FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: July 3, 2009

SIRENS OF SONG CONCERT CELEBRATES CANADIAN FEMALE SONGWRITERS
Lynn Miles, Melanie Doane, Catherine MacLellan and Annabelle Chvostek appear together in a special songwriter circle concert series across western Canada
Juno Award winners Lynn Miles & Melanie Doane, along with the critically acclaimed Catherine MacLellan and Annabelle Chvostek – four of Canada’s most celebrated female songwriters – will be appearing across Western Canada on special concert tour called The Sirens of Song this fall.

Lynn Miles is one of Canada’s most respected songwriters, garnering a Juno Award in 2003 for her CD Unravel, and a Canadian Folk Music Award for the CD Love Sweet Love in 2005. She has toured internationally, and her songs have been covered by many notable artists, most recently by Sarah Slean whose latest album with the Art Of Time Ensemble was named after one of Lynn’s most popular songs, Black Flowers. Lynn is releasing a new double album of acoustic versions of her songs this fall, also entitled Black Flowers vol. 1 & 2.

The product of a musical family, Halifax-born Melanie Doane has ranked four top 40 radio singles, a Juno Award for Best New Artist, a Canadian Radio Award for Most Charted Artist, and performed with the likes of Jann Arden, on Sarah McLachlan’s “Lilith Fair”, and Great Big Sea, in the process earning a Gold sales award for her album Adam’s Rib.

Catherine MacLellan is a songwriter whose music is steeped in the Canadian folk tradition and whose songs are hauntingly intimate and powerful. MacLellan has won six PEI Music Awards and earned multiple East Coast Music award nominations in 2006 and 2007. Her work is a characteristic of the work of many of the singer/songwriters Catherine cites as influences and inspirations – such as Joni Mitchell, Nanci Griffith, and Townes Van Zandt. Catherine was voted “Critics Favorite New Discoveries” in Canadian folk Magazine Penguin Eggs in 2008. Her new album Water in the Ground has received critical acclaim from the international press. She is the daughter of iconic Canadian songwriter Gene MacLellan, writer of the classic “Snowbird” recorded by Anne Murray, and “Put Your Hand In The Hand” recorded by Ocean.

Born and raised in a musical family in Toronto, Annabelle Chvostek is a former member of the wildly popular female folk trio The Wailin’ Jennys, whose most recent album featuring Annabelle is still charting on iTunes in the USA almost two years after its release. Leaving the group last year, Annabelle recently released her much-anticipated solo album, Resilience. Recorded in New York and Montreal with Grammy-nominated Canadian record producer Roma Baran and her producing partner Vivian Stoll, Resilience is a sublime, spare, and profoundly reflective album that Chvostek describes as “a big complicated hug.”

The Sirens of Song will feature acoustic performances, stories behind the songs, and good old-fashioned girl-talk when Lynn Miles, Melanie Doane, Catherine MacLellan and Annabelle Chvostek share the stage in a classic songwriter circle. Tickets are available to the public July 10, 2009 and can be purchased through Ticketmaster.ca or the venue box offices.

Western Tour Dates:

September 11Brandon, MBWestern Manitoba Centennial Auditorium
September 12 Winnipeg, MB Garrick Theatre at the Marlborough
September 13 Regina, SKRegina Performing Arts Centre
September 15 St. Albert, AB Arden Theatre
September 16 Red Deer, AB Central Alberta Theatre
September 17 Calgary, AB Knox United Church
September 18 Lethbridge, AB Yates Memorial Centre
September 19 Cranbrook, BC Key City Theatre
September 21 Kelowna, BC Kelowna Community Theatre

About True North Concerts/Agency:
Legendary Toronto indie label True North Records expanded in 2008 into concert promotion and booking with True North Concerts and True North Agency. The Sirens of Songs tour is the first True North Concert series outside of the Ontario region

Weblinks: http://www.sirensofsong.ca

This week on TTBTGH: it’s Fathers’ Day, and I’m starting to really like this gig. Some great new music to share courtesy of my wonderful family, as well as some father/family related songs & stories.

And, some memories of one of the GREATEST SHOWS EVER, which went down Thursday night in Fargo. The music nerd caravan congregated to see Kasey Chambers & Shane Nicholson with Bill Chambers and special guest Justin Townes Earle, and it was amazing. Tune in to hear some live music and some memories.

As if that weren’t enough, we’ll have a fathers’ day gift for some lucky dad, when we give away a pair of tickets to see Jill Barber at the Jazz Winnipeg Festival, next weekend!

Should be a great show, tune in at 2 pm central on 101.5 umfm in Winnipeg, or www.umfm.com online around the world!

Fred Eaglesmith will be performing at Shooters in Kenora on June 30th.

In live performance, Eaglesmith brings to mind both Neil Young’s raucous splendor with Crazy Horse and the tender beauty of Young’s acoustic numbers. This summer he embarks on a tour across Canada with his band including annual stops to host his upcoming Roots on the River festival in Vermont (June 11-14) and annual Charity Picnic in Aylmer, Ontario near his home town.

Media outlets have proclaimed his live performances:

“If you’re missing out on Eaglesmith, you’re really missing out: since he left the family farm in his teens and struck out on his troubadour’s path, he’s been prolific and sharp.” (The New Yorker, August 2008)

“Fred Eaglesmith released a self-titled debut album nearly 30 years ago and has won over a strong audience with his country-ish folk rock songs that are sometimes funny, often heartbreaking and always richly detailed. In concerts his between-song banter is worth the price of admission.” (Houston Chronicle, October 2008)

“A prolific singer/songwriter often hailed as a genius at his craft.” (Arizona Daily Star, February 2009)

“His cantankerous, bone-dry humor well tempered weighty stories wrestling hardship with heart. Eaglesmith and his combustible trio fueled new material – particularly the haunted hymnals ‘I Pray Now,’ ‘Fancy God’ and ‘Get on Your Knees’ – with a zealot’s urgency.” (Austin American Statesman, February 2009)

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

FRED EAGLESMITH NOMINATED FOR JUNO AWARD FOR TINDERBOX
Critically Heralded Album Up for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year: Solo

(Los Angeles) Acclaimed and award-winning singer-songwriter Fred Eaglesmith has been nominated for yet another honor in his distinguished nearly-four decade recording career: a Juno Award — the Canadian equivalent of a Grammy — for Roots & Traditional Album of the Year: Solo for his 17th album, Tinderbox. The nomination is Eaglesmith’s third time up for a prestigious Juno, which he won in 1997 in the same category for his album Drive-In Movie.

Tinderbox continues to garner critical praise since it was released in May of last year, and was cited on a number of year-end Top 10 lists. San Jose Metro recently hailed it as “one of the best albums of last year.” And the Santa Barbara News Press just named it as “one of the more intriguing albums of the last year… with its hypnotic array of swampy grooves, obsessive refrains, hymns and hollers.”

The CD has been described as an “alternative gospel” album, but Eaglesmith points out that “it’s not a gospel record. This is actually tearing the whole thing [religion] apart and having a look at every bit of it. I was raised in a religious background and we weren’t allowed to question. This album asks every question.”

The Santa Barbara News Press says that Tinderbox sounds “like a field recording from the alternative world of rural Pentecostalism mixed with the artful theatricality and gruff timbres of Tom Waits.” Metro describes it as “Something on the order of Eaglesmith jamming with Tom Waits on a 1930s chain gang full of bluesmen, it’s spooky and dark, with a hint of the metaphysical.”

Tinderbox has already been heralded as a “masterwork” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “exceptional” (Americana Roots), and “beautiful” (Ink 19). The New Yorker says, “Imagine a duet record from Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie,” declaring, “if you’re missing out on Eaglesmith… you’re really missing out.”

Working outside the pop music radar, Eaglesmith had forged one of the most unique and eminent careers in contemporary music. His previous 16 releases have won him comparisons to such major talents as Woody Guthrie, Bruce Springsteen, John Prine, T Bone Burnett and Steve Earle. His songs have been recorded by fellow artists like superstar Toby Keith — who covered Eaglesmith’s “White Rose” on his recent hit album Big Dog Daddy and included his recording of “Thinking ‘Bout You” in the movie “Broken Bridges” and on its soundtrack album — The Cowboy Junkies, Kasey Chambers, Mary Gauthier, Ralph Stanley II, Dar Williams and Todd Snider, and he is the subject of a tribute album by other fellow songwriters. His has also scored a #1 bluegrass song with James King’s recording of his “Thirty Years of Farming.”

Eaglesmith boasts such a fervent coterie of fans that he hosts a number of annual music festivals such as Roots on the River every summer in Vermont; the Fred Eaglesmith Texas Weekend each spring at Gruene Hall, the mother church of the Texas roots music scene; and last year two Roots on the Rail rolling music fests along both historic narrow-gauge railroads through the American West and another into the Canadian arctic. Martin Scorsese and James Caan have used his music is their film projects, and his songs are even included in the course curriculum of two colleges.

Tinderbox was already in consideration for Canada’s Polaris Prize, which is awarded for musical artistic merit. And odds-makers agree with the Guelph Mercury, which suggested in its rave review of Tinderbox that Eaglesmith “better get his tux dry-cleaned in preparation for all the award shows he’ll be attending.”

Fred Eaglesmith tour dates:
5/1 Victoria Playhouse Petrolia, ON
5/2 Bayfield Town Hall Bayfield, ON
5/8 Red Onion Saloon Skagway AK
5/9 Alaska Barn Dance Haines AK
5/10 Resurrection Luthern Church Juneau AK
5/13 St Elias Convention Center Haines Jct, YT
5/14 Yukon Arts Center Whitehorse, YT
5/15 Palace Grande Dawson City, YT
5/21 Tractor Tavern Seattle , WA
5/22 Green Frog Acoustic Tavern Bellingham WA
5/24 Papa G’s Portland, OR
5/25 Harmony House Concerts Sisters, OR
6/6 McGinty’s Meaford, ON
6/11-14 Roots on the River Festival, Bellows Falls, VT
6/16 Kennebecasis Valley High School Quispamsis, NB
6/17 Marigold Cultural Center
6/18 Parkside Pub Dartmouth, NS
6/19 Membertou Trade & Convention Center Syndey NS
6/20 King’s Theatre Annapolis Royal, NS
6/23 Petit Campus Montreal, QC
6/24 The Black Sheep Inn/La Mouton Noir Wakefield, QC
6/25 Tweedsmuir Hotel Tweed, ON
6/26 The Beef n Bird Sudbury, ON
6/27 Speak Easy Pub Sault Ste Marie, ON
6/28 Finlandia Club Thunder Bay, ON
6/30 Shooters Kenora, ON
7/2–5 Dauphin Country Fest Dauphin, MB
7/9 Moose Jaw Cultural Center Moose Jaw, SK
7/10 The Palomino Calgary, AB
7/11 Pembina River Nights Evansburg, AB
7/12 Auditorium Hotel Nanton, AB
7/14 Grandview Stage Resort Rocky Mountain AB
7/15 The Max Drayton Valley, AB
7/16 BJ’s Cue Club Grand Prairie, AB
7/18 The Players Club Camrose, AB
7/21 The Royal Nelson, BC
7/22 Caravan Farm Theater Armtrong, BC
7/23 The Dream Café Penticton, BC
7/24 Creekside Theatre Winfield, BC
7/26 Island Folk Festival Duncan, BC
7/30 Element Victoria, BC
7/31 Mayne Island Agricultural Hall Mayne Island, BC
8/1 Filberg Festival Comox, BC
8/2 St James Hall Vancouver, BC
8/3 Pynelogs Cultural Center Invermere, BC
8/7 Interplay Festival Fort McMurray, AB
8/8 – 9 Edmonton Folk Festival Edmonton, AB
8/14 – 16 15 Annual Fred Eaglesmith Charity Picnic Aylmer, ON
8/23 Music at Fieldscote Ancaster, ON
8/26 Hugh’s Room Toronto, ON

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The Monsters. Monsters of Folk – comprised of Bright Eyes’ Conor Oberst and Mike Mogis, My Morning Jacket’s Jim James and M. Ward – will be releasing their first collaborative album on September 22. The self-titled effort was recorded in Malibu, CA and Omaha, NE, and produced by Mogis. Although these critically acclaimed artists have shared the stage before, this album marks their first recorded output as a band.

Monsters of Folk began as folklore of sorts, when James, Oberst, Ward and Mogis did their first run of shows together in 2004. Like the musical revue shows that went town to town when rock ‘n’ roll was newly born, the tour was called “An Evening With: Bright Eyes, Jim James and M. Ward,” although amongst friends and crew, it became affectionately known as the “Monsters of Folk Tour.” While entertaining audiences coast to coast with gorgeous acoustic melodies and world-weary tales, the foursome vowed to make their way to a studio at some point after the tour’s completion. Instead, the songsmiths went on to individually release some of rock music’s most exciting albums of the last five years – Bright Eyes’ I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and Cassadaga; My Morning Jacket’s Z and Evil Urges; M. Ward’s Post War and Hold Time. Never ones to forget their promises, when downtime presented itself, they convened in the studio multiple times over two years, with Mogis at the helm of their first recorded effort.

All four members play every instrument on the album, supplying everything from drum fills to cascading backing vocals. The songs – some road-worn fables, some intimate and intricate with electronic elements, some woozy and sun-soaked – are everything one might expect from these four musical minds collaborating together.

Track Listing:

1. Dear God (sincerely M.O.F.)
2. Say Please
3. Whole Lotta Losin’
4. Temazcal
5. The Right Place
6. Baby Boomer
7. Man Named Truth
8. Goodway
9. Ahead of the Curve
10. Slow Down Jo
11. Losin Yo Head
12. Magic Marker
13. Map Of The World
14. The Sandman, the Brakeman and Me
15. His Master’s Voice

CFMA Committee Announces
The Fifth Anniversary Edition of the Canadian Folk Music Awards
and Call for Submissions
Please visit the CFMA media web site at www.folkawards.ca/media 

The Canadian Folk Music Awards celebrates its fifth anniversary this year by returning home to the National Capital Region.

The 2009 CFMA ceremony will take place Saturday, November 21st, 2009 in the theatre at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, QC. By popular demand, Shelagh Rogers of CBC Radio’s The Next Chapter and Benoit Bourque of the legendary Quebecois group La Bottine Souriante will return to host the bilingual ceremony. Performers will be announced later this summer. Awards will be handed out in 19 categories, ranging from Traditional Album and Contemporary Album of the Year to Pushing the Boundaries and Young Performer of the Year.

The Canadian Folk Music Awards were founded in 2005, in response to rumours that the Junos intended to cut one of their Roots and Traditional categories. The gala has quickly become Canadian folk music’s biggest night of the year. The awards recognize Canada’s outstanding writers, producers and performers of folk music, and the artists who are expanding the genre in innovative and exciting ways. While the Junos pay homage to Canada’s pop music success stories, the CFMAs celebrate the magnificent diversity of Canada’s musical heritage – from the musical traditions of Aboriginal Canada to Celtic, Acadian and traditional Quebecois styles, singer-songwriter music, blues, bluegrass and old-tyme country and the myriad of global traditions brought to Canada by each new wave of immigration. What’s more, the CFMAs provide an opportunity to draw Canadians’ attention to the depth and breadth of folk music in Canada.

Past Canadian Folk Music Award winners include established artists like Luke Doucet, Corb Lund, Alpha Yaya Diallo, Harry Manx, Oh Susanna, David Francey and Les Charbonniers de l’Enfer, and up-and-comers like T. Nile, Kyrie Kristmanson, Brigitte Saint-Aubin and Sarah Noni Metzner.

Call for Submissions

Submissions are now being accepted for the 2009 Canadian Folk Music Awards. Canadian folk, roots and world artists who released recordings between June 15, 2008 and June 14, 2009 are eligible to submit.

The deadline for receipt of submissions at the CFMA office is Friday, July 3, 2009. Forms and eligibility guidelines can be found on the CFMA web site at http://www.folkawards.ca.

Nominees will be announced October 7, 2009 at a media conference in the capital.

The full list of categories is as follows:

· Traditional Album of the Year
· Contemporary Album of the Year
· Children’s Album of the Year
· Traditional Singer of the Year
· Contemporary Singer of the Year
· Instrumental Solo Artist of the Year
· Instrumental Group of the Year
· Vocal Group of the Year
· Ensemble of the Year
· Solo Artist of the Year
· English Songwriter of the Year
· French Songwriter of the Year
· Aboriginal Songwriter of the Year
· World Solo Artist of the Year
· World Group of the Year
· New/Emerging Artist of the Year
· Producer of the Year
· Pushing the Boundaries
· Young Performer of the Year