Songwriters Cirlce at The Frolic
NOTE: For those who weren’t refunded for the previous songwriters show that was postponed due to covid, your tickets are valid for this event. Please call/text Dan at 1-902-412-8888 to confirm
An evening of songs and stories featuring:
Mike McKenna Jr.
Dreamy, introspective songwriting with a backdrop of Americana and indie-folk soundscapes. Inspired by true stories and common folklore of isolated, working-class island life in the North Atlantic.
Jordan Musycsyn
Jordan is a hard working singer/songwriter, is a masterful storyteller writing songs about life and love with pathos and humour in a Folk-Country style. A dynamic performer, Jordan moves the audience from laughter to tears and back again.
Wayne Bedecki
Wayne is a singer/songwriter from Glace Bay, Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island who now resides in Halifax. Currently working on his debut album. His songwriting touches audiences with honesty and vulnerability, along side a smooth Indie Folk sound to create a melodic connection.
Kitchen open till 9PM, and full bar service till midnight. Ages 19+
Tap Take Over Songwriters Circle – POSTPONED
POSTPONED – CREDITS AND OR REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED
Back By Popular Demand with a Sold Out Show Last Year, Sociable Entertainment and The Frolic & Folk Presents
Breton Brewing Tap Take Over Songwriters Circle with Jordan Musycysn, Mike McKenna Jr, & Carmen Townsend
Madison Violet – POSTPONED
POSTPONED – CREDIT OR REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED
After 20 years together, Juno nominated singer-songwriting duo, Madison Violet, are as much wanderers as they are musicians. It is a career filled with endless roads stretching into the horizon, winding through changing landscapes, each kilometer traveled carrying with it the promise of inspiration. Perhaps that is the secret of what has made Madison Violet such an enduring band. Because with each new town, each new venue, their curiosity grows, their love of music deepens, their desire to push musical boundaries expands.
It is believed that the spark that ignited Madison Violet’s irrepressible curiosity came from an unlikely source; while sitting in Brenley’s grandmother’s kitchen in Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, filled to bursting with family, friends, instruments (and maybe even a foe or two), and miles from their adopted home of Toronto, Ontario, two musicians looked at each over the flickering light of the old wood stove and knew that theirs would be an unconventional journey. Inspired by their heritage, emboldened by their vision, Lisa MacIsaac and Brenley MacEachern decided that they would create a sound that would have it’s roots in their past while continually exploring new sounds. From the beginning, the multi-instrumentalists have carried authenticity with them like a talisman, writing all of their own music and lyrics, believing that the best way to connect to their audiences was to treat them like old friends sharing a secret and a smile. As vocalists they have an innate ability to break your heart, slyly knowing that their soaring harmonies will mend it, often all in the span of one song.
The shared belief in themselves and their fearlessness to follow their dreams did eventually pay off and accolades and awards soon became synonymous with Madison Violet; including a Juno nomination, a Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Vocal Group Album of the Year and a Critic’s Choice Award from Country Music People’s Magazine. Their songs have been featured in the notorious music magazine MOJO’s Top 10 Playlist, and received a mass of acclaim from outlets such as the BBC, the CBC, Maverick Magazine and NPR, and have earned the duo the Grand Prize in the Maxell John Lennon Song Writing Contest (which was voted on by a panel of distinguished artists including Elton John, Tim McGraw, Black Eyed Peas, Fergie, John Legend, Enrique Iglesias and Mary J.Blige). Madison Violet were on Germany’s WDR’s list of ‘Best Bands of All Time’ and with a bit of a departure from their rootsy sound, their single ‘These Ships’ was released in 2014 on one of the largest dance labels in the U.S., Ultra Records, garnering over 1,000,000 plays on Spotify. Madison Violet has 9 studio albums to their credit including the new Christmas classic “Sleigh Bells in the Snow” featuring their friend and collaborator Ron Sexsmith, singing on Frosty the Snowman.
In March 2019, Madison Violet will release their latest album “Everything’s Shifting”. The album is a heartfelt examination of how memory can splinter a heart, how loss shapes perspective and how sometimes, no matter how hard you try, you can’t have love without regret. It is an album to be listened to on the open road, with the windows rolled down: a love letter to their fans, from two wanderers who continue to follow the melodies wherever they lead.
Lloyd Spiegel – POSTPONED
POSTPONED – CREDIT OR REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED
Somewhere between songwriter, social worker and truth-seeker, sits 11X Australian Blues Award winner, Lloyd Spiegel. Named one of the top Australian guitarists of all time, Lloyd blends comedy, storytelling and jaw-dropping guitar chops to provide one of the most unique, solo, acoustic concert experiences in the world.
Picking up the guitar at age 4 and playing his first professional show at age 10, Lloyd can’t remember a time before playing guitar. By 16 he was on tour in the United States and has since performed at major festivals and iconic Juke Joints around the globe. He has supported the likes of Ray Charles, Bob Dylan and Etta James on tour and has sat with the founding fathers of modern blues including Brownie McGhee, who taught him the most important part of being a blues musician: connecting with everyday people.
Growing up in the music business, Lloyd is passionate about promoting the blues scene and mentoring the next generation. He has taken countless young artists under his wing who have since become multi-award winning performers in their own right and he has been an advocate for blues in Australia.
Quotes:
“A revelation, the consummate performer, an Oz Blues & Roots icon.” – Rolling Stone Australia
“A guitarist almost without peer, Spiegel deconstructs how the blues guitar is supposed to operate, makes sweet love to it, then kicks it out the back door” .– Australian Guitar Player Magazine
“Lloyd Spiegel…guitar magic and great stories. This show is value for money! Go, be amazed!”– Terry Seguin, CBC
Steve Poltz (all ages show 4PM) – POSTPONED
POSTPONED – CREDIT OR REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED
Throughout over three decades in music, Steve Poltz did it all and more—often shared by way of his rockin’ countrified folk slices of sardonic Americana (hatched in Halifax). Of course, he co-wrote Jewel’s multiplatinum Hot 100-topping megahit “You Were Meant For Me,” but he also went on a whale watch with her and a few federales that turned into a drug bust. The two still share the story at every festival they play together. He made his bones as the frontman for underground legends The Rugburns, who burned rubber crisscrossing the continent on marathon tours and still pop up once in a while for the rare and quickly sold out reunion gig.
In 20 years since his full-length solo debut, One Left Shoe, he blessed the world’s ears with twelve solo records, spanning the acclaimed 2010 Dreamhouse and most recently Folk Singer in 2015. NPR summed it up best, “Critics and fans alike now regard Poltz as a talented and prolific songwriter.” By 2016, he survived a stroke, endured anything the music industry could throw at him, and still performed like “280 days a year.”
However, he still never lived in Nashville, which represents a turning point in the story and the genesis of his 2018 Red House Records debut, Shine On…
“My girlfriend Sharon sold the condo we were living in, and I was ready to live in a van, which seemed like a good idea for one night—then I decided I wanted a kitchen and a closet,” he admits. “Sharon wanted to move to Nashville, because she thought it would be good for me. It caused a huge fight. I’d been in San Diego since 1980, and that’s where I cut my musical teeth. I thought I’d never leave. In fact, at the height of our fight, I said, ‘I’m not leaving San Diego. I am San Diego!’ This makes me laugh now. As soon as I got to Nashville, I immediately knew I wanted to make a record in ‘Music City’.”
So, the man who once protested “I am San Diego” made Shine On in his new home of Nashville with one of its elder statesmen behind the board, Will Kimbrough [Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell]. Holing up in the studio at Kimbrough’s house, nothing would be off limits. Together, they unlocked the kind of creative chemistry you only hear about in band bios—but for real.
“I respect Will so much, and I’d always wanted to work with him,” says Steve. “Like two mad scientists, we just took our time and had fun. We didn’t overthink things. Everything felt organic. We ate soul food and drank lots of really good coffee. We tried out weird sounds, and the songs always started with voice and guitar—no click track, just how I’d play them. I road tested many of them, and they were ripe for the picking when recording time came around.”
Evoking themes of “hope, love, contemplation, celebration of Wednesday, pharmacists, and the fact that windows are not inanimate objects and they sometimes have conversations with each other,” the record represents Steve at his most inspired and insightful. The opener and title track “Shine On” pairs a delicate vocal with lithely plucked acoustic strings as he urges, “Shine on, shine on.”
“The song was a gift,” he recalls. “I woke up really early in Encinitas, California at Sharon’s sister’s house. The sun was just coming up. I was all alone in perfect solitude. My guitar was there. The sky was gorgeous. I wrote it as a poem. Everyone always told me, ‘Never start a record with a really slow song.’ So, seeing that I have O.D.D. (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), I started my record with one. I love the mood it sets. It’s almost like my mission statement, trying to find some semblance of positivity and light in a sometimes ruthless world.”
On “Pharmacist,” rustling guitar and harmonica propel a tale of “this dude having a crush on his pharmacist.” It also serves as an extension of his friendship with neighbor Scot Sax—with whom he shares the podcast “One Hit Neighbors” (since they’ve both had one hit song). Meanwhile, he joined forces with Molly Tuttle on “4th of July,” which, of course, came to life on the 3rd of July. “Ballin On Wednesday” drew its title and chorus from a diner checkout girl (with a super cool gold tooth) who Steve paid with a $100 bill and she replied, “Oooh, ballin’ on a Wednesday.” The finale “All Things Shine” skips along on sparse instrumentation as Steve sends a message.
“‘All Things Shine’ came about after one of the many mass shootings on this planet,” he sighs. “I was feeling overwhelmed. So, I wanted to put my feelings into words and melody. I was thinking that even if we’re feeling hopeless that there is still beauty. All things shine in their own way.”
Who could contend that?
In the end, for everything you can call him “searcher, smartass, movie freak, lover of technology, news junkie, baseball fan to nth degree, lapsed catholic who still believes in god even though all his friends are atheists and think he’s an idiot, and maker of fun,” you might just call Steve that little light in the dark we all need in this day and age.
Or Nashville’s Canadian Jiminy Cricket…
“I hope Shine On makes listeners smile and feel welcome, and they want to share it with their friends,” he leaves off. “Music means energy to me. All things. It connects us, makes us move, helps us relax, and inspires us to change things up.”
An Evening with Steve Poltz – POSTPONED
POSTPONED – CREDIT OR REFUNDS WILL BE ISSUED
Throughout over three decades in music, Steve Poltz did it all and more—often shared by way of his rockin’ countrified folk slices of sardonic Americana (hatched in Halifax). Of course, he co-wrote Jewel’s multiplatinum Hot 100-topping megahit “You Were Meant For Me,” but he also went on a whale watch with her and a few federales that turned into a drug bust. The two still share the story at every festival they play together. He made his bones as the frontman for underground legends The Rugburns, who burned rubber crisscrossing the continent on marathon tours and still pop up once in a while for the rare and quickly sold out reunion gig.
In 20 years since his full-length solo debut, One Left Shoe, he blessed the world’s ears with twelve solo records, spanning the acclaimed 2010 Dreamhouse and most recently Folk Singer in 2015. NPR summed it up best, “Critics and fans alike now regard Poltz as a talented and prolific songwriter.” By 2016, he survived a stroke, endured anything the music industry could throw at him, and still performed like “280 days a year.”
However, he still never lived in Nashville, which represents a turning point in the story and the genesis of his 2018 Red House Records debut, Shine On…
“My girlfriend Sharon sold the condo we were living in, and I was ready to live in a van, which seemed like a good idea for one night—then I decided I wanted a kitchen and a closet,” he admits. “Sharon wanted to move to Nashville, because she thought it would be good for me. It caused a huge fight. I’d been in San Diego since 1980, and that’s where I cut my musical teeth. I thought I’d never leave. In fact, at the height of our fight, I said, ‘I’m not leaving San Diego. I am San Diego!’ This makes me laugh now. As soon as I got to Nashville, I immediately knew I wanted to make a record in ‘Music City’.”
So, the man who once protested “I am San Diego” made Shine On in his new home of Nashville with one of its elder statesmen behind the board, Will Kimbrough [Emmylou Harris, Rodney Crowell]. Holing up in the studio at Kimbrough’s house, nothing would be off limits. Together, they unlocked the kind of creative chemistry you only hear about in band bios—but for real.
“I respect Will so much, and I’d always wanted to work with him,” says Steve. “Like two mad scientists, we just took our time and had fun. We didn’t overthink things. Everything felt organic. We ate soul food and drank lots of really good coffee. We tried out weird sounds, and the songs always started with voice and guitar—no click track, just how I’d play them. I road tested many of them, and they were ripe for the picking when recording time came around.”
Evoking themes of “hope, love, contemplation, celebration of Wednesday, pharmacists, and the fact that windows are not inanimate objects and they sometimes have conversations with each other,” the record represents Steve at his most inspired and insightful. The opener and title track “Shine On” pairs a delicate vocal with lithely plucked acoustic strings as he urges, “Shine on, shine on.”
“The song was a gift,” he recalls. “I woke up really early in Encinitas, California at Sharon’s sister’s house. The sun was just coming up. I was all alone in perfect solitude. My guitar was there. The sky was gorgeous. I wrote it as a poem. Everyone always told me, ‘Never start a record with a really slow song.’ So, seeing that I have O.D.D. (Oppositional Defiance Disorder), I started my record with one. I love the mood it sets. It’s almost like my mission statement, trying to find some semblance of positivity and light in a sometimes ruthless world.”
On “Pharmacist,” rustling guitar and harmonica propel a tale of “this dude having a crush on his pharmacist.” It also serves as an extension of his friendship with neighbor Scot Sax—with whom he shares the podcast “One Hit Neighbors” (since they’ve both had one hit song). Meanwhile, he joined forces with Molly Tuttle on “4th of July,” which, of course, came to life on the 3rd of July. “Ballin On Wednesday” drew its title and chorus from a diner checkout girl (with a super cool gold tooth) who Steve paid with a $100 bill and she replied, “Oooh, ballin’ on a Wednesday.” The finale “All Things Shine” skips along on sparse instrumentation as Steve sends a message.
“‘All Things Shine’ came about after one of the many mass shootings on this planet,” he sighs. “I was feeling overwhelmed. So, I wanted to put my feelings into words and melody. I was thinking that even if we’re feeling hopeless that there is still beauty. All things shine in their own way.”
Who could contend that?
In the end, for everything you can call him “searcher, smartass, movie freak, lover of technology, news junkie, baseball fan to nth degree, lapsed catholic who still believes in god even though all his friends are atheists and think he’s an idiot, and maker of fun,” you might just call Steve that little light in the dark we all need in this day and age.
Or Nashville’s Canadian Jiminy Cricket…
“I hope Shine On makes listeners smile and feel welcome, and they want to share it with their friends,” he leaves off. “Music means energy to me. All things. It connects us, makes us move, helps us relax, and inspires us to change things up.”
New Years Eve (Eve) with Pretty Archie
SOLD OUT!
Doors open at 4PM. No reservations. General Admission Seating. Ticket gets you entrance, party favours, champagne, midnight snacks & a guaranteed good time!
Pretty Archie is a Canadiana band from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Long time friends Brian Cathcart (Lead Vocals, Guitar), Matt McNeil (Mandolin, Guitar), Colin Gillis (Harmonica, Bass, Vocals), Redmond MacDougall (Banjo, Percussion, Vocals) and recently added Scott MacLean (Guitar, Mandolin) make up the band. Always jamming together growing up, they guys decided in 2012 to form a band. The band chose the name Pretty Archie after a local (Cape Breton) character known for playing with 2 strings outside shopping malls in any weather and not always (or ever) in key. The guys thought the name Pretty Archie embodied the love of playing and performing music along with representing their hometown.
With the release of Hanging On, Pretty Archie showcase a genre-bending mix of folk, bluegrass, country, rock and vintage soul, all underpinned the band’s east coast roots, that’s absolutely impossible to pigeonhole. Hanging On has been nominated for Music Nova Scotia’s Americana/Bluegrass Album of the Year.
Ages 19+
New Years Eve with Pretty Archie
Doors open at 4PM. No reservations. General Admission Seating. Ticket gets you entrance, party favours, champagne, midnight snacks, fireworks & a guaranteed good time!
Pretty Archie is a Canadiana band from Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. Long time friends Brian Cathcart (Lead Vocals, Guitar), Matt McNeil (Mandolin, Guitar), Colin Gillis (Harmonica, Bass, Vocals), Redmond MacDougall (Banjo, Percussion, Vocals) and recently added Scott MacLean (Guitar, Mandolin) make up the band. Always jamming together growing up, they guys decided in 2012 to form a band. The band chose the name Pretty Archie after a local (Cape Breton) character known for playing with 2 strings outside shopping malls in any weather and not always (or ever) in key. The guys thought the name Pretty Archie embodied the love of playing and performing music along with representing their hometown.
With the release of Hanging On, Pretty Archie showcase a genre-bending mix of folk, bluegrass, country, rock and vintage soul, all underpinned the band’s east coast roots, that’s absolutely impossible to pigeonhole. Hanging On has been nominated for Music Nova Scotia’s Americana/Bluegrass Album of the Year.
Ages 19+
Garnet Rogers
In a darkened bedroom, lit only by the amber glow from an old floor model radio, two young brothers aged 6 and 12 lay in their beds, listening to the country music broadcasts from the Grand Ol’ Opry, and practiced their harmonies. Two years later, the youngest one was playing the definitive 8-year-old’s version of “Desolation Row” on his ukulele. He soon abandoned that instrument to teach himself the flute, violin and guitar.
Within ten years, and barely out of high school, Garnet Rogers was on the road as a full-time working musician with his older brother Stan. Together they formed what has come to be accepted as one of the most influential acts in North American folk music.
Since then, Garnet Rogers has established himself as ‘One of the major talents of our time”. Hailed by the Boston Globe as a “charismatic performer and singer”, Garnet is a man with a powerful physical presence – close to six and a half feet tall – with a voice to match. With his “smooth, dark baritone” (Washington Post) his incredible range, and thoughtful, dramatic phrasing, Garnet is widely considered by fans and critics alike to be one of the finest singers anywhere. His music, like the man himself, is literate, passionate, highly sensitive, and deeply purposeful. Cinematic in detail, his songs “give expression to the unspoken vocabulary of the heart” (Kitchener Waterloo Record). An optimist at heart, Garnet sings extraordinary songs about people who are not obvious heroes and of the small victories of the everyday. As memorable as his songs, his over-the-top humour and lightning-quick wit moves his audience from tears to laughter and back again.
“Garnet Rogers is capable of awe-inspiring and unpredictable stuff – and that includes more than just music”
Resolutely independent, Garnet Rogers has turned down offers from major labels to do his music his own way.
Mo Kenney
“I am demented and all my friends are scared of me,” Mo Kenney sings on a beloved, unreleased staple of her live shows. “I am an alien waiting for my family.” Connection—the rare times we have and hold onto it tenuously, the lack or loss of it, the search for it, and even the creeping feeling that it may be unattainable—is a defining theme of the Dartmouth, Nova Scotia songwriter’s body of work. It’s no stretch to imagine that it’s maybe the main reason her fans are so passionately drawn to her as an artist and performer, either. In a world where connection becomes increasingly scarce, there’s a quixotic stubbornness in Kenney’s songs, an insistence that forging a bond is worth all the unavoidable pain and heartbreak and self-destruction that might be wrought from it. And there are few songwriters who are able to create such unforgettable melodies while communicating just how rough the ride can be.
Throughout Kenney’s own rough ride, from troubled teenagerdom and teaching herself Elliott Smith songs in her small-town bedroom to battling with her demons on 2017’s eclectic and brash The Details, music has remained constant. At 17, she stunned Maritime rock ‘n’ roll legend Joel Plaskett with a couple songs recorded at her friend’s high school, eventually leading to a long-running collaborative relationship between the two. In 2012, she released her self-titled debut, a powerful first impression that melds her extraordinary knack for nuance—the dreamy, award-winning folk tune “Sucker,” for example—and a clear bent toward sounds more incendiary and ambitious that shows up on the driving kiss-off “Déjà Vu” and her cover of Bowie’s “Five Years,” which explodes with an interstellar crescendo worthy of the Starman. She expands that vibe on In My Dreams, venting existential frustration by almost gleefully urging the listener to blow her head off on the hazy pop of “Take Me Outside,” dabbling in spacey prog rock for the stomping “Mountains to the Mess,” and stylishly sowing sorrow on the title track over subtle, ‘60s-tinged piano, convinced that she’s hallucinated an absent lover.
Kenney pathologically mines the most shadowy corners of herself in order to surface with something unflinchingly honest, but The Details found her exploring uncharted territory. It traces her own strange, devastating, and ultimately hopeful trip through the trials and tribulations of booze-fuelled breakdowns, clouds of depression, and disintegrating relationships. It sounds as fraught as the subject matter demands. “On The Roof” seethes with suffocating anxiety and punchy guitar; the jangle of “Unglued” is deceptively sunshiney, the way someone might force a smile as they’re falling apart; and “Feelin’ Good” offers some real redemption in its weird, soothing sparseness, but feels tentative, as though Kenney is aware things could still unravel at any moment.
It’s this willingness to bare so much of herself—not all, mind you—on record and on stage that draws in fans from all over the world, people far and wide who feel like aliens themselves, looking to connect with anyone or anything. And that illuminates a comforting truth: sometimes the fear that you don’t belong in this world is the most human feeling you can feel. With a touring history that’s seen her play her tunes for swaths of the United States, Europe, Australia, and the UK, the future will find Kenney continuing to tour as much as possible, expanding her sonic reach here on Earth and perhaps beyond, beamed up somewhere deep in the cosmos among other beings like her.