Sometimes it is good to be a weirdo.

Regina born “grung-try” musician Val Halla has spent the past two years touring all over the United States in support of her third CD “ No Place” but found she had no place in the music industry as she was to rock for country people and too country for rock people, but the fans love her.

 She was to make her first appearance in Lethbridge, Oct. 18 at Whispers with Smokestack Jacks, however had to cancel due to pneumonia. Smokestack Jacks will still be performing.

 The 27-year-old comes from a strong grunge and classic rock background.

“Nashville is a music city. While it is really known for country music, there is everything from punk to metal to weird experimental stuff,” said Val Halla, from Kenora, Ontario, en route to Winnipeg. While she usually tours with a band, for this tour, she is going it alone, with just her electric hollow-body Carparelli guitar and two amps, one of which she found sitting in the closet of an apartment she rented in Nashville.

“ I benefitted from the fact I was trying to do something a little different instead of the classic country sound. Because there is heavy, heavy competition. There are tonnes of girls who have pipes and who sound like Carrie Underwood and they’re singing every night and they all sound great. So I benefitted that I stood out as a weirdo,” she said. Being a weirdo means she has had some difficulty being played on modern radio.

“Rock people would say I was too country while  country people would say I’m too edgy,” she said. However her song “Stay I Want to Be With You” is getting some airplay, though the ballad is a departure for her musically.
“It’s a little more on the chill side. That might be the price I pay for being all over the place,” she said.
 She knows Ted Nugent and has toured with him. But most importantly, he encouraged her to just be herself.

“ I was playing a show in Waco, Texas and one of his friends was in the audience. He came up to the stage and said Ted was recording a demo and was looking for a really strong female singer and asked me if I minded if he recommended me, so I said ‘whatever.’ And the next thing I knew I was in his studio. But he heard me sing and went crazy. He said we have to work together,” she related, he talked to his management about having her open his Trample The Weak, Hurdle the Dead tour last summer, and made contact with her during a show in Los Angeles.

The Owl had a full house on  Oct. 7 for several musicians including Lauren Mann and the Fairly Odd Folk featuring handsome and Gretyl and friends. While I unfortunately missed most of them, I did catch Snailhouse, who played some catchy and quirky indie pop music with a smattering of blues on the electric guitar.

He sang some pleasant melodies and had some fascinating lyrical turns of phrases, though I couldn’t hear much of them over the chattering crowd.

 He played some very cool fingerpicking guitar and added a few tasteful blues solos.

It may seem strange to have a birthday party for a blow up doll, let alone play “Happy Birthday” for one as Jesse Northey noted, Oct. 7, but Mr. Lethbridge is more than just a rustically dressed, moustachioed plastic doll, his annual birthday parties are known for good music and raising money for great causes.

 This year, the Slice was the site of a full house and the Big Brothers and Sisters of Lethbridge and District were the lucky recipients of the donations.
While I didn’t get an exact total raised, there were some substantial donations sitting in the collection jug as each of the attendees paid a five dollar cover, some of them a lot more.

 They were having fun. I hadn’t seen Jesse and the Northey and the Dandelions for a while, but haven’t changed much  since the last time I saw them. The energetic trio (Jesse Northey, drummer Nick Vederes and bassist Tyler Stewart) played an upbeat and tight set of catchy indie-pop music along the lines of Hey Ocean and Said the Whale with just a touch of the Violent Femmes.
They introduced a couple new songs as well as several from their “Lions Tooth” EP.

 The Coal Creek Boys were next with an upbeat country fried set of whiskey fuelled outlaw style country music.

 The hirsute, whiskey swilling quintet have picked up their musical game a lot, starting with a couple of upbeat numbers on which bassist Dino Scavo, lead guitarist/ vocalist John Paul Smith and back up singer Ali Stuart traded lead vocals, while Smith added scorching leads, while rhythm guitarist Devin Gergel and drummer Dustin Gergel supplied the solid rhythmic foundation for the set.

Anytime Big Dave McLean and Doc MacLean are in town like they were at the Slice, Oct. 6, it’s not  only going to be entertaining, but also a crash course in authentic delta blues history. I arrived during the last song of the set from the self proclaimed “Bad Boys of the Blues” — Doc Maclean playing “Jimmy Lee Jackson’s Blues,” with Big Dave McLean  blowing some beautiful harp.

 That was the template for the show. They took turns trading lead vocals and harp solos and other accompaniment during each other’s songs and complementing each other perfectly.

 Doc MacLean is well known for telling stories in his laid back, southern drawl and had plenty of them.

 Big Dave McLean has as big of a heart as he does prowess on guitar and showed it. He belted out blues classics  and originals, like the dark, but hilarious “Gun,” about a car thief stealing his prized Cadillac, not once but twice and grinned as he offered to rip out the thief’s “yellow spleen” then following it by vocalizing a cheerful poppy, bluesy melody.

 Doc MacLean stood up and conducted the audience of approximately 30 into the chorus of Muddy Waters’ “Love Somebody,” while Big Dave McLean  played and belted out the lyrics.
 He also did an exceptional job of Mississippi Fred McDowell’s “You Gotta Move.”

Their  gritty, authentic delta blues muse made it easy for the audience to envision themselves in  a hot, sweaty,  and humid Mississippi juke joint back in the Depression instead of the Slice on a rainy, chilly Thursday night.

Doc MacLean did a great job, pounding out the blues on an old National Steel guitar of some of my favourite originals like “Bone Train,” and “Robert Johnson Terra-plane,” which he prefaced with the longest introduction ever for a two minute song. It is was very cool to listen to him speak/ sing  the introduction to that song while Big Dave set the beat with the harp.

 They ended their show with a  gospel tinged “Goodbye,” which concluded with them wandering through the audience, battered acoustic guitar  and harmonica in hand.