I caught the tail end of  Keith Price and  Michael Peters’ excellent concert at the Slice, March 23.

While Keith Price is basically known as a jazz man, his band was backing the more upbeat alt- country tinged ambient rock stylings of  Winnipeg singer-songwriter Michael Peters.

 They put on an excellent show for a handful of fans, playing a variety of styles, but their ambient indie-rock stylings reminded me of New Brunswick’s Grand Theft Bus, with enjoyable melodies and a pleasant groove.

You don’t have to leave town to find a record label. There are at least four of them, right here, all catering to different styles of music. While some of them are based around studios others are  groups of friends who hang around and play together sometimes even sharing band members.

The latest one, Esper Records, is not so much a record company as a musician’s collective. Jon Martin of the New Weather Machine and Jesse Northey from Jesse Northey and the Dandelions formed the label to share their knowledge and trade tips about all aspects of the music business  from gigs to recording to promotions. They met through the University of Lethbridge’s music program.

“We realized we were doing a lot of the same things,” said Martin of the label adding Leigh Doerksen and his duo Church are  the only other band on the label other than their own bands.

“We thought it would be more effective and efficient if we had a brand of our own,” he continued adding, for example,  they can cut costs by mailing out CDs to radio stations and media together rather than on their own and by booking shows together, which helps as Martin and Northey play in each other’s bands.

“We’re all benefitting from sharing our knowledge,” Northey said adding that can stop the other members of this ‘artistic collective’ from making similar the same mistakes.
“It’s so they don’t have to start from scratch,” Northey continued.
“We’ve all had our pitfalls recording our first albums and they’ve been a learning experience for our next albums,” said Martin.

“It is artists helping artists,” he added, noting while he and Northey have their own home studios, the studios aren’t part of the day-to-day workings of the label.

Some shows you can’t resist, even on a Monday night. One of these was Maria In The Shower who returned to tear up  the Slice, Monday, March 28.

 You just can’t stand still at a show from this East Vancouver based four piece who took a small but mighty audience on a journey around the world and through time as they played an array of music influenced by  ’40s jazz, French cabaret music, plus a couple Trinidad and Caribbean influenced songs.

I arrived in time for the second set to see them basically provide a workout for the many dancers in front of the stage and a workout for the musicians themselves, playing a cornucopia of notes while leaping all over the stage.

 The band incorporated a  variety of traditional sounds including accordion, trumpet, guitar, energetic stand-up bass and even some trombone.
 We could have been in New Orleans rather than Lethbridge, from the sounds of all the cabaret styled fun.

 Stand -up bassist Brendon Hartley writhed and  danced , then laid back as trumpeter Jack Garton  stood on the side of the bass and blew  a lot of notes during ‘St. James Infirmary.’

Garton sang most of the songs this time round, with guitarist/ trombonist Martin Reisle singing a couple near the end.

They showed off some exceptional vocal harmonies especially at the end as  enthusiastic audience members wouldn’t let them off the stage, calling for encores, which they granted with a  very cool a cappella number to end the show around 11:30 p.m.

Bagpipes are generally an acquired taste, when listening to them, most people can immediately see why Scottish warriors used to use them to strike fear into the hearts of their enemies. But in the hands of Toronto  “Mudpiping” brothers Sandy and Ron Campbell, the heart and soul of Toronto celtic rockers  the Mudmen, they were  a beautiful thing at Essies, Monday, March 28.

The band didn’t have nearly as big of an audience as they deserved, but that didn’t faze the band who noted they wanted to go and have a drink with them. They dragged a ‘long lost’ brother  from the audience, who  also sported a kilt onto the stage, saying  “Our dad used to work on the railroad here. Looks like he planted one extra spike.”

The massive brothers towered over the rest of the band on both sides of the stage, dwarfing mandolinist/ guitarist/ banjo player Alex Maletich, drummer Steve Volk bassist  Troy Spinner and cowboy hat adorned lead singer Travis.