Ron Hawkins at The Horseshoe

If you come here often, or even once in a while, you might have noticed that I'm a big, big fan of Ron Hawkins. I enjoy all of his incarnations and bands including The Lowest of the Low, The Rusty Nails, his solo work and his latest offerings with The Do Good Assassins. Across all these projects, Ron shows himself as an accomplished, prolific and gifted songwriter. As I've said before, I think he's one of the best songwriters Canada has produced. Perhaps it's fitting that this last post of 2013 is about one of my absolute favourite artists.

It was great to be able to see Ron again in a live, full band environment that included tunes outside of the Low catalog. In fact, they only hit up one Low tune, "Salesmen, Cheats and Liars" from the iconic Shakespeare, My Butt. 

Unfortunately, I missed his most recent release, Rome, with The Do Good Assassins, so much of the set was unfamiliar to me. No matter; it was awesome.

The Do Good Assassins are Ron, plus outstanding, mostly finger-style guitar player Steve Singh; cello, flugelhorn and keyboard player Alex McMaster, who just might have found the inspiration to learn the harmonica; and the rock solid rhythm section of Derrick Brady and Jesse Capon on bass and drums respectively.

Highlights from the set for me were: "Straitjacket Love", "Saturday", the hard rocking "Bite Down Hard", "Spotlight", "Kingdom of the Sun" (which might be on a forthcoming EP if I heard that right), "Salesmen, Cheats and Liars" and "From the Alta Lima Hotel".

Check out some songs, and if you have the chance, go see Ron live. He's as great a performer as he is a songwriter.

"Bite Down Hard"

"Dead Man"

"Rome"

"Rusty Chain"

"Propellers"

Peter Elkas sings the blues at The Horseshoe

My night out at The Horseshoe Tavern on December 19 continued with the blues stylings of Peter Elkas and his band.

Being as focused on the indie-alternative thing as I am means that I don't listen to a lot of blues bands, although Indie Week and TURF turned up my awareness of more rootsy bluesy bands. It was good to let some blues back into my ears.

Speaking of Indie Week, I recognized Peter's keyboard player Jeff Heisholt instantly from seeing Little Foot Long Foot at Cherry Cola's. He's also in the Trews, and the Skydiggers touring band, so I guess he's a busy guy. Great player, too.

Peter, if you're reading this, check out your web site. Chrome and AVAST won't let it render on my machine due to some virusy nastyness.

I can all but guarantee you won't get an infection from Peter Elkas' tunes. Check some out:

"Anticipation"

"Sweet Nancy"

"Fall Apart Again"

Lindy Vopnfjörð at The Horseshoe

I was at the historic Horseshoe Tavern to see a great triple bill on December 19. Up first was Lindy, a Manitoba native with Icelandic roots who played some solid rock tunes with great guitar tones. Some of the vocals and guitar atmospherics reminded me of Sigur Rós. Overall, some great tunes from a great band. I would definitely see these guys again.

Check out a bunch of tunes below. "The Limit" recently hit number 1 on CBC Radio 2. Other stand-outs from the show were "Dark Matter", "Warsaw's Blinking Lights" and "Lover Sister". The album Young Waverer came out in February 2013.

New clips from Yuck

Earlier this year, Yuck released their second album, Glow & Behold. Here are a couple of recent videos from the album.

The quiet and lovely "Somewhere".

The cute-filled "Lose My Breath"

and the tough-buy tennis video for the brilliant "Middle Sea"

They're here in Toronto at The Garrison on January 17.

Arthur Beatrice share Midland

London's Arthur Beatrice's début album Working Out is coming out February 3. I rather enjoyed this tune: "Midland". Hope you do, too.