By Will McGuirk
“if we're heading towards something bad, let's head towards it slowly." - Devon Bate, The Weather Holds
Slowcity.ca Open Mic: Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Hayden, Charlotte Cornfield, Braids, LA Priest, The Matinee, and Marcus Lowry
By Will McGuirk
“When I wrote this song I was thinking about the idea of leaving things behind as a part of moving on - those painful past experiences that cause a pang of embarrassment and regret, the people who were at one point a central part of my life with whom I've fallen out of orbit - and how we can't really sever ties with our past selves no matter how hard we try.” - Charlotte Cornfield
“Everyone has a past, and everyone has a secret they’d rather keep than spill.” - The Matinee
Hayden, photo by Robert Georgeff
Slowcity.ca Open Mic: Hayden, Braids, Sunnsetter, Abigail Lapell, Alex Whorms, The Matinee, Jacques Greene, and TEKE::TEKE
By Will McGuirk
“Reminding myself that surely everything is alright, even when I’ve tricked myself into believing otherwise.” - Sunnsetter
Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Career Boy, Braids, Elvis Costello, Billy F Gibbons, Mike Edel, summersets, Justin Rutledge, Donovan Woods, and Real Estate
By Will McGuirk
“For me it's usually the emotional and sonic qualities of a song that catch me first and the rest of it later. After getting deep into the lyrics I enjoy that it's calling out the fake and the shallow; I like doing that in my songs. So this one goes out to the influencers.” - Mike Edel
Joseph Shabason, photo by Colin Medley
Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Josh Tavares, Joseph Shabason, Braids, Katelyn Biehn, Sia Shells, Real Estate, Bealby Point, Show Me The Body, and Manchester Orchestra
By Will McGuirk
Can one dream without guilt, should one create without commerce, why just make when making a difference is of more import.? We look to the artist but who does the artist look to, to oneself, to one’s family, to one’s heritage, to one’s home. . .
“Cuz everytime that I get sad, I get so scared I'll fall into my past” - Con Man, Josh Tavares
“Upon receiving DJ Python’s remix of our track Young Buck, my pining for the dance floor kicked in, I pulled my car over to an empty parking lot and turned the volume up as far as it could go. Alone beside the concrete barriers of a now desolate shopping mall, I was reminded of bodies beside bodies, of a night that you never want to end, of sweat, of joy. For a moment I was transported from my new and uncomfortable reality: distanced, living through a pandemic, to memories streaming behind my closed eyes, of a life lived prior, and one that will be lived again. This track offers the fuel needed to keep going, the energy needed to stay hopeful. When I close my eyes and dance to it in my living room, I am at the club and the club is with me.” - Braids
“Life keeps changing and additional responsibilities and stresses keep being added, but this band is still here. When I was writing a lot of these songs, I was feeling a little weird about being in a band. Like, ‘how is this still a thing?’ I was feeling silly about it and then coming around to it at the same time. This is what we’re good at and it’s what we love to do and want to keep doing. I don’t want to do anything else.” - Martin Courtney, Real Estate
"During this isolation we had to recalibrate. Recalibrate both how we exist as a band and how we cultivate power within our community. Our live performance is not just a moment for us, it’s our weapon, our language, and our ceremony. Without it, we had to reconfigure how we interact with our community. We established CORPUS headquarters. With our team, we started CORPUS Family, a branch of CORPUS focused on community initiatives; Burning World Book Club, a clothing drive, and a studio residency. We are preparing CORPUS Self-Defense initiatives as well as open jam sessions as soon as safety will allow for it. We built a studio in our headquarters. Survive is the first project to be written and recorded top to bottom in the CORPUS studio. The songs deal with spiritual and physical isolation, as well as staying ready and preparing for the next time we come together." - Show Me The Body
“Bed Head is two old friends existing in two separate realities. It’s a conversation about the lives they lived, the consequences of life’s decisions, and finding purpose in trying to be better.” - Andy Hull, Manchester Orchestra
Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Braids, Paul Kelly and Paul Grabowsky, Chris Bell, Jill Barber, Hello Moth, Satellite and The Harpoonist, Mallory Chipman & the Mystics, and Just Costa
By Will McGuirk
Like the best of digging in a record store is getting something you didn’t know you needed. A record store should be the physical version of the zeitgeist. Here at slowcity.ca we aim to be the same online, we open the mic to pretty well anyone but today’s line-up is one of the most eclectic mixes in some time. Shout out to the acts and PR reps who continue to surprise us with their fab recommendations and support.
“Here 4 U is a song about love, about a fleeting relationship, about the aftermath, and about the desire to be there for someone in a new light. “The fear of love, the fear of what it means to give, and what it takes, to protect it.” It’s the swirling thoughts as love falls apart, and the pillars to hold on to throughout.” - Braids
Braids, photo by Melissa Gamache
Slowcity.ca open mic with Zoon, Braids, Indigo Girls, Sarah Jarosz, Noah Reid, half•alive, Davis & The Love Gear, Juke Ross, Grizzly Coast, and The Prairie States,
By Will McGuirk
Take this moment and nail it to the wall. Take every moment and nail it to the wall. Not because its your last but because it isn’t and years from now you will look for it and it will be there for you to tear off and recall and smile.
Jaunt, photo by Sylvain Chaussée
Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Jaunt, Braids, Midnight Vesta, Forces, Scott Goodwin, Harrow Fair, Nation of Language and the Lovely Eggs
By Will McGuirk
Its become quickly about those who are making art for art’s sake. The infrastructure around delivering music live was breaking, it may be broken forever now. But like the murmuring of starlings the fragments may coalesce into “something familiar” and it may be the artists themselves who figure this out, the makers not the managers. Dig in. think, wash your hands.
“The song is an optimistic ballad about what it means to be present. We hope it can spark a bit of joy and encouragement for those who listen in these strange times that we are collectively experiencing. In a way, the song feels mysteriously prescient for the moment. Hope everyone is staying safe, connecting with their loved ones, and keeping their head up.” - Jaunt
“‘Snow Angel’ was written in the immediate wake of the 2016 US election, as our collective conscience took a sharp inhale. It’s a diary entry of sorts – a snapshot of the mind grappling with our era’s endless barrage of content and destruction, continents away and close to home. *This* moment, with our world in the midst of a pandemic, is admittedly a new context. But I can’t help but sense the song speaks to feelings many of us are experiencing – uncertainty, angst and a desperate desire to make sense of it all. - Braids
“The only way for time to be wasted on lost love is to refuse to examine it and learn something about yourself. “I’ll Have Another” is a coming of age story, showing the growth that comes from owning your mistakes.” - Midnight Vesta
"‘September Again’ is about struggling with the feeling that with each passing year you're only becoming a worse version of yourself—less capable of wonder or grand ambition, less sure of your footing in your own life. I used to just pick up a book like 'Crime and Punishment' or a detailed history of the Italian campaign in WWII. Those kinds of artistic/academic adventures now feel so much more daunting for some reason. There is a grit that is required to relentlessly pursue these things like I used to, and I can feel that part of me slipping. I tell myself it's simply because I've picked a lane in life and I only have so much time, but there is always the nagging suspicion that I have, in reality, deteriorated in some meaningful way. The song comes out of this war within myself where one part of me is desperately wanting to get back there, while another part is only looking to what lies ahead in the life I’ve made for myself.” - Ian Devaney
Slowcity.ca Open Mic pre-future edition with Braids, Dralms, Loving, Caveboy, Lord Dying, Nikki Yanofsky, Laila Biali and The Revivalists
By Will McGuirk
The future is inevitable, even the day after the Groundhog, round and round and round again, even after palindrome dates - back and forward, to and fro, but the sun rises and the mellow days of a waning winter approach, the endlessness ends and in the waxing we wait for the inevitable breaking of Spring. Perhaps earlier in this year of hindsight, perhaps earlier than ever. The sameness is no longer.
“Why is it that where we were or what we had isn’t clear until it’s gone and over? In the end, has the story written itself?” - Dralms
“The video was filmed on location in the countries that made up former Yugoslavia. It highlights both the beauty and strangeness of Spomenik (WW2) monuments, some of which have been forgotten by the sands of time.” - Lord Dying
“Forget is about being underestimated, overlooked and doubted, but prevailing. Going from the butt of a joke to being impossible to ignore, being everywhere (like a meme!). A song for the haters.” - NIkki Yanofsky
“I believe that nothing is wasted, that even life's greatest challenges can produce something meaningful, even if only to make us more aware of and empathetic to the struggles of those around us.” - Laila Biali