Back to the Basics

I'm going to try and re direct these articles back to the original all Canadian performers it should be.

So we'll start it off fresh with Mark Minelli.
Mark is the newest addition to the Candy rat records team, and for the most part is quite different than what they have to offer. Rather than being a "different" guitar focused performer. He is a solo singer/songwriter, with a rather unique voice. I hate to make this comparison, but his musical style is somewhat like Jason Mraz. His melodies are nice, poppy, easy to listen to, and yet complex in their theoretical breakdown.

With this song as pointed out by someone in the comments he is using a Minor I, Major Fifth, Minor II, Minor I pattern and using a G# major as his Major fifth which is different, but really well suited to the song. Which I realize that that probably means nothing.


Second from further east is Stephen fearing
Stephen has been around for quite a while and is a really good writer. Here you go, I don't want to talk anymore.

This post will have no name.

First up is Roy Rogers. I don't want to say anything about him because I think it will take away from his awesomeness. Just simply enjoy his amazing amount of talent with a slide.







Second up is Eddie Vedder. If you haven't heard me talk about him in real life I'm amazed. He's pretty much my favourite person, I'm more of a fan of him than I am of Joel Dust, and I'm Joel's number one fan. Eddie Vedder (if you didn't know) is the lead face of Pearl Jam. He participated in the making of the soundtrack for the movie Into the Wild. Which I'm glad he did, the people he was up against would have ruined the feel of a fantastic film.





This is a fantastic cover by him.



And now some of you may be thinking, what is this Pearled Jam you speak of. Well shame on you if you are, and here are some of their songs.

Melodic Madness

This post is going to be all about metal. But seeing as I have not done any metal before and I know there are not a lot of metal fans around here, I will start off slowly with it by doing more of the musical side of the awesomely diverse genre. By going with the easier side of things here it will probably be bands that even if you are a metal fan you might not know.

First up I am going to list Opeth. These guys are one of my favourite metal bands because of their musical talent and diversity. Opeth is generally known as being a very heavy dark sounding band, But! they have a lighter side with a very wonderful musical back ground. This is a band that is not in metal because they like to just through out heavy chugging riffs and growl into the mic. They are into it because of the opportunity it provides to use many different musical backgrounds in one piece. Mikael Akerfeldt the lead singer of Opeth is a very well renowned singer in europes music scene. He has leant his voice to many other albums for bands throughout the "Fantasy Metal" scene, including work for the legendary Arjen Lucassen with his album 01011001 under the band Ayreon. The two songs I am going to show you are from Opeths album Watershed which is their latest release.

The First song is Burden and my favourite from the album. This song is a really good example of how you can blend different musical styles into one song in metal. You will hear them using Jazz influences in parts, a very heavy Blues influence for the guitar solos and a little bit of classical guitar for the outro.




The second song is Porcelain Heart



The second band I am going to do is Rhapsody (of fire). (These guys are super awesome if you are driving through a really mystical looking forest). Their guitarist Lucca Turilli is quite well known throughout Europe as well as the lead singer Fabio Lione. Both of them were also featured on Arjen Lucassens album 01. This is a hard band to appreciate if you don't enjoy theater or opera even the slightest. One thing that does gives them a whole bunch of street cred is that they were able to get Christopher Lee (Saurumon - Lord of the Rings) to do the narrating for all of their albums. Sorry that paragraph was all over the place and really really bad. Here's a couple of songs.



This second on is really really long, but you should watch because it kind of feels like a lifetime achievement being able to say "I've watched the full copy of Rhapsody's Unholy Warcry. Plus it is a really epic song.

Tribute to Les Paul

As you may know, Les Paul died today. I don't think I really need to say anything about him, because if you put his name into Google right now you'll come up with a whole bunch of articles telling you his life story. So what I am going to do is give you a few videos to watch. They will have some of the most famous Les Paul playing artists.

First up, should be fairly obvious. Slash, probably the most famous for only playing a Les Paul
watch in HD



Here's a great song from Ben Harper



And here is the man himself.



And here a commercial feature Les Paul, not the best quality and Japanese subtitles.

Slipity Slide

So I've really been getting into playing slide on my guitar, which made me think why not do a slide edition of New Notes? So that's exactly what I'm going to do. I also realize that I haven't done a post in a while, and that is because I haven't really listened to anything worth posting in a little while. Anyways lets get to it shall we.

First up is the fantastic Derek Trucks. Derek Trucks I think is really important to the music scene, which (people may argue this one) I also think John Mayer is. I believe that they are important because with out guys like these the blues would die with the greats such as; Eric Clapton, BB king, Buddy Guy, The Blind Boys of Alabama, and we know that they can't last forever. Derek Trucks is an absolutely phenomenal slide guitarist and one thing that makes him even better is his music is diverse. Which I didn't realize was possible with slide. Derek Trucks is the youngest person to be featured on the rolling stones list of 100 best guitarists of all time. Derek Trucks main project is The Derek Trucks Band (go figure). Heres a couple of my favourite songs.



This second song isn't by Derek, but it is a really good song with Warren Haynes.



Second up is an oldie but a goodie, Ry Cooder. Ry Cooder gets major bonus points with me, as he was the one to perform and write all the guitar parts for the movie crossroads (definitely a must see movie). With exception to Steve Vai's solo from the guitar battle scene, which was written by the man himself. Ry Cooder is an interesting musician because he plays a couple of instruments you don't see very often, Mandolin, and the Mando-guitar. Then on top of playing both of those, he plays slide on them! I would never have even thought to play slide on either of them. Ry Cooder is Fairly old news, but who cares, if it's good it's good. I'd tell you more about him but I'm going to guess that most of your parents will be able to tell you who he is, or there's the possibility that you are old enough to have gotten one of his albums new (1970's-1980's) So I'll just give you a couple of videos.

(Mando-Guitar)




This last one is a group from Beautiful British Columbia, Vancouver. They are James Lamb, and while they are not a blues group of a slide group or anything like that their secondary guitarist plays a lap slide. I really Don't know alot about these guys, they're pretty under-ground. They don't have a website or anything that I know of and the only material I've seen of theirs is from Vancouver City Limits. So I'll just give you the video.

I've got a kinda special post this week. It is going to feature three female artists who are all from P.E.I, I know kinda weird, opposite ends of the country and all. They're all pretty sweet, and they've all got a unique style that a lot of people might not like. I'll start with the smallest reputation.

Tanya Davis. Tanya Davis is unique because shes not a songwriter, she's a poet, which really changes her music style from the usual one person act. Tanya's music is all recorded in Hallifax, but she is P.E.I raised. I don't really want to fake knowing a lot about her by reading her bio and then re writing because that's cheating. So I'm just going quote the whole thing. There aren't really any videos of hers on youtube as shes not well enough known yet, so to hear her music you have to go to her site and you can listen to full versions of a couple of her songs off her album "Gorgeous Morning" I recommend listening to the songs Art and Fortress.

"Tanya Davis celebrates the everyday with her sophomore release Gorgeous Morning. Based in Halifax, she's up with the birds most days and can be often found scribbling thoughts in her notebook at neighbouring cafes. Over the course of the past few years, the Prince Edward Island-native has earned the reputation of being a black coffee drinker who colours outside the lines.

Part poet, part songwriter, all performer, she dabbles in all aspects of art-making. Gorgeous Morning is a kaleidoscopic insight into a multi-dimensional creative. She poetically addresses the dark notes of herself, nurses her sentiments through sad-luck serenades about her late cat Henry, rekindles faith while paying witness to a festival of night bugs and wards off poem-promising knights and lovelorn princesses with quirky pop songs. Davis' creativity is as fluid as her sexuality and as eclectic as her work. She writes and loves from the same place - her hopeful heart.

Recorded over the wintry months in Halifax at Echo Chamber Audio with renowned engineer Charles Austin, Gorgeous Morning portrays Davis through a paradigm of bravery and vulnerability. With an instinctual ear and the vernacular of a poet, she makes wordy music built on unique arrangements that fend off genre and highlight both musicianship and passion.

Davis self-released Make A List in 2006, which garnered 4 nominations for both the PEI and Nova Scotia Music Awards. She was the regional winner of the 2006 RadioStar songwriting competition and was recently awarded Best Author/Poet in The Coast's Best of Halifax readers' survey in 2007. Her music and poetry has been featured locally and nationally on CBC Radio and campus community stations. She's toured extensively through Central and Eastern Canada with several shows in the Northeastern United States in the fall of 2007." -www.tanyadavis.ca

Second up is Jenn Grant. Jenn Grant is probably my favourite out of these three, and I'm not going to lie, it's just because I think she's really cute. I really couldn't find out much about her, but I did like her music. Plus one of her videos has a cruiser bike gang scene which is just awesome. She is again a P.E.I native and thats all I really know about her. So again I'll just copy her sites bio which I didn't really find very helpful anyways...

"From her debut record, Orchestra for the Moon, Jenn Grant's name has surfaced in four star reviews from Harp and The Globe and Mail, earned her several East Coast Music Awards nominations, and landed her on tours with the Great Lake Swimmers, Hayden, Justin Rutledge, Martin Tielli, Danny Michel, and The Weakerthans.

There are traces of Orchestra for the Moon in her latest offering, elements that helped shape Jenn’s sound into what it has become. Producer/pianist Jonathan Goldsmith (Bruce Cockburn) leads a heart-on-sleeve band through Echoes: Kinley Dowling on violin, David Christensen on bass clarinet, Sean MacGillivray on bass, Gary Craig on drums/percussion, and Jenn herself on guitar. These are all sincere songs captured in the moment, on tape. Echoes was recorded and mixed with a fully analogue process at Puck’s Farm.

Without the songs being old or feeling old, Echoes’ analog heart reflects the art and the heart of Jenn herself, inciting a familiarity that connects the listener with the roots of music." -- www.jenngrant.com

Here's a couple songs.






Last up is Catherine MacLellan, Catherine is also from P.E.I. Catherine Maclellan is one of the fastest rising new Canadian Singer/Songwriters. She released her first album in 2004 and has since released two others. With her latest being released just this year, titled "Water in the Ground". So with that little tiny bit said heres a couple songs. Theres also a few songs from past albums that you can listen to on her website which is www.catherinemaclellan.com

First up this time is Zee Avi.

This girl has a fantastic back story. I found out about her on youtube when she started posting simple her playing acoustic guitar infront of a webcam style videos, which was about 2 years ago. She's a girl from Malaysia who's got a cute face and a wonderful voice. Mid fall last year I got a message from her (as well as everyone else thats friends with her on youtube, so no i'm not special) saying she was going to be on Brushfires christmas album "This Warm December". Which I was prety stoked for. After that album was released on November 17th I found out that with Jack Johnsons help she would be recording her first album in the US under Brushfire Records, and she is now officially a Brushfire artist. She's been doin the odd show in L.A and New York, but no actual tours or anything yet. Heres a couple of her songs.

This first one is her first single "Bitter Heart" which includes an apearance by Matt Costa on Trumpet.



and this second one has a few songs in one video, which are the songs "Honey Bee" "Bitter Heart" "Kantoi" which I believe is a Malay folk song, and "Monte"



Second I think will be a composer. Joe Hisaishi.

Joe Hisaishi has been around for a pretty long time now, but being Japanese most people don't know who he is. His music is mostly heard in movie soundtracks, But then again there isn't really a big enough classical orchestra market to not sell your music for movies. His music was first seen in Studio Ghibli's 1986 hit movie "Kaze no Tani no Naushika" (Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind). Sinc that movie Hisaishi has been a constant contributer to Hayao Miyazaki's films, but he did lend his talents to other movies as well, like 1999's "Kikujiro". One of the best things about Joe hisaishi's music is his instrumental diversity with his orchestra. While all of his music can be listened to or performed solo on piano. He is known to use Chello's, Saxaphones, Violins, and Drums as leading instruments and does so quite often. So Here's a couple videos showing his music performed live, and don't blame me if they don't work, being foreign they quite often violate audio laws and stuff so they get takin off of youtube, and then re-uploaded by someone else.

First one is the theme song from the first movie I mentioned Nausicaa



Second one is "Summer" from the movie Kikujiro




And Third is Don Ross

I don't know what to say about Don Ross, so I'll just tell you two thing, He's Canadian, and is on of our top solo guitarists. Check him out, he's just so funky.

Michael Michael Michael



Loaded, Leather, Moonroof



Tight Trite Night with Andy Mckee (i'll talk about him next week)





And here's a bonus Canadian Guitarist, Kelly Valleau.

Kelly Valleau is a really good classical guitarist. He has near perfect flamenco picking and writes some really awesome covers.

Pink Floyd cover of "Another Brick in the Wall"



"Hommage to Barios"



and one more this one is an origional song of his that shows of his flamenco skills.

"Imperial March" (yeah I know awesome)