Lethbridge Christian Radio station CKVN is using the power of music to not only help support southern Alberta Christian musicians, but also Lethbridge’s less fortunate.

The station is getting excited about the Nov. 27 CD release party for Segue: Songs for Change— a compilation CD of southern Alberta Christian musicians, for which all proceeds will be donated to Streets Alive.

 The new CD, which has been in the works for the past eight months, is a sequel to the station’s first compilation “Rays of Hope,” which was released in 2009 and  helped raise money for the Water School— a church based program designed to help give African villages clean water through the innovative use of plastic  water bottles, and a simple steel frame, which utilizes natural sun and heat to purify local drinking water.

“ We’re part of Golden West radio group and we wanted to do our part to do something that would focus on local musicians, so we decided to hold a songwriting contest,” related CKVN Station Manager Mike LeBlanc and project manager for the CD program.

 The first year they received overwhelming response from the Southern Alberta Christian music community, receiving approximately 66 songs from 30 some artists.

They whittled those down to the winners including classical/ flamenco style guitarist and songwriter Joshua Reuben Fritz, singer/ songwriter Sarah Folden and Gerrit Hofsink, who all appear on the five track EP. The winners have even been added to CKVN’s playlist.

Matthew Good’s sold out show at the Stone, Nov. 17 was a good example of why Lethbridge needs a decent sized concert hall, midway between the Enmax and the Yates, but not as cavernous as Exhibition Park’s South Pavilion.

I’m not surprised Good (according to my interview with him last week) prefers to play theatre shows, though he observed it was nice to have the audience so close to him at this show.

With a large, rowdy, alcohol fuelled crowd crammed together shoulder to shoulder, wall to wall with scarcely room to breathe let alone move, I wasn’t surprised there were a few short fuses.

So it was only a matter of time before the ‘time bomb’ went off two songs in.

Good started off the show slow with a couple long ambient numbers, then stopped his show midway though the second song to snap at and roundly curse out some loogans fighting in the front.

No knock on him, but I was a little shocked to see that as the crowd roared their appreciation for his reaction.

While Matthew Good at the Stone was completely sold out, for something  completely opposite to that show,  Po’ Girl played an excellent a fundraiser for local environmental organization Greensence, Nov. 17 at the Geomatic Attic. That was a complete contrast to Matthew Good.

Allison Russell and Awna Teixeira sang beautiful vocal harmonies and traded lots of different instruments throughout the show. Russell did most of the storytelling though Texiera added her two cents while introducing a couple songs from her upcoming solo CD.

 The show  was basically very cool songs covering  a variety of styles   including folk, blues, Creole, jazz and bluegrass and a great sense of humour shared by two very fetching female singers. Allison Russell and Awna Teixeira traded stories and musical instruments as easily as they traded lead vocal duties.

Teixeira started off playing accordion whole Russell played clarinet. Russell talked about recording a new CD with JT Russell, then played “Grey Ghost” from Mountains/Forest.

 They took turns  singing lead, singing a range of material from Po’ Girl songs, to songs from songs  Russell played with JT Nero on his latest CD Mountains/ Forest plus a lot of others.

 Everyone I talked to raved about the Ballgag N’ Chain Gang’s performance that I unfortunately missed at this summer’s South Country Fair, but where were they Wednesday, Nov. 16 at the Slice?

 About 10 people pretty much including the wait staff and opening act Toques and Beards saw a stellar show by the Victoria based group of zanies
 After a solid set of high voltage rock from Toques and Beards, The Ballgag N’ Chain Gang started things off by showing their more acoustic, bluegrassy folk side, before getting the “crowd” involved singing along to “Everything Goes Better With Bacon.”

But they showed they were more than just a novelty act as underlying their wicked sense of humour was some pretty sweet musicianship.