“Otherwise, I’d be 50 years old and still playing ‘The Gambler,’” he says with a laugh

Since releasing his debut album, Gunning has had a steady stream of success, garnering six Music Nova Scotia Awards and three East Coast Music Awards along the way.

This week finds Gunning still in the midst of his Atlantic Canadian tour for We’re All Leaving (see remaining dates below), and he has plans to tour western Canada as well as the United Kingdom once again.

In the midst of it all, the busy musician is already looking ahead to his next project, sort of a side project to his original work – a tribute to legendary east coast musician John Allan Cameron. Gunning performed on a recent tribute album to the artist, but he plans to release his own CD tribute to his musical hero.

Gunning, who says the first concert he attended featured Cameron and Stan Rogers, honoured both musicians on his latest album’s tune Big Shoes.

And while he’s in the middle of touring, Gunning is keeping a close eye on what’s happening back at home. His wife Sara is expecting the couple’s third child anytime now. While Gunning himself is on the road, other family members are on call in case baby decides to show up before Dad can get home.

For more on Dave Gunning, check out his website.

Here are Gunning’s remaining east coast tour dates:
Oct. 20 – Corner Brook, NL – Arts & Cultural Centre
Oct. 21 – Labrador West – Arts & Cultural Centre
Oct. 22 – Goose Bay, NL – Arts & Cultural Centre
Oct. 23 – Grand Falls, NL – Gordon Pinsent Centre for the Arts
Oct. 24 – Gander, NL – Joseph R Smallwood Centre for the Arts
Oct. 25 – Carbonear, NL – Princess Sheila Theatre
Oct. 26 – St. John’s, NL – Arts & Cultural Centre

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(Brenley MacEachern and Lisa MacIsaac of Madison Violet. Photo contributed.)

They changed producers, changed their sound (a bit, anyway) and even changed their name. But Lisa MacIsaac and Brenley MacEachern of Madison Violet (formerly Madviolet) still write and perform charming folk tunes with a bit of a pop flare and their stunning, trademark harmonies.

While Madison Violet is based in Toronto, the duo has strong roots in the east coast – MacEachern grew up in Kincardine, Ont., but spent much of her childhood in Nova Scotia and MacIsaac (a sister of Ashley MacIsaac) was raised in Creignish, N.S.

They’re actually in the middle of an east coast tour this week, and EastCoastNoise caught up with MacIsaac by phone from her Toronto loft shortly before the tour began to chat about the band’s seemingly never-ending road journey, recording their new album and songwriting.

“It’s exhausting, but I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she says when asked about Madison Violet’s touring. They have east coast dates and they’re following it up with dates in Ontario, Germany, Ireland, Denmark and more. “There’s less distractions, and I’m able to keep my thoughts in check.

“There are times when you just want to get the hell home,” she admits. “It’s rare. To me, that’s what the song, ‘The Ransom’ is about on our album (the just-released No Fool For Trying), one of those little moments when you just … you’ve had enough and you just want to get home and sleep in your own bed with your own pillow and there’s familiar sights and sounds. But knowing that I do have a home base in Toronto, that I do have a loft here, is comforting.”

The girls in Madison Violet aren’t strangers to traveling. They keep a busy worldwide touring schedule, and they even wrote their new album in a small villa they rented in Grenada. True east coasters, they find themselves at home near the sights and sounds of water – only in Grenada they have palm trees instead of pines and crystal-clear waters to swim in.

MacIsaac and MacEachern wrote their 2006 album Caravan in just that – a caravan. This time, they spent a month in Grenada (where they recently purchased some property).

“I find it’s challenging to write on the road because there is always a task at hand,” MacIsaac says.  “You’re thinking about the next show, or the next interview, getting to the next city. That’s our reasoning behind holing up in a camper van or in a villa some place near the water. It’s the tranquil serenity, the peace of not having to deal with work.”

On No Fool For Trying, the duo sheds its pop sound even more for a rootsier, alt-country/folk sound where their stunning voices truly shine.

“It happened naturally,” MacIsaac says of the more stripped-down sound. “I think our songwriting has progressively gotten rootsier. I think it was just a natural progression. We recorded two albums in the U.K., fairly big productions with John Reynolds, who very much has a stamp and a sound. His productions are very drum- and bass-oriented; he’s a drummer. We wanted to put something out that was a little more stripped down that would let the lyrics really shine through. Also we wanted something that was a little more indicative of our live show, which 90 per cent of the time is done as a duo.”

Madison Violet signed producer Les Cooper (Jill Barber, Meaghan Smith) up for the project.

“It was very strange to me to work with a different producer,” MacIsaac says. “We know John’s style, we know what to expect, we get each other. Les and I butted heads a little bit … or a lot, because I’m sure I was stuck in my ways and used to working one way, and it’s difficult to give up the reigns to a producer you haven’t worked with previously,” MacIsaac says.

“There were some points where we fought tooth and nail on some things. And sometimes I won, sometimes he won. In the end, I think what he came up with was a beautiful production. I wouldn’t change anything that he came up with. I think he did a great job, and he’s a brilliant producer.”

If MacIsaac and Cooper had difficulty at times, MacEachern brought a calm voice to the recording sessions.

“Brenley is a pretty even keel peacekeeper,” MacIsaac says. “I think we all had certain things we needed to learn about each other in the studio. You’re really vulnerable in the studio, you’re putting your heart on your sleeves and emotions run rampant. No matter who is producing, it would have been a really emotional experience, I’m sure.”

With the slightly altered sound came a slightly altered name. The duo went from Madviolet to Madison Violet in time for this new album simply because it suits their sound more.

For most of their east coast dates, MacIsaac and MacEachern are performing with a stand-up bassist (Adrian Lawryshyn). They’ll be joined by drummer Robin Pirson for their August date in Port Hawkesbury, N.S.

MacIsaac says more east coast dates are likely, but for now, here’s what they have coming up:

July 23 – Harmony House Theatre, Hunter River, P.E.I.
July 24 – The Company House, Halifax, N.S.
July 25 – Harmony Bazaar Festival, Lockeport, N.S.
July 26 – Lift the Wind Concert Series – St. Margaret’s Bay, N.S.
Aug. 9 – Granville Green – Port Hawkesbury, N.S.

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(Jessica Rhaye. Photo contributed.)

Six years passed between Jessica Rhaye’s debut self-titled album and her 2006 follow-up, Short Stories.

She wasn’t about to let that happen again, and the singer-songwriter from Saint John has proved that by releasing her third album, Good Things, only three years after her sophomore effort.

“There was a huge gap between the first record and Short Stories, but I think that was because I was in school, and I think I really needed to take the time and mature and really own my craft of songwriting,” she tells EastCoastNoise. “And I wrote a lot of tunes that didn’t make Short Stories, so I had a lot of tunes left over, so the whole songwriting process didn’t take quite as long.

“But yeah, I’d definitely like to keep moving at this pace.”

Rhaye’s third album is a more acoustic-based, stripped-down affair than Short Stories was. The new album, released independently only a few weeks ago, came out of a tour of England Rhaye did with New Brunswick’s Matt Andersen and Nova Scotia’s Dave Gunning a few years ago.

Usually when Rhaye performs, she does so with just her vocals and an acoustic guitar, so she decided to take that approach on Good Things.

“I was (in England) by myself, and we were each doing our own solo acoustic shows,” Rhaye says. “It was going along really well, and I think people were looking to buy the music as they had heard it. And at the time, I was playing a lot of the new tunes which are on the new record. That’s kind of where it started. I thought maybe it was time that I record something that sounds like what I do acoustic.”

Rhaye’s earlier efforts weren’t over-produced, but they had a bit of a pop sheen that is less present on the new record.
The new album, produced by Ed Woodsworth in Cape Breton, features a few of Rhaye’s earlier tunes which she wanted to revamp a bit, as well as a cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses,” which has been a staple of Rhaye’s live show for some time.

“I brought back Time Out, which was on my very first record. I just thought it would work well with the new tunes, and I kind of thought it was time to bring it back and, I don’t know, kind of make it a little bit more mature sounding, which I think it does … (I) got rid of the children’s laughing. And I brought back Holding Out (from Short Stories) too, which is kind of funny. It’s probably the version which we should have started out with first because it’s kind of the root of the song. On Short Stories, we did the more produced, almost dance version of the song.”

Rhaye wrote some of the new album herself, but she relied on help from songwriter friends – or “song doctors” as she calls them – Dave Gunning, Ken Tobias and Asif Illyas (Mir) for others she co-wrote.

And for the title track, Rhaye met up with legendary Canadian songwriter Ron Sexsmith.

“I was definitely nervous,” she says of working with Sexsmith when he was in New Brunswick for some gigs. “But once I got talking to him and kind of settled into the songwriting mode it was no big deal really. It was a big deal, but it wasn’t as nerve-wracking as I thought it would be. He really brought that song around. I had a verse and sort of a chorus and he really helped me fix up the chorus and he helped me write the second verse and he wrote the bridge, so he really brought that song around.”

With Good Things now out, Rhaye has some summer concert dates lined up, a proper fall tour and even some possible gigs planned for outside the east coast.

She also has a DVD called Good Things From The Stage in the works. Produced by Hemmings House Pictures, it will feature live performances, interview footage and behind-the-scenes clips from the making of Good Things.

“We were in Riverview last June when we did the live recording part of it. It was originally just supposed to be an EPK, a press release we would send around to different people to try and book shows so they could see what I do live.”

The project quickly turned into something more expansive that Rhaye hopes will be released as soon as next month.

A sample of the new DVD along with tons of other information on Rhaye can be found at her new online home here.

Rhaye’s upcoming dates include:

June 26 – The Mason Jar Speak Easy & Cabaret – Sussex, NB
July 4 – Harmony House – Hunter River, PEI
July 11 – Salty Jam Festival – Saint John, NB
Aug. 16 – Outdoor Ampitheatre – Cambridge Narrows, NB
Sept 2. – The Carleton – Halifax, NS
Nov. 13 – Brush of Hope Event at the Delta Brunswick – Saint John, NB
Nov. 20 – Capitol Theatre – Moncton, NB

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Through Sonic Records, Warner distributes acts like Matt Mays & El Torpedo, The Novaks, Hey Rosetta! and Nathan Wiley.

Plus, Atlantic Canadian acts such as Great Big Sea and Buck 65 are signed to Warner. On top of that, Warner has released a handful of albums under the banner of the Atlantic Standards series, compiled by the east coast’s award winning Warner Music rep John Poirier. The albums have featured traditional artists such as The Rankin Family, J.P. Cormier and Dave Gunning.

Poirier’s latest project is a little more cutting edge, however.

Released last month, Atlantic Voices is a compilation of some of the best and brightest female singer-songwriters from Atlantic Canada. Featuring Julie Doiron, Rose Cousins, Christina Martin, Ruth Minnikin and more, the album features 14 tracks, from folk to rock.

It’s a labour of love for the record label representative and music fan, who says he has the full support of Rhino Records, who released the album, and Warner, who is distributing it.

“I think Warner recognizes that that this region is top-heavy with talent and has afforded me the opportunity to go out and do projects like this,” he told EastCoastNoise recently. “Warner, at the end of the day, is still a business. They would not be encouraging me to do Atlantic Voices if the previous efforts had not done well.”

Poirier says he reached out to east coast singer-songwriters in particular for this new collection because he’s noticed in the last two or three years just how many “really interesting and talented women singer-songwriters were coming out of the Atlantic region. It’s overwhelming.”

He says he had enough songs for a double-album, but that would have been a tougher sell to music fans who are curious and might pay for a single CD but wouldn’t fork out the extra dollars for a double album.

“It’s to show the rest of Canada how diverse the talent pool is in Atlantic Canada,” Poirier says of the collection. “It runs the whole gamut from traditional, bluesy artists such as Catherine MacLellan right to alternative artists such as Rebekah Higgs and Julie Doiron. And I think the package succeeds in that regard.”

Most of the artists on the record are independent or on labels not affiliated with Warner, though Meaghan Smith is signed to the label and Amelia Curran and Jenn Grant have distribution deals with Six Shooter Records, which is affiliated with the major label.

Atlantic Voices starts off in a traditional vein and works its way to more alternative or rock-based sounds.

Jenn Grant, a singer-songwriter originally from Prince Edward Island, painted the Atlantic Voices album cover. Veteran New Brunswick reporter Bob Mersereau, who has been writing about east coast music for years and who put together the book The Top 100 Canadian Albums, wrote the liner notes for the album.

Poirier says he has another project in mind for sometime down the road which may compile tunes from some of the east coast’s many rock and pop bands.

Atlantic Voices is in stores now.

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(The Novaks, left-right, Mark Neary, Elliot Dicks and Mick Davis. Photo contributed.)

Mick Davis bemoans the loss of spontaneity and of real guitar heroes in rock music. The Novaks singer and guitarist says technology allowing bands to fake things in the studio to get a perfect sounding recording is killing emotion and feel in rock music today.

But Davis hopes his Newfoundland band can help change that.

“Singers today in these power-pop, whatever you call them, punk groups on the radio, they never sing through a whole track, you know, or at least it doesn’t sound like it to me,” he says. “Because of ProTools, they can sing the chorus, and if they get it right the first time, they cut-and-paste it into the other two places where the chorus is.

“Instead of, when you listen to a Lenny Kravitz song, when he goes, ‘ooh yeah,’ or ‘rock on, guitar solo,’ you don’t hear that anymore because nobody’s actually sang through the whole take, and you’ve lost all that feel and improv, you know. And it really sucks. There’s no guitar solos on the radio anymore … there’s no guitar heroes. That video game is huge now, and I think that might be in our corner,” he says with a laugh.

“I’m not saying I’m a guitar hero, but at least there’s guitars prominently on the album.”

Davis was chatting with EastCoastNoise recently about The Novaks new album, Things Fall Apart (Sonic/Warner), which was released two weeks ago. The trio’s sophomore effort comes four years after the band’s self-titled debut, a long time for any band to wait around.

Tonight at The Rock House in St. John’s, the band hosts an official CD release show.

Apart from a concert here and there, the band has mostly laid low since touring finished for its debut a few years back.

But a lot has changed for the group. Most notably, guitarist Chuck Tucker left The Novaks prior to the recording of Things Fall Apart last year, leaving Davis (vocals, guitar), Mark Neary (bass, vocals) and Elliot Dicks (drums) a trio.

“Just before we made the record, (Chuck) said he had a job offer and he wasn’t sure he was gonna do, so we said ‘Well, if you’re going to leave, you should leave now before you put your face on the album.’ That wasn’t any big deal or anything, he just wanted to go that way and we said, ‘Well, best to ya.’

“We all sort of knew that he’d sort of go off that way, be a regular person,” Davis continues. “He got a great job offer and I think he’s more of the type that would like a family and a house and all that. The rest of us are crazy. I don’t think he was so meant for the road as the rest of us.”

It takes a special type of person – or a crazy one, as Davis describes – to want to live a life on the road. While the hour or two each night of playing to fans is supposed to make the lifestyle worth it, many bands will tell you living away from family, friends and your own bed gets to you after a while.

“You’ve got to not mind scrounging, just going in the hole, making it work no matter what,” Davis says. “Everyone else in the group now will do whatever it takes. When we’re home we play gigs or do whatever work we have to do to keep it going, but we will never latch on to anything that will keep us here.

“You’ve got to be crazy in a sense; you’ve got to believe in it. I can’t do anything else, I have to do this. Sometimes, you, in a town like this, like St. John’s, you hang around with so many people who play .. it’s a real close-knit scene and everything, but sometimes you forget that most of the people you’re with are not going to be doing this forever, you know. A lot of groups or bands start in college and when they get their degree, it’s over. That’s not us. The Novaks or bust for me.”

Davis says he’s always known the rock n’ roll lifestyle was for him.

“I never went to school. I had a couple little jobs that didn’t last very long, washing dishes one time when it got really bad. Besides that, it’s been from playing for pizza to playing for $50 to being in all the papers and playing for nothing,” he says, laughing.

The singer says playing as a three-piece has forced The Novaks to work harder and it’s made them a better band because of it. In the last few years, the band has gotten to be more business savvy as well.

“The new record to me is very honest, for me. It was just songs that I wrote, you woke up in the morning and this is what came out, whereas the first record was sort of … when I wrote those songs I didn’t even know that we’d ever make a record. There are songs on there where the influence is on the sleeve. Like, I think I have a Rolling Stones song, so I’m going to write one like that.’”

But the band has come into its own on Things Fall Apart, 12 tracks of classic rock n’ roll sounds that wouldn’t sound out of place next to old Tom Petty records.

Davis doesn’t deny his influences, but he says he gets tired of hearing comparisons to Petty, The Rolling Stones and other bands.

“The Rolling Stones and Tom Petty always come up with us,” he says. “And that’s fine because people love those guys. That’s no insult or anything. But it just gets tired after a while.

“The key is longevity because then they’ll start comparing young bands to you. That happened to us really early on. I remember somebody getting one of those (Canadian Music Week) report cards from ChartAttack, there was a young band and they said that they sound like us. It was like, ‘Jesus, we just got here ourselves. They were probably highly insulted,” Davis says with a laugh.

Davis, wanting to get away from comparisons to other bands, actually didn’t want one of the new album’s tunes, ‘Under Those Wheels,’ to be on it as it sounds too much like a tune by The Faces, ‘You’re So Rude.’

But Gordie Johnson (Big Sugar, Grady), who helped the band out on the new record, loved the tune and threw in his bid to keep it on the record. He went so far as to play the tune for his neighbour in Austin, TX, Ian McLagan, keyboardist for The Faces.

McLagan liked the tune and agreed to play keyboard on it. Needless to say, Davis put his concerns aside and the tune is on the album.

“So if anyone says, ‘you ripped off the Faces,’ I can say, ‘well, one of the Faces is on it,’” he laughs.

The Novaks host its CD release show tonight at The Rock House in St. John’s, and the band’s next Maritime date will see the group on a bill with The Trews, Thornley, Econoline Crush and headliners KISS on July 18 on the Halifax Common.

For Davis, the gig is a bit of a dream come true. He says growing up he was a huge KISS fan.

“The other guys, no … me, yes,” he admits. “I was a maniac. I think most kids were about KISS. Not so much anymore, but I’ve got a soft spot for them. If you’d told me about this when I was 10 years old, I’d have shit my pants. But the boys, Mark and Eliot never listened to a KISS record in their lives.”

Going forward, Davis is just looking to play for people again and promote the new album. The band has Ontario dates with Matt Mays & El Torpedo and a reunited Change of Heart over the next few weeks.

A video will also be shot for the band’s single “There Goes The Night.”

If you haven’t heard the new album yet, Davis says it represents just how The Novaks sound on stage, playing scrappy, guitar-based rock n’ roll.

“I’m proud of the record, but it was made in 10 days,” he says. “Ideally, I’d love to go in and make a Beatles record and spend a year on it, but if I look at it like, ‘Well this represents the group live,’ then I have no qualms with it. It’s full of flubs, full of mistakes. We didn’t use a meter, drummer didn’t play to a click, nothing like that. It’s very real. It’s going to be tough competing on the radio with all the robotic, sort of sterile stuff, but hopefully it’ll help change it.”

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(Moncton-based singer-songwriter Melanie Keith will release her debut album this week. Photo contributed.)

Moncton singer-songwriter Melanie Keith promised me just over a year ago that her debut solo effort would be released in June.

She didn’t lie, but I was expecting she meant June of last year and not June of 2009.

Another year has passed, but finally – officially – Melanie Keith & The Strombachs will release its seven-song debut this week with a show at Moncton’s Empress Theatre on Thursday.

The release has been marred by delays and disasters.

After recording with Moncton songwriter and producer Robin Anne Ettles in 2004 for the Imitating Hercules project, Keith started her solo project, The Strombachs.

Fast forward to 2007 and Keith recorded her debut album, which soon had to be scrapped due to a serious production error. The album was tracked and ready to be mixed, but there were problems with what the studio delivered for tracks to the mixer. The studio refused to fix the problem, and Keith was left with tracks that were unusable.

She ended up getting a grant to help fund the album, but it wound up only covering the cost of the initial, unusable recording.

When she was finally able to re-record the album, with Ettles producing and playing every instrument but drums (Al Bourgeois), Keith had no money left to have the CDs manufactured.

“It’s killed me to make all of these decisions all the way along,” she said in an interview this week. “It really has. It’s embarrassing. You do an interview or you say something’s coming out and it doesn’t happen … but by the same token, it was a really good decision because things that have led up and have happened since then have kind of made it more useful to be releasing it now.

“I think things kind of got fast-tracked really fast for me in 2005. We entered this battle of the bands thing, and we won it and there was pressure to get an album out, and I didn’t even have time to sit and think of where I wanted to go or develop myself as an artist.”

Since that time, Keith says her sound has drifted a bit from pop-rock to an Americana sound in the vein of Lucinda Williams and Sheryl Crow.

She’s also started her own record label, MerleSong Records, and she has national distribution through Fontana North/Universal Music and online through MapleMusic.

A lot has happened, and Keith admits she’s both nervous and excited for Thursday’s CD release show. For it, Keith is arranging to have the hour-long show broadcast on her website. She will also Twitter throughout the day so fans can keep track of the CD release chaos.

“I’m nervous more about all that technical stuff because I’ve never done it before,” she says. “So I just hope that it all works.”

She’ll also be shooting a video over the next few days for one of the tunes from the new album.

In addition to playing all the shows she can around the east coast, Keith is preparing a cross-Canada and potential U.S. tour for the fall. She’s even in early discussions to possibly tour the U.K.

The Strombachs were also chosen to be one of about 45 bands showcasing at the Contact East convention Oct. 1-4 in Moncton, which could land her more gigs.

In the meantime, she has an album to release.

“I just hope it’s worth waiting for,” she says with a laugh.

Watch Keith’s CD release show online here Thursday at 6 p.m. If you’re in Moncton, the show is free to attend.

Here are Melanie Keith & The Strombach’s upcoming tour dates:

Thursday, June 11 – The Empress – Moncton, N.B.
Friday, June 12 – Relay For Life in Moncton, N.B.
Saturday, June 13 – Ruthie’s Pub & Eatery – Victoria, P.E.I.
Friday, June 19 – Sessions Café – Rothesay, N.B.
Friday, June 26 – Bridge Street Café – Sackville, N.B.
Tuesday, June 30 – The Capital – Fredericton, N.B.
Saturday, July 25 – O’Brien’s – Riverview, N.B.
Saturday, Aug. 22 – GreenFest – Clairville, N.B.

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