Newfoundland - The Once

I love the east coast, the people, the scenery, the beer and the music. This band is one of the few bands that are playing traditional maritime music. I grew up in a house that always had the Rankin Family playing (more on them later) so I had the traditional tunes from an early age. Once (pardon the pun) I got to University every Thursday night me and my friends would go down to Dolans to listen to some more east coast music. Gradually they started bringing in different bands that the closest they got to east coast/ irish tunes is brown eyed girl by Van Morrison. Therefore when I first heard The Once for the first time,I fell in love. The first time I heard of them was through my last artist Amelia Curran. The Once is often her background band, so then I looked into them more and found this concert on one of my  favorite websites http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/cod/concerts/20090903tonce  Please have a listen and you'll realize why they are on this blog.  Shortly after I also heard them on the Vinyl Cafe, my favorite radio program. Some of the songs have some real grit, some with beautiful harmonies and some even done  acapella. They have recently won group of the year at the east coast music awards which usually means Canada will soon be seeing allot of them. You can find out more about them here and listen to a few of their songs in full http://theonce.ca/site/music/ . Listen and then go buy the CD. Unfortunately for the sake of this blog the you tube video's available aren't the typical quality I'd like to provide so have a look and then listen to the CBC concert.

My favorite song:


The crowd quiets down pretty quickly with that beautiful voice:


Leonard Cohen cover

Newfoundland - Amelia Curran

Amelia is an amazing singer song writer from Newfounland who has been having a great couple of years including her super fantastic album Hunter Hunter, countless awards and signing with my favorite record label Six Shooter records. Six shooter currently boats some of my favorite artists including Luke Doucet, Justin Rutledge and Jenn Grant (both of whom I am seeing tomorrow night at the Capital in Freddy Beach).  The first time I heard of Amelia was from this cbc site http://www.cbc.ca/eastcoastsessions/  This amazing concert series has allot of my favorite artists all in one spot. The first time I saw Amelia was at the six shooter showcase in Ottawa, probably the best single concert I have ever been too. I will include some video's from that concert  for some of the Ontario artists. Find out more about her here http://216123216456.info/amelia/  Amelia's songs are deep, thoughtful and I am usually listening to them in front of the fire with a glass of red.Here are some of my favorite video's:

My initial favorite for her Hunter Hunter album:


The song that got me:


Not the best visual quality but sure sounds great: