For artists of the Folk persuasion in particular, playing in bars is fraught with frustrations. For one thing, they tend to be noisy, with a lot of other (and usually, in my opinion, completely unnecessary) distractions such as tvs broadcasting poker tournaments and occasionally actually real sporting events due to an obsession most owners have…
Monthly Archives: March 2013
Harpin’ Norm bails on Hirut open stages -Nicola Vaughan to keep Sundays going
Welcome to my world. After a few short weeks and after some enthusiastic reports about how well things were going, Harpin’ Norm Lucien has decided to end his involvement as host at Hirut for the two open stages I created there Wednesday evenings and Sunday afternoons. While it would appear that the Wednesday event that…
130331 Toronto Moon, Sun. March 31, 2022
Rick Gunn funeral & after-party Thurs. April 4
Lisa Gunn The daughter of Rock-Blues guitarist Rick Gunn, who passed away March 25 after an 18-month battle with cancer, has announced details of his funeral and an after-gathering. The service has been set for Thurs. April 4 at 1 p.m. and will be held at the R.S. Kane funeral home at 6150 Yonge St.…
Bear’s back and now teamed up with Kimberley Wetmore Saturday afternoons at Southside
Saturday afternoons at Southside Johnny’s in Etobicoke have been a bit of a mystery to me —and others such as club owner John Theodore— for the past few months since the host of the weekly 4-8 matinée, singer The Bear, suffered some medical relapses and was unavailable for several weeks going into the winter period.…
Celebrity players may help Shawn get some traction at monthly NTB jam tonight
It’s been a bit of a struggle for songwriter, open stage host and these days Etobicoke resident Shawn Sage out at the NTB Lounge on Lakeshore Blvd. near Islington the past few months. The club owner, Romaine, is a pleasant lady but priorities seem to change there regularly and she seems to have zero promotional…
Haggis at Easter? It’s the weekend special at Hugh’s Room
It’s been about a decade since I last saw riotous Celtic-Rock troupe Enter The Haggis perform and for most of that time I really hadn’t heard much about them playing anywhere on the GTA bar circuit, so if you’d asked me about them last week I would have told you I assumed they were extinct.…
130330 Toronto Moon, Sat. March 30, 2022
Keys & Gauci bringing Boogie Woogie to changing Linsmore
One of Ontario’s oldest extant taverns, the Linsmore Hotel tap room at 1298 Danforth Ave. in East York must have been doing something right to stay open all those years. But nowadays the room is evolving into a different space (though the bathrooms, which would never pass code if the place were opening nowadays, are…
Randy kicks off regular weekly karaoke at Karla’s Roadhouse with Good Friday show
We told you last week [see article March 23] about the new Karla’s Roadhouse that is all the buzz in West Hill since opening its doors in December of last year. The room at 4630 Kingston Rd. has already been given an enthusiastic thumbs up in a review in Pub Magazine, which is distributed all…
Music writer remembers Rick Gunn
by Diane Wells SPECIAL TO TORONTO MOON MAGAZINE I first met guitarist Rick “Boogieman” Gunn in March 2002 at the ill-fated Blues on Bellair club in Toronto, co-owned by Peter and Diane Jermyn. He was sitting in with the Paul Fenton Band for a live recording. At that time I had mentioned to him that…
130328 Toronto Moon, Thurs. March 28, 2022
Artists join Kyp Harness tonight to cover his tunes
Upon first hearing passionate and highly literate songwriter (and author) Kyp Harness perform almost 20 years ago at the old Ultrasound bar I instantly became a fan. Back then he was a quite quirky lyricist whose persona and writing was reminiscent of Bob Dylan in many ways. His sometimes zany but brilliant similes and metaphors…
The Dog is Loaded with pretty fine talents Wednesdays
It was nearly 1 a.m. by the time I finally got to The Loaded Dog in Scarborough last Wednesday and having visited a couple of other rooms where their open mics had been sparsely attended (St. Patrick’s Day-weekend hangover no doubt) I feared I might have missed my chance to catch the musical action at…
R.I.P. guitarist Rick “Smiley” Gunn
It wasn’t easy during the past two years to tell whether or not guitarist Rick “Have Strat Will Travel” Gunn was in pain from the cancer that infected his back or not. It wasn’t that he particularly went out of his way to hide the pain —it was that the lanky-jawed duck-tailed Rock ‘n’ Roller,…
130327 Toronto Moon, Wed. March 27, 2022
Tuesdays are often lively at Rusty Nail jam
Like any jam or open stage, you can never really predict what Tuesday nights will bring at the event hosted weekly at Rusty Nail in East York by affable songwriter Kevin Davies. The bar attracts a diverse clientele, ranging from scruffy-shoed locals magnetized by the cheap drink prices, to well-off professionals who dote on friendly…
Well worth making a night of it at 3 clubs with shows on Danforth at Broadview
It’s officially Spring and it almost feels like it with the sun shining and most of the snow in my backyard just (for the moment at least) a bad memory rather than an eye-glazing ubiquity. And while the evening will be cool, it should be dry too, so I’m thinking it’s well worth making an…
Genres get Bent but never broken Mondays at Relish
Though described as a “Swampy Blues Band” in some of the promo for its Monday night residency at East York music and food emporium Relish, Bentroots goes way beyond the swamp in its rollicking and deftly delivered repertoire. [See also article from January 21]. Fronted by guitarist Nicholas Balkou, the group seems to define Blues…
130325 Toronto Moon, Mon. March 25, 2022
Jeff Healey’s Jazz Wizards reunite this afternoon at The Rex to celebrate his birthday & tribute
This coming Tuesday would have been Blues and Jazz phenom Jeff Healey’s 47th birthday had he not been felled five years ago this month by cancer, which had been the bane of his life. (As an infant he had to have both eyes removed and replaced with artificial ones as a result of rare retinoblastoma.)…
Erstwhile Mynahs reunite for Junction All-Stars jam in The Hole this aft.
The group known as The New Mynah Birds may be no more, having disbanded a couple of months or so ago on friendly terms, but that’s not stopping the three core members of the group from performing together on a regular basis. Meet: The Erstwhile Birds!? lol Just last week lead-singing Bird Nicole “Nikki” Dunn…
