Old Man Luedecke • Oct 17

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OLD MAN LUEDECKE
Thursday Oct 17, 2019
Doors 7:00PM, Show 8:00PM
Tickets: $20 (+SC) adv., $25 door • 19+
>> BUY TICKETS HERE << 

“This will be the first tour I’ve ever done with a full band,” says Old Man Luedecke. “Mostly made up of the album band from working at Montreal’s Hotel2Tango with Mike O’Brien (Vic Chestnutt, Sin and Swoon) and Jamie Thompson (Socalled, Islands), and rounded out with Brian Kobayakawa on bass (Serena Ryder, Creaking Tree). I thought it’d be really nice to recreate the calypso vibes of the new record. We performed the record in Montreal to great success this past Sunday at the Festival Folk Sur Le Canal and it felt so good to be on the festival main stage with a fuller sound for the afternoon easing in to the evening. It’s pretty exciting to put old and new songs into the band context and bring the sound not just of this record but all of my records on to the road this fall. It just seems like time for this new fun.”

Easy Money picks up where Old Man Luedecke’s award-winning Domestic Eccentric (2015) leaves off: four years farther down the road, dreaming about his ship coming in, still a parent but now grappling with the newness of middle age, dad jokes, love for an abiding partner, the death of a parent, along with some calypso-feeling local Nova Scotia history thrown in for good measure. Composition and recording were both begun at the Banff Centre’s songwriter-in-residence program. It was there that Luedecke met the album’s producer Howard Bilerman of Montreal’s famed Hotel2Tango studio where the album was eventually recorded. The two hit it off when Luedecke composed “Easy Money” on the tracking floor on the first day of the program. Desperate for something worthy to use in his recording time, Luedecke channeled a traditional Christmas number he knew from a Harry Belafonte record and sang largely improvised verses into a winning tune that is sure to be a modern classic: “Oh yes I need it, Oh yes I want it, I dream about easy, I dream about Easy money.” (Don’t we all.) 

The further nine new original compositions and two covers run a modern storytelling line from the fifties folk and calypso boom into the everyday of tangible middle life. Guest appearances by long-time collaborator and Grammy award-winning Tim O’Brien, Afie Jurvanen of Bahamas, and Fats Kaplin (Jack White, John Prine) add piquant accents to the impeccable playing of Luedecke and a crack Montreal studio band of Mike O’Brien, Joshua Toal and Jamie Thompson.

The album begins with three upbeat incantations of what is surely the beginnings of a mid-life crisis (Dad Jokes? Wakeup Call, come on!) then moves to two songs musing about death; both inspired in part and in different ways, by the passing of Luedecke’s father, the passing of Leonard Cohen and current politics and the death of truth. There are two island-themed numbers that imagine a laid-back life in the local un-tropical paradise of the Canadian Maritimes. Then comes a country song with killer fiddling and harmony singing by Tim O’Brien, a dance number of frightful worry and then a cover of Nana Mouskouri’s French language cover of Bob Dylan’s topical apocalyptic plaint, “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”. This is followed by a traditional sea shanty about a mermaid and a shipwreck. The album closer, “‘I Skipped a Stone”, is the most beautiful song about hoping your wife will pick up the phone. The song is made all the sweeter by the special appearance of Bahamas’ playing and singing, to close out Luedecke’s sixth full length studio album.

Old Man Luedecke is the recording and performing name of Christopher Luedecke, 2 time JUNO and multi East Coast Music award-winner, and Polaris Music Prize nominee from Chester, Nova Scotia. Since 2004 he has travelled the world playing festivals, theatres and clubs. He delights his audiences with his heart-felt command of the stage. Plus, his inspired banjo playing and wry storytelling cut to the heart of normal/extraordinary experience itself. Born and raised in Toronto, Luedecke followed Thoreauvian and romantic notions to Canada’s Yukon where he fell in love and started composing folk songs with a banjo. Since 2005, he has lived rurally on the south shore of Nova Scotia in Canada’s music-rich Maritime provinces. He has had major appearances at Canadian, Australian and UK festivals and has performed with the likes of Feist, Bahamas, Tim O’Brien, and Rose Cousins. He has built a name and a following that has been uncompromisingly unique and is now firmly established in the top echelon of Canadian folk artists. As the Vancouver Folk Festival says, “He is a musical singularity to be savoured and shared.”

Old Man Luedecke • Feb 8, 2018

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OLD MAN LUEDECKE
With DEVARROW
Thursday February 8, 2018
Doors 7:00PM, Show 8:00PM
Tickets: $20 (+SC) advance, $25 door • 19+
>> BUY TICKETS HERE <<

You can hear the listening on Old Man Luedecke’s new album, Domestic Eccentric. You can hear the cabin in the snowy Nova Scotia woods where it was recorded. On their third collaboration, you can hear the beautiful conversation between Old Man Luedecke and Tim O’Brien, two like-minded artists in love with folk and roots music, playing at the height of their powers.
“You can’t fake a work of heart,” Luedecke sings in “The Girl in the Pearl Earring,” the second song on Domestic Eccentric, and the assured confidence of that line, the assertion of a straightforward truth, is the guiding principle behind the entire album. Old Man Luedecke is the real thing, a modern-day people’s poet and traveling bard and balladeer. He’s played around the world to a loving and increasing fan base, and won two Juno awards in the process. Tim O’Brien is a multiple grammy-winning roots multi-instrumentalist whose solo work and collaborations have made him one of the most respected American players working today. The two last worked together on Luedecke’s 2012 release, Tender is the Night, which was nominated for a Juno, listed for the Polaris Prize and won Album of the Year at the East Coast Music Awards.

Not since Loudon Wainwright III has anyone written so honestly, so openly, or with such aching tenderness and good humour about family life. “Saving up for date night so we can have our fight” “The Early Days”. But Luedecke has always insisted on a solid poetic heft in the way he uses words, and highly personal stories are what have always connected him to the universal in his audience. Recording with Tim O’Brien in an intimate setting at home has yielded an album where the songs take the starring role.

Calling to mind the powerful force at the heart of other musical vocal pairings: The Milk Carton Kids, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, Tony Rice and Ricky Skaggs, or even Tim O’Brien and his work with Darrell Scott, the combination of Old Man Luedecke’s highly personal songs and infectious old-time banjo and guitar, and Tim O’Brien’s mastery of bluegrass harmony, guitars, mandolin, bouzouki, and fiddle adds up to much more than a simple sum of parts.

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Devarrow is the moniker of Graham Ereaux, a singer-songwriter who blends simple folk with sophisticated pop to create music which reflects an upbringing in Moncton, New Brunswick and a subsequent half decade of traveling. In 2015, Devarrow self-released The Great Escape, a collection of eleven songs written in a leaky-roofed apartment while living in Vancouver for a winter. To support the release, Devarrow toured Canada extensively as a one-man-band in 2015 and 2016, focusing on creating an energetic, captivating and intimate live show performed in the raconteur style. Gaining recognition in the maritimes – including an ECMA nomination – Devarrow moved back East to Halifax, Nova Scotia where he now resides. With a refined focus on lyrics and arrangement, Devarrow is currently working on a new album.