I Heart the Music: Your Online Source for Live Music Reviews and Interviews in Toronto!

Day two of CMW for iheartthemusic saw us at the Opera House to review the completely sold-out show featuring Saukrates, Woodhands and headliner K-OS.  CBC radio were taping the concert live so the entire event had huge buzz and the excitement was rampant throughout the building.

Toronto hip-hop and R&B artist Saukrates opened the show and definitely set the tone of the evening.  He came out backed up by a live band and we especially have to give props to his guitarist who was just wicked onstage.  It’s always great when a band backs a hip-hop artist because it just takes this genre of music to a whole new level.  A master lyricist and performer, Saukrates was really versatile and sang R&B ballads, rapped and even ended with a harder, grittier, rock infused song where yes.. he head banged with his awesome dreadlocked mane. It was impressive to watch an artist rev up a hip-hop crowd, then bring them down to create an intimate, emotional space and then finish things off with really high energy. It was a true testament to both Saukrates’ experience and ability to connect with his audience.

Next came Woodhands’ Dan Werb and Paul Banwatt who played numbers from Heart Attack and their new album Remorsecapade. This performance was highly anticipated and definitely ended up being the highlight of the night; these guys were just unbelievable! Woodhands had wicked momentum and boundless energy; it was kind of like Girl Talk fused with jungle percussion and Werb’s distinct punk/hip hop vocals and utter craziness were only made even more magical accompanied by a frenetic driving bass and our favourite instrument: the keytar. Melanie Todd accompanied them for two songs, which were a lighter, cuter version of what Woodhands are known for. During the concert, the scene changed from a just a live show to an all out Ibiza style electro rave. Woodhands’ sound is so current, postmodern and totally rare to the Toronto music scene and only left us wanting more.

Headliner and seasoned pro K-OS restored order and closed the show with classic hits and new numbers from his albums like “Bounce”, “Heaven Only Knows” and “Sunday Morning”.  Also backed by a full band and DJ, K-OS freestyled, did some old school beat boxing, sang, played acoustic guitar and harmonica and did a wicked song over Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven” that made for an awesome marriage of Hip Hop and Rock and Roll. Anyone who has seen K-OS live knows that the man has stage presence and swagger.

All told, Opera House was on fire last Thursday.  People were chanting lyrics, dancing and even the occasional joint was lit up—much to the dismay of Opera House security. It was really a great show…definitely one of CMW’s best this year. 

As reviewed by Victoria Kuketz

photography provided by  Mike Palmer

What started with a bunch of friends coming together to play in support of the launch of a magazine, Blues in D have grown into something so much more than an “opening band”. With the tragic loss of band member Dylan Ellis in the early stages of the band’s existence, the remaining members were pushed to continue on their musical path finding even more motivation to continue to do what they do best: bring blues-inspired tunes to the mainstream. Frontman and founder Ben McPhee sat down with iheartthemusic before their set at the PEACE DOT LOVE music festival: a festival that is in support of local anti-violence initiatives that work towards preventing random acts of violence – a cause that is important to the Toronto five-some.Ben shared with us the inspiration behind the group that is Blues in D today…

iheartthemusic:  How did you come to be?

Ben: Myself, Dylan and Oliver ran an online magazine for a couple of years called 2point0 and to raise money to try and get it to print, we started to throw parties. We had this one party in February 2008 that we knew we needed some music for. I had been playing with Dylan and his brother Cody for a while, just dicking around on the guitar and we were like “why don’t we just play”. So we found a drummer and opened up for this band and ended up playing a bunch of blues tunes for fifty people at this party. We named ourselves The BDC Blues Band and that went really well with people suggesting that we play another show. Unfortunately shortly after that we lost Dylan and that gave us more motivation than ever to keep it going. We got a new bassist, another guitarist and started hitting the stone really hard; practicing a lot and doing a lot of regular gigs and charity shows. Now we are Blues in D.

iheartthemusic: Is the “D” an homage to Dylan?

Ben: Absolutely! Our signature stuff is a bunch of blues tunes and we always close the show with the first song we ever played together that we wrote. We started off as blues and now we are doing a lot of our original rock stuff.

iheartthemusic: Where did the blues influence come from?

Ben: I had been playing guitar for a while and when Dylan started to pick it up, the first stuff that I started playing with him was blues music. He kind of gravitated towards that, so whenever we would sit and jam in his basement it was blues stuff. Then when he started teaching Cody how to play it was blues as well. So when that first show came around it seemed like an obvious fit or choice for us to play. I also just happened to have a voice that suited that genre and so that’s where it all started.

iheartthemusic: Any musical influences then?

Ben: I’ve got a bunch; Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden…

iheartthemusic: Soundgarden has not been a name I have heard in a while!

Ben: I love complex music and melody and lyrics that actually, when it all comes together, sound fairly straightforward. I think they are the geniuses of that.

iheartthemusic: Do you all come from different musical backgrounds?

Ben: Yeah. I’ve had training on piano and drums and am self-taught guitar and singing. Cody is self-taught guitar. Andrei and Tura are self-taugh bass and drums. The only one person that has formal training on the instrument they are playing is Nick, our other guitarist. The musical background is the coolest part of the band because I’m really into rock and alternative rock and hip hop and funk. Nick is really into hippy-shit. He’s into Grateful Dead. Cody is into straight blues, Andrei is into alternative rock and Tura is into to funk and Caribbean stuff.

iheartthemusic: We’ve got no punk in there!

Ben: Yeah, there’s no punk!

ihearttthemusic: Maybe I should join the band with the cymbals! [laughs]

Ben: I’ve had a couple of offers to play emo punk stuff for fun and it got shot down pretty quickly. It’s the one genre we can’t agree on!

iheartthemusic: Is it tough for an unsigned band to get noticed?

Ben: It is for a number of reasons. I mean we aren’t really going full bore into being popular, we just want people to enjoy our music.

iheartthemusic: Okay, but is this something that you hope to do as a career?

Ben: I would depending on how much of a pain in the ass it really was. The problem isn’t how easy it is to get your music in the world, it’s just how much noise it creates on the shitty end of the stick. There is so much brutal stuff out there and I hate to put people down who are working really hard, but it’s an industry with a lot of great talent but also a lack of talent. A lot of bad noise gets out there and people hear that and sort of get disenchanted with the entire music genre as a whole. Like, a lot of people base what’s happening with music on what’s on the radio. There isn’t anything that sets people apart which is why you find sex symbols at sixteen years old; selling all the records because that’s an easy sell. The other thing is our genre, we are very very classic rock- we don’t want to sound like anybody else. When we recorded our EP over the summer last year we were so happy to hear the guys in the recording studio be like “we can’t pinpoint who you guys sound like”. That was it for us- mission accomplished. I don’t care if it makes us not sell a lot of records because the idea is that we want to sound like our sound and we want to bring originality to music. I think that right now the instinct is to go with what is easy to hear or popular, and we are going with what we love and think would be original for peope to listen to.

These guys are planning to release a full album by the end of August/beginning of September.

photography provided by Matt Vardy & Carl Heindl