by Joel Thiessen
On March 25 Streaming Cafe is hosting a BarCraft for the MLG Winter Championship of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty.
The MLG, or Major League Gaming, was created in 2002 and has been building a massive following of gamers (and spectators) all over the world. Their tournaments legitimize the term Pro-Gamer, attract nut-so crowds, boast prize pots totaling $76,000 and ascend the winners to near-celebrity status (in the gaming world at least).
For those of you who are still wondering if ‘BarCraft’ was a typo, well, it’s not. The term was first used in 2011 and is defined by wiki as “a portmanteau name for watching StarCraft at bars.” (If you are unfamiliar with the term portmanteau then you’re on your own). It might sound kind of corny - to go to a bar and drink and eat with fellow MLG enthusiasts, but is it really that different from a UFC match? Or a football game? The game has full commentator coverage, the vocal ‘woooos’ and ‘boooos’ of live tournament audience and high stakes for the players.
StarCraft II joined Halo: Reach and Call Of Duty as the MLG’s games of choice for it’s Pro Circuit back in 2010. The game’s intense real-time combat strategy has quickly made it a fan favorite and a suspense and action filled show.
Before you pick up your controller to hone your Super Mario Bros skills for a chance at The Title, keep in mind that these competitors train year round and will most likely beat you very, very badly. So rather than embarrass yourself in a one on one, why not play a FUN ON FUN and come down to the Cafe on March 25th!
The official start time for the Winter Championship hasn’t been released yet, so make sure to stay in the loop by joining our BarCraft event at on our Facebook.
MBF, or Michael Bernard Fitzgerald, first blew through Streaming Café as part of the Breakout West music festival in October of 2010. He took the stage with a drummer and backing guitarist, and, along with his trademark “flower-on-the-headstock-of-his-guitar”, proceeded to play an energetic set that had the crowd literally up and dancing. By the end of the set our producer was hard-pressed to find a camera angle that could capture MBF, because the dancing hordes had surrounded the stage and were cutting off views of Fitzgerald from all sides. And the term ‘dancing hordes’ is not a fluffy non-accurate description written to spice up an otherwise dreary paragraph; the room was packed, and there were frenetic dancing bodies filling virtually every square foot of the space around MBF.
Endearing Calgary singer/songwriter Michael Bernard Fitzgerald is returning with a new album/EP combo. The "Side A" album portion of the project, Yes, comes out on April 24th with the more intimate "Side B" EP will be coming out in conjunction with his national tour.
Michael hits the road and Kelowna music lovers will get a special treat at MBF’s Saturday, February 25th show at the Streaming Café. If you live out of town and make make it down be sure to watch the show streamed FREE live online @ http://streamingcafe.net/. Viewers anywhere in the world can enjoy direct and personal interaction with MBF via the live chat.
Canadian philosopher Marshall McLuhan once said "Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century".
On that note we continue on our journey of artistic self-promotion with our fifth installment of Cafe chalk art.
by Joel Thiessen
I vividly remember one chilly December evening in the darkened depths of the Streaming Cafe production office, a conversation had while hanging out after hours. We were flipping through archives upon archives of videos from previous live SC shows, admiring not only the amazing music we've captured but also the artist's personalities that would shine through between songs. The scientifically tested truth that when you see a song performed live - when you see the passion in the singer's face and the guitarist doing that solo-twitch-thing - that song means so much more to you. That was a feeling we've been successful giving back to our viewers through our YouTube videos…but that little extra hint of personality or insight that would come to light when the artist talked about how much a song means to them, or the time they got a bar full of bikers to sing along with a folk-love song - those were the moments we wanted to show again, we just didn't know how.
Two years and 100 podcasts later our videos have been featured numerous times on iTunes and watched in over 21 countries. Strangers walk into the Cafe from the street because they recognized the logo on our door. We have managed to re-live some of those classic Cafe moments and share them with you all once more.
It has been exciting to see who all watches our podcasts, its a different demographic than that of our live shows - which is different than those who watch our YouTube videos - which is different again from our daily coffee shop customers! As different as all those audiences might be, they all share some similar characteristics (aside from having great taste in Live Streaming Indie Music And Delicious Coffees), they all see something cool is happening at the Streaming Cafe and they want to support it. And all of us at the Streaming Cafe are extremely grateful for that support!
If there is a show moment that you want to see again, send us an message and we'll see what we can do.
Thanks for watching the Streaming Cafe podcasts. Tell your friends about them.
Here's our 100th podcast that features a performance from Vancouver's Portage & Main.
We are very happy to be displaying some amazing art on our cafe walls for the month of February by Rena Warren of Capricornucopia Artworks. Rena is having a Showing at Streaming Cafe Friday, February 10 at 6:30 - 9pm, so be sure to come down and enjoy these works in person. This showing is featuring her detailed Block Prints and 20% of all art sales goes to Muskan, a non-governmental, non-profit organization that provides art opportunities for children in rural India. For more info go to the facebook event. Hope to see you there!
The Block Prints will be on display at the cafe Feb. 3 - 29.
BIO
Rena Warren has over seventeen years experience in teaching art courses throughout the Okanagan. She received a Bachelor in Fine Arts at Okanagan University College and a Bachelor in Education at University of Victoria. Rena has taught for Opus Framing & Art Supplies, Kelowna Art Gallery, Cool Arts Society and in the private school system. In her private practice, she specializes in large-scale oil portraiture in bold fauvist colour and original block print designs. Currently she is working on a series of mandalas in block print. http://capricornucopiaartworks.blogspot.com/
There must be something about February that attracts Victoria’s Mike Edel to the road life. He played Streaming Café in February of 2011, and now he’s back again this February on the 18th.
There is a video loop of past SC performances by various artists which plays in the café during the week, and Edel’s “You smile at me” jumps out at me each time I hear it. The song is actually called “Bottom Floor Apartment”, and when I hear the stabbing opening lines/phrases I always think ‘Okay, I’ve heard this before...’, and then as the song builds and gets to the chorus’s line of “you smile at me” I recall that “Oh, yeah – this is Mike Edel”. You can see those same past-performance videos here.
Edel grew up on his family’s grain farm in rural Alberta, but more recently he’s made his home in Victoria, BC. He’s made a name for himself already, with positive reviews in all types of media:
"Edel's voice is Damien Rice having a meeting with Dan Mangan..." See Magazine
"'The Country Where I came From' is not only a wonderful homage to home, wherever that may be, but uses the simplicity of a banjo and hand claps to perfection." Grey Owl Point
“In the last two years that Mike Edel has been in Victoria he has established himself as one of the region’s go-to musicians” Times Colonist
Mike is warm and personable in performance, and that same warmth comes through on his album The Last of Our Mountains, produced by Winston Hauschild (who’s lent his musical prowess to other Canadian acts like Hey Ocean and Hannah Georgas). No doubt that warmth can find some of its origins in the fact that the album sessions were the last time Mushroom Studios’ vintage gear was used in production. Sigh; the end of an era… The Last of Our Mountains is worth having in your collection even just for its historical value – but the music itself is definitely worth owning, too.
Mike Edel has already toured Western Canada five times. It could be that Mike gets bored sitting around in the mild climate of Victoria, or it could be that he loves the challenge of traversing hill and dale during the frigid winter months; in either case, he’s no stranger to covering the long distances between Canadian towns while on the road, and he seems willing enough to do it when there’s snow everywhere.
You don’t have to travel to Medicine Hat for the cold Tongue On Post Folk Festival, nor do you have to catch a ferry and hit Victoria for the Rifflandia Festival (both of which are events Edel has been part of); you can catch Mike Edel live and in-person on Saturday, February 18, right on your doorstep at the Streaming Café, 596 Leon Ave in Kelowna. Not close enough for you? Then watch and listen online at streamingcafe.net, starting live at 7:00 p.m. – and you can interact with Mike and ask him anything you want, whether you’re physically at the café or whether you’re checking in online. We hope to see you there.
Keith Price is an indie musician. The Keith Price Trio is an indie group. Mention the term “Indie Musician” and what generally comes to mind is a casually dressed individual (i.e. contemporary hippie-type clothing) toting an acoustic guitar, singing and playing folksy-sounding songs they wrote themselves. The term “Indie Group”, on the other hand, usually conjures up images of earnest young men slamming around on electric guitars, playing self-written music that’s got enough of an edge to keep them slightly off-centre of mainstream but still pushing hard for a record deal; and they, too, are often dressed like modern hippies. This is a definition we’ve already (as in previously) tossed around in our newsletter, boys and girls.
Yet as soon as you hear the name “Keith Price Trio” you think, “Hey, what’s this ‘trio’ business all about?’ – and that’s your first inkling that something other than the pre-fab definition of indie group might be in play here.
Most of the promo photos of Keith Price show him in a casual beard. So far, so good. Some shots show him wearing a baseball cap – a trucker-style nylon mesh baseball cap; again, artist apparel that we’re familiar with here at Streaming Café.
But even the casual observer at this point notes that the guitar accompanying Price in all the shots is a lovely hollow-body electric, worn slightly higher on his body than most rockers would be comfortable with. And in pictures of the whole Trio, the bassist is seen with a double bass (you know, those giant violins that stand on a metal spike).
“Aha!” you say. “This is a jazz group!”
Well, yes. The Keith Price Trio is a jazz group. (And now the ‘trio’ business makes sense). Price hails from Winnipeg, and has made his musical home in Manitoba by choice, even though he was offered a scholarship at New York’s New School University. Price spent time in Boston studying with guitar guru Mick Goodrick, but when it came time to put down roots, his choice was to spend time in the jazz program established by Steve Kirby at the University of Manitoba.
“A jazz group? Aren’t jazz musicians / groups a little too esoteric for the likes of us at Streaming Café?” (SHHH! Don’t let them hear you saying that!!).
Here are a couple of examples of what’s different about Keith Price, and part of why the Keith Price Trio is booked to play SC:
-Price produced Michael Peters’ latest album; Peters is an indie-pop singer/songwriter who appeared at SC back in the early days.
-Keith Price Trio’s new album, Gaia Goya, features covers of tunes by artists like Nirvana, Sufjan Stevens, St. Vincent, and Grizzly Bear.
-Six of the tracks on the new album are a suite that Price wrote while on his last tour, and they’re based loosely on Pink Floyd’s album Animals.
Nirvana. Pink Floyd. Definitely not your typical jazz fare. Sufjan Stevens. Definitely part of the faves playlist of most Streaing Café aficionados. Maybe this Keith Price Trio is more SC-like than might be first realized.
Keith’s own words to Michael, our talent-booking (amongst everything else) guy: “I’ve really enjoyed watching/hearing my friends Kim McMechan, James Lamb, and Michael Peters perform at the café. The quality of the recordings is always amazing and the vibe of the place seems really wonderful, even over the Internet.”
We like it when people tell us they like what we’re doing. And it’s good to hear that Price is friends with some of the artists who’ve played here (McMechan and Lamb have each been featured here on multiple occasions). And it’s good to know our live streaming has even reached into the land of Manitoba. But is that enough to make the Keith Price Trio someone we would host at SC?
“I find the jazz world a little too stuffy these days,” Price says, “and have been wondering: why are the folk musicians having so much fun when we are having very little?”
Price says his newest album is intended to reach beyond the confines of the jazz world. His choice to cover material by artists like Nirvana and Sufjan Stevens in his latest work is an intentional decision designed to bridge the gap between the more every-day music lover and the sometimes hard-to-understand world of jazz.
“I’m trying to find a balance with my new music between interesting, creative jazz and material that is accessible to a wide range of people (not just jazz nerds!) without being cheesy.”
Price and his bandmates, Julian Bradford on bass and Curtis Nowosad on drums, have logged a lot of time together. They’ve covered gigs such as CBC Canada Live and the 2010 Montreal Jazz Festival. In a testament to either their courage or their Manitoba hardiness, they’ve elected to tour Canada during these frigid winter months, and they’ll be appearing at Streaming Café on February 11th.
Landing as it does right in the Valentine’s Day season, an evening with the Keith Price Trio might be the perfect chance for a night out, with warm jazz filling the airwaves – yet jazz that is easy to get into even for the non-initiated listener. Keith has done an amazing job of opening up the world of jazz guitar to everyone through his choice of cover material. We think this is going to be a great night! Saturday February 11, live in person at 596 Leon Ave in Kelowna, or live online at StreamingCafe.net
by Michael Donley
February is set to be a truly great month of indie music at the cafe. Vancouver indie rockers In Medias Res start off the month Feb. 4th, Streaming Cafe being the first stop of their western Canadian/US tour. Michael Bernard Fitzgerald returns to the cafe, this time killing it with a brass section and also returning to our stage, with his band is Mike Edel from Vancouver Island. Stepping a bit out of our "folk" roots, The Keith Price Trio performs their jazz vibes on the Valentines weekend.
All four performing artists are definitely worth looking into. View videos from this months artists and as always if you can't make it out to the cafe for drinks and music, catch the shows streamed live @ http://www.streamingcafe.net/ - 7pm (pacific standard time)... it's free!
IN MEDIAS RES - Feb. 4th
Formed over a decade ago, Vancouver-based In Medias Res has risen from a fledgling act full of potential to one of the most lauded indie-rock bands in the city. Recently, the band has taken on a new shape, with principle songwriter and frontman Andrew Lee striking out on tour himself but the Streaming Cafe show sees the whole band their to perform a bit of a "stripped down" show. Going to be wicked!
THE KEITH PRICE TRIO - Feb. 11th Keith Price has thrown a indie flare to jazz. His last album covering well known indie and alternative bands such as Sufan Stevens and Nirvana. He was nominated for the TD Grand Prix Du Jazz and The Galaxie Rising Star awards at the 2010 Montreal International Jazz Fest.
It's a great way to spend your Valentines weekend.
Here's a clip of the trio performing their rendition of indie rock band Grizzly Beat "Ready Able".
MIKE EDEL - Feb. 18th Mike Edel returns to the cafe having toured non stop for the last year. This time he brings his band with him for his performance. His album "The Last Of Our Mountains" is definitely worth a listen!
Here's an official video "Turn the Lights on Bright" as well as solo performance from his apperance at Streaming Cafe.
MICHAEL BERNARD FITZGERALD - Feb. 25th
We are very privileged to have MBF back at the cafe. Hailing from Calgary, Michael's indie-folk-pop music and personality have brought him a large following across Canada.
Here's his video "Suzie (I Love You)" as well as a performance from his apperance at Streaming Cafe in 2010.
by Joel Thiessen.JPG)
StarCraft II joined Halo: Reach and Call Of Duty as the MLG’s games of choice for it’s Pro Circuit back in 2010. The game’s intense real-time combat strategy has quickly made it a fan favorite and a suspense and action filled show.
