Peterborough Folk Festival

Julia Fenn, Megan Kendrick and Mary Clare Kendrick have been great friends and played in various bands together for years. They discovered early on that they shared a love of Kate and Anna McGarrigle’s music. One night a few months ago while having dinner, they decided to try a couple songs. As soon as they started playing, the passion took over and, they couldn’t put their instruments down. During the first week of practicing they realized that this was a really very important project and were driven to share the music.

Kate and Anna McGarrigle started playing in the early 1960’s and quickly became Canadian folk icons playing with the likes of Emmy Lou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, Nick Cave and Lou Reed, to name a few. Over the next 40+ years they recorded many albums of their own compositions and interpretations of English and French songs and poetry. Kate and Anna continued recording and playing in traditional folk
style with family and friends until the passing of Kate McGarrigle in 2010.

Pronto Monto is a tribute to the music of Kate and Anna McGarrigle.

(Julia Fenn plays tenor guitar and triangle, Megan Kendrick plays guitar and banjo, and Mary Clare
Kendrick plays mandolin and accordion.)

The Burgess Shale is the brainchild of veteran musicians Gerry Gregg, John Climenhage, and Wyatt Burton. Their songs are skeletal structures which allow for contingent performances, with the end results being necessarily different each time.

Drawing on various artistic practices, and work in varied genres the group are able to create an environment in which music becomes. The accessibility of pop/rock structures, with the volatility and spontaneity of jazz and progressive improv based musics.

The band’s rehearsals and initial engagements at intimate venues point toward larger performances and multimedia
installations.

“Love isn’t an emotion or an instinct – it’s an art.” – Mae West

Closing your eyes might help you imagine West boldly sashaying across the screen, a wake of affected men left undeniably helpless in her thrall. If you’ve ever been left in that position, then you can understand Mz. Chawls’ potion of soul magic. At once a study in stunning contrasts, like platinum butterfly wings, the Toronto born Edmonton raised Mz.Chawls operates in a sonic timecapsule possessing the assurance of Inez Foxx, the vulnerability of Tammi Terrel, and the smoldering intensity of Betty Wright. Mz.Chawls is the Truth. Soul music seems to have come full circle with the re-introduction of greats like Al Green and Lee Fields to a younger audience, and now Tanika Charles marks its completion. The Toronto press concurs, as Now Magazine voted Tanika as best R&B singer of 2008.

Tin Vespers was conceived in the summer of 2009 in a hot, instrument-filled attic on Harvey Street in Peterborough, Ontario with lead singer Meagh Culkeen and multi-instrumentalist Derek Bell hatching the initial sketches of the project. A year later, armed with a book of plans, the band began in earnest – with cellist Charity Justrabo, pianist Katie Adamson and percussionist Brandon Munro each joining in the summer of 2010. 2012 saw the addition of Aaron Hoffman to the group. The players in Tin Vespers were largely new to each other and some were new to Peterborough’s music scene. They came together with a love for weird stories, and a desire to create a folk sound that they hadn’t heard before.

In their music Tin Vespers seeks to explore narrative and storytelling in the folk tradition. On their first EP released in November of 2011, they’ve sought to sing the story of Dr. Evermor – a real-life scrap metal sculptor in Baraboo, Wisconsin – and of his fantastic masterwork, the fifty foot tall “Forevertron” – a spaceship from the past, powered by lightning , built to send its maker to the Heavens – and the dozens of sculptures that surround it.

The musicians in Tin Vespers are true collaborators. While many of their songs begin as rough sketches on Culkeen’s three-stringed guitar, the musicians share in the task of fleshing out, arranging and translating the bare bones of these pieces into the complex and varied songs which are the hallmark of Tin Vespers performances. The classical training of the musicians in the band works well with Culkeen’s literary lyrical style. Listening to their work, it’s easy to discern their love of many folk traditions, including maritime and celtic music, gospel and liturgical music, ballads, freak folk and appalachian tunes.

Since their beginnings in 2010, Tin Vespers have toured eastern Canada, been played on the CBC and played shows with some of the top names in Canadian folk music, including Ohbijou, The Burning Hell, Julie Dorion, Magali Meagher,  Cousins, Elfin Saddle and many others. They are looking forward to releasing their full length album in 2013.

You can learn more about Tin Vespers on their website.