It’s so great to see the recent attention given to the re-release of THE GREATEST ALBUM OF ALL TIME, Shakespeare My Butt by The Lowest of the Low. Here’s a pretty great interview posted by Exclaim magazine. Sure, I would have loved it if he’d referred to me by name instead of just as “the interviewer,” or at least dropping UMFM’s name or something, but hey, we’re still cool with it.

http://exclaim.ca/Interviews/WebExclusive/lowest_of_lows_ron_hawkins

The folks at CBC radio posted an interesting interview with our pal Keri Latimer. Check it out online: http://www.cbc.ca/radio2/canadalive/2011/01/07/the-truth-about-keri-latimer-and-nathan/

I’m hoping to get my act together and get our old pal Jim Bryson on the phone soon to promote his fine new record and upcoming show (March 5 at WECC, see the Upcoming Events page for more info). In the meantime, here’s a neat interview posted by former Winnipegger Chuck Molgat on his blog, Thick Specs

See the full interview here: http://www.thickspecs.com/my_weblog/2010/10/interview-with-jim-bryson.html

Jim’s always interesting, but especially so in this interview. You surely know by now that Jim’s album The North Side Benches is one of my all time faves, a true desert island disc. Well, it sounds like Jim wasn’t even trying to be brilliant, and certainly wasn’t having a good time making the record! Shocking:

“TS: Over 10 years, you’ve released 5 solo works but a few have been gapped by more than 3 or 4 years (North Side Benches in 2003 to Where The Bungalows Roam in 2007) – was that planned or due to other busyness?

JB: There is a perfect example of how playing other people’s music affects your own stuff. Kathleen toured all of 2005 and all of 2006 and I was playing with her through all of that so I recorded Bungalows on breaks from tour. So songs like The Wishes Pile Up, All The Fallen Leaves, Pissing On Everything, Death By Vibration…I had bed tracks done for all of those. So half of it was made one year and I made the rest of it over another. That stuff I recorded went to a studio. And I mean, North Side Benches was a little intense and somewhat negative record company experience so I was taking a bit of a calculated step back at that point. I wasn’t enjoying many elements of it. And ya know, you only live once in a year and so I wanted to make sure I felt better about all of it and that I lived as well as I could in that space of a year. I was lookin to get dropped and I did get dropped by the label. I guess it was part of learning to trust my own instincts more. And it’s weird – sometimes they’ll say ‘you got some buzz going!’ and you’ll call the same press people you called 10 years ago. It’s all strange. But for me, I just made a decision that its my life and I’m happy to work with other people but I want to do it my own way. I strangely felt burnt out after North Side Benches. But then when I went on tour with Kathleen, it re-energized my own desire to do my own music. A lot more positives in my life came around since then.”

Dauphin Countryfest is an annual gathering of drunken uneducated idiots who can’t wait to get their next Toby Keith fix. It’s really a side of humanity that you don’t need to see to understand – it’s better left at a distance. Somehow, however, they do manage to book a few really cool acts each year.

This year’s Dauphin lineup includes: The Sheepdogs, Joshua Cockerill, The Warped 45s, The Heartbroken, and legendary Texan Joe Ely. Of course, the shenanigans are probably sold out (the drunken, uneducated, obnoxious contingent in that part of the world is large), so it doesn’t much matter, but we hear that a couple of the good ones may play the StuDome on July 3. (The Sunset Saloon is looking at booking Joe Ely for a Wednesday night show just to get back at ol’ Stu. Don’t hold your breath.)

Check out the details at the Countryfest site: http://countryfest.ca/index.php

You may recall our struggles getting Fred Eaglesmith to appear on the show (capped off by the infamous Fred Eaglesmith Will he or Won’t He Show and the subsequent Fred Eaglesmith clause that we use on the email list (you have joined the email list, right? See the Home page for the link). We’ve had a rocky relationship, and that along with his somewhat questionable musical direction and his cantankerous ways which alienate some great musicians who toil away in his band, lead us to not always see eye-to-eye with ol’ Fred.

That having been said, he is a pretty darn intelligent, interesting dude, as you can see in this great interview online: http://www.mulevariations.com/features/feature-interview-fred-eaglesmith-part-1