So how do you follow an amazing day of entertaining music?
well, you start by getting up at 430 in the morning, packing your car and only then noticing you have messages waiting for you as you are about to drive out to Canmore for the 24 hours of Adrenalin bike race.
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Saturday brings the first full day of music, with workshops and individual concerts on 6 different stages that run almost non stop from 1030am until 530pm.
I definitely had some people I wanted to check out from what I had seen on Thursday and Friday, but I really wish I could have been in two (or three) places at once because the overlap from one stage to another made it difficult to get to see absolutely everything I wanted.
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Is there anything better than a gathering outdoors with friends to listen to a constant parade of great music?
I only knew the headliners performing tonight, but sitting through the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Charlie Musslewhite, Wendy McNeil, Be Good Tanyas, Andrew Bird, and Calexico before I got to them (Bedouin Soundclash) was certainly not a chore.. in fact, it was downright pleasant. 
Having zero expectations I just sat back and enjoyed everything that was offered to me. In fact, I can’t think of a single performer that had me wishing their set was shorter, or thinking that they were a misfit for tonight… all good energy, good entertainment and great music, which usually means my CD collection is about to start growing again.
I can’t wait for what tomorrow brings
Day 1 brought us Master Musicians of Jajouka, The Weakerthans, Aimee Mann, and Sam Roberts, with 2 of the 4 bands that convinced me to buy tickets for this year on opening night I was certain this is going to be a good show.
The lineup to get in to the grounds was horrendous looking (and kept getting worse), but when we made the decision to line up it surprisingly moved along quite quickly, getting us inside within 15 minutes. Once inside I see Susan selling programs (I talked with her for a bit, long enough to get separated from my group) and in the background I can see and smell food alley…
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Yea, beeeatches, it’s dave’s third post in a row!!!
wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! (gonads and strife)
And to further some of my ramblings from the other day, I have uploaded some of my tunes to Last.fm. Two of them are songs I recorded when I lived in Halifax (one written there, one written in Calgary). And then there is the most recent thing that I have recorded, which was back in 2005 I think. So there you go, now you can go listen to me singing, playing guitar and making an ass out of myself under the pseudonym irwin guiffrey.
And if anyone’s understands the gonads and strife reference without having to look it up, I will congratulate you with a hampsterdance.
So I have finally moved the home of my web business/portfolio over to it’s own properly named website. I am getting some new business cards printed so it seemed prudent to have burningfishdesign.com as the URL on the card.
The exciting part of this is that now my old site, irwinguiffrey.ca, can hopefully start housing various music experiments and projects. My old computer is almost completely purged and ready to be reformatted as a “music only” device. Slowly I am moving towards creating more music, which is something that has been put off for far far too long.
Oh, and I have Neil Diamond tickets for GM Place in Sept… and I have 2 extras! Any takers?
Tokyo Police Club rocked the Warehouse last night, with the very solid The Meligrove Band opening. What a show! Down the road we’ll look back fondly at these small venue shows and say “yeah, I saw them when they weren’t even selling out clubs.” This is one of those bands that are simply destined to be huge!
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This has to be close to the 10th time I have seen Matthew Good perform, but by far the show on Tuesday was the most entertaining one I have seen.
I’ve seen him at the Coke Stage during Stampede (live or die with the stuffed animals was awesome), really bad venues like the Palace (anyone else remember the power cutting out to the stage?) and Cowboys, down at Mac Hall, but last night was definitely a first for me… a sit down acoustic show at the Jack Singer Concert Hall, and he owned the stage from the second he stepped out there.
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Matthew Good’s new full length album is available streaming off his website.. all you have to do is register.
If you are the more patient type, the album is released July 31.
I know what I’m doing at lunch that day
Or is that “kicks ass”… I never figured that one out. Regardless (not irregardless), they came, we saw, they kicked ass, and we loved it! Every minute of every song too, and I don’t say that about many bands these days. After a strange Deftones show on the 15th (couldn’t really make out any music and the vocals were up WAY too high) it was great to see such a tight band on the 20th. They played mostly new stuff, with a few older songs thrown in for those who remember their Fat Wreck Chords days. Even a couple acoustic songs – very cool! And the fans were really great too – reminded me of our singalongs at NIN shows 
This show definitely solidified Rise Against on my favorite bands list – can’t wait for a new album!