Friday, September 14, 2018

World Music! Fun! part 1

Yesterday So Long Seven announced our big send-off concert on October 28 before our tour of Europe in November. I will get into that a little more later in this post.

A couple years ago (I think it was a couple years) my friend Andrew told me about a musician that lived in our neighbourhood. He told me I should check her out "she lives right around the corner!" I was intrigued. Then he told me she was famous in Turkey. I have other friends with connections to the Turkish music scene and they confirmed this for me.

I decided I should just get her number, text her and see if she wanted to jam. I was playing banjo on the porch one day and I got up the nerve and did just that. I told her I was working on playing and singing Wayfarin' Stranger and she should come over. Unfortunately she was out of town but seemed a little bit interested in getting together.

A couple months went by and I was performing at the Tranzac (might have been with the Cluttertones) There was a woman hanging out, even after almost everyone went home. She had a real vibe. Seemed to know a lot of people. Definitely some sort of artist. I didn't get a chance to talk to her but I asked someone at the very end of the night who that was and they told me it was Brenna MacCrimmon.

Fast forward a year or so and we became fast friends. We got into a regular jamming habbit and realized we had a lot in common (including some rare vinyl that we both owned) We even found out eventually that we grew up around the corner from each other in Burlington Ontario. Funny that we never crossed paths there. However, we did realize that the record collection at the Burlington public library had had an impact on both our lives. The coolest part of that being Fran Clutton (Rob Clutton's mom!) was in charge of buying a lot of those records as she worked at the library.

Anyways, Brenna and I have had lots of fun musical adventures including a double bill with So Long Seven and a group she is in called Turkwaz. We even have a CD coming out soon with a great early jazz pianist friend of ours named Bill Westcott. Now we are working together on presenting this fun show on Sunday October 28 at Revival called World Music! Fun! which will feature a trio she is part of called Zephyr. (Zephyr also includes Jaash Singh on Dumbek and Demetri Petsalakis on oud)

The show will also include the Near East Trio (and of course So Long Seven) but more about that in the next blog instalment.





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