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Streaming Cafe

Thursday, February 2, 2012

Mike Edel - "Edel's voice is Damien Rice having a meeting with Dan Mangan..."

by Makcolm Petch
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.


St. Columba from Mike Edel on Vimeo.

Indie Jazz? The Keith Price Trio

by Malcolm Petch
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