Thursday 31 January 2013

SONICWAVES OF ICELAND - An interview with Mark Hamilton by Christine Leonard-Cripps

SonicWaves bridges the gap between Calgary and Reykjavik

 

Sonic Waves presented in conjunction with One Yellow Rabbit's  High Performance Rodeo

Local man-about-town turned international songwriter Mark Hamilton has spent the better part of the last decade nurturing his fledgling folk vehicle, Woodpigeon, into a recording and touring success. Relocating from Calgary to Brighton, Edinburgh, and eventually Vienna, his passion for fashioning new musical constructs has led him to develop relationships that would never have been available to him had he remained static. Best informed by exploring a broad scope of cultural environments, Hamilton will soon return to Calgary, bringing with him the SonicWaves event — a musical mini-fest that will hopefully bridge the gap between Iceland and Calgary.

“The idea for SonicWaves came from my first visit to Iceland in 2009,” Hamilton says. “Since then I’ve come back three additional times, including a performance at Iceland Airwaves 2012, one of the greatest festival experiences of my life. What I took primarily from my visits here was a sense of self-confidence — that if my songs got me here, they could get me anywhere. And with that in mind, I wanted to share that feeling with some Calgary musicians that I’m a fan of.”
Hamilton sought out Icelandic musicians to collaborate on a project that would come to be known as SonicWaves. He also called upon a handful of Calgary’s most prolific songmakers to pair their original creations with the material being generated by his Mid-Atlantic collective.

“As far as kinship, the Icelanders we know are some of the sweetest, most giving musicians I’ve ever met. It’s a great feeling to be working so closely with true friends like this,” he says. “Alongside me stand Clinton St. John, Laura Leif, Samantha Savage Smith and, from Reykjavik, Benni Hemm Hemm and Prins Póló. Our process has been incredibly stress-free, which could be a bit surprising given how we’re each so in control of our own projects. Despite our short time together, this feels like a band already. No one has acted sacred or unwilling to take suggestions. Each member has brought a piece or three of music along to flesh out. It’s been a great experience standing in a circle in a studio space on the waterfront, wandering back and forth between instruments, and seeing what sticks."

“I’ve always thought that coming to Iceland is a bit like visiting the moon,” Hamilton continues. “The colours and the shapes and the nature of the wild around you is unlike anywhere else I’ve been. We chose to take a tour of the country before sitting down to actually write the music. Yesterday, Laura Leif and I went for a walk through Þingvellir, the site of the first Icelandic parliament. We strolled between the Eurasian and Mid-Atlantic Ridge, towering on either side of us. The thought hits you of what exactly you’re looking at — glaciers bigger than you can comprehend, or massive volcanoes that could change the face of the planet with a single eruption.?

"I can’t help but think about the human spirit that keeps us as a species here — that at times the conditions can be so uncomfortable, but the Icelanders stubbornly stay put. I think we’ve got a similar attitude in the prairies, to an extent — I think it takes a special person to truly love the prairies and realize what’s stretching out in front of them. We’ve spent a fair bit of time talking about it this week, actually, despite the incredible differences in the landscapes we come from, (we are) a group of young musicians from seemingly opposite ends of the world communicating with song.”

An intriguing addition to the High Performance Rodeo, SonicWaves is a concept that has been three years in the making. Thanks to the assistance of key supporters Kerry Clarke, Mark Hopkins and Erin O’Connor, Hamilton was able to co-ordinate a sequence of SonicWaves performances.

 “The shows will change from night to night, and these songs themselves will also develop over the course of the three performances at HPR. I think we’ll be starting the evenings off with short opening introductory sets from Benni and Prins, so they can show off their own material to a Canadian audience, followed by the group presentation of the works amassed here in Iceland. We’ve got a song about an Icelandic folk tale, for which the Calgarians received a quick lesson in pronunciation, while another song features our Reykjavik collaborators singing in Icelandic with a beautiful backing bit.”








Tuesday 15 January 2013

The Mahones interviewed by Christine Leonard



THE MAHONES SHAKE HANDS WITH THE DEVIL


The Mahones 5

"Pogue mahone!" is a variant of the Irish phrase póg mo thóin, meaning "kiss my arse"


Keelhauling ancient tradition and giving it forty lashes with a punk rock twist, The Mahones are a notoriously Irish band that just happens to harbour some very Canadian roots. Conceived in Kingston, Ontario one fateful Saint Patrick’s Day, the long-running outfit can proudly boast a 23-year history of music and mayhem. Running the gambit from dirty ol’ town murder ballads to hard-charging hardcore fisticuffs, The Mahones have come to embody the respectable revolutionary. With his ninth album on tap, the quintet’s lead singer/guitarist/mandolin player, Dublin-born Finny McConnell, admits he had a difficult time penning an album that could contend with their previous effort, 2010’s The Black Irish. He decided it was time to for The Mahones to raise the bar, instead of just polishing it with the sleeves of their coats.

“We started working on Angels & Devils almost as soon as we had finished recording The Black Irish,” McConnell reports. “There was no break, which is odd for us because we usually take a few years off between records. A couple times we’ve taken as long as five years in between. Of course, I was drinking a lot more back then. Now, things are coming out much faster for us. We wrote the songs for the new album around springtime, recorded in the summer and we were absolutely thrilled to be able to release it in November of 2012.”

The Mahones, Finny McConnell and his lovely wife Katie “Kaboom!” McConnell (accordion, vocals), Dom “The Bomb” Whelan (drums, vocals), Sean Winter (mandolin, banjo, vocals) and Paul “Cuzo” Mancuso (bass, vocals), each came to the table with big ideas for the dichotomous follow-up.

“You could say that Angels & Devils is a really big production. We felt it was the only way to take things further than we had already gone on The Black Irish,” he confirms. “We moved to Montreal two years ago and the best part is that the studio I work at is just across the street from our house. I get to just roll-out of bed and roll-in to work. That’s what allowed me to put so much time into the album. I worked closely with our producer to engineer and spent a lot of time in the studio adding more layers into the sound. I knew I wanted two things. One: really fucking big stadium sound. And, two: no shortcuts. Up until now, I’ve always wished we’d done more on each record we’ve put out. This time, I made sure we did things the right way and put the cherry on top.”

Applying their love of classic Celtic arrangements to their equally evocative politico-punk railings, The Mahones arrived at the crossroads of good and evil, where saints and sinners reconcile over Guinness and boxty. From the frenetic celebration of “Shakespeare Road” and the spirited “Spanish Lady” to the live off-the-floor feel of “The King of Copenhagen” and “Whiskey Train,” The Mahones throw an enthralling party. Purists can rest assured, pipes and strings a-plenty festoon the inexhaustible céilidhs that comprise the reeling hub of the album’s heady track list.

“I don’t remember the ’90s very well, the drunken heyday when we started up the band. It was all about ‘Drunken Lazy Bastard’ and ‘Paint the Town Red.’ I’m happy to say that I’m very focused on my music at this point. I’m married, I’m a father and I’ve matured a lot over the years. I’m a positive thinker and I think that, despite the fact that there’s a lot of darkness in the world, we’ve got to motivate people to reach for the stars. I always tell people that they can do anything and never to let anybody hold you back. I’ve had teachers who told me I couldn’t sing, let alone lead a band, and I’ve toured and performed all over the world. Never take ‘no’ for an answer. And, most importantly, follow your genre. I knew I was an Irish punk, so I followed that road… past the pint of no return.”

Catch the Mahones at the SAIT Gateway on January 18.

By Christine Leonard

Originally published in BeatRoute Magazine 14 January 2013