It’s been 10 years on the road, but  all of the hard work is starting to pay off for Toronto based folk duo Madison Violet, who play the Slice with Ottawa roots rock band the John Henrys, May 6.
This year the girls, Lisa MacIsaac and Brenley MacEachern  not only received a Juno nomination for their latest CD ‘No Fool For Trying,’ (which they lost to the Good Lovelies) but won the John Lennon Songwriting competition for the CDs first track ‘The Ransom.’
“We’d never entered anything  before, but Yoko Ono started the competition so it is reputable and besides, our friend Gordie Sampson, who’s a Billboard chart topper entered it too and if Gordie gets involved with it we thought maybe we should too,” said Lisa MacIsaac.
“We started getting feedback from people about songs like ‘Ransom,’ ‘Small of My Heart’ and ‘Lauralee and decided to enter  ‘Ransom,’” added Brenley MacEachern.
“There’s a lot of heartache and loneliness on this CD, but those were the songs that spoke to us the most. We entered into the contest and  then forgot about it, ” she continued.

“Which is strange because  arts and music is pretty subjective,” MacIsaac added.
“And I just got an e-mail from Jimmy Rankin, lead singer of the Rankin Family, who said  ‘The Ransom’ should be the theme song for all traveling musicians,” she continued adding response to the new CD has been great, receiving accolades all over the world including  reviews in Mojo Magazine, and Penguin Eggs Magazine.
“Mojo Magazine said ‘Small of My Heart’ was the third best song in December, even above Bob Dylan,” MacIsaac enthused.

The Juno nomination was a bit of a shock as they had never entered the competition before.
“There’s a big submission process and we had never submitted before. But the Good Lovelies, who won,  are friends of ours. It was a tough category this year,” MacIsaac said adding they flew in on Friday to play a couple shows and to attend the awards dinner where most of the awards were presented.
“We saw a lot of great performances by musicians we had never heard of. I think we’re going to have to fly back and find my liver,” she laughed.

It is always interesting to see how bands approach an AC DC tribute act. Some  just play the music and dress up in crazy costumes. Others, like Who Made Who, who played a Friday and Saturday at Average Joes, not only sounded the part, but looked it too.

 “Angus” did duck walks across the stage playing his Gibson SG in Angus’s  trademark schoolboy uniform and pulled off all his moves, April 24. Meanwhile “Brian” sported a black beret and sounded uncannily like AC DC frontman Brian Johnson.

 their second set on Saturday April 24 included familiar standards including pretty much note perfect versions of ‘Shoot To Thrill,’ and ‘Back in Black,’ and older hits like  ‘Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap,’, ‘Jailbreak,’ ‘Highway to Hell,’ and ‘TNT’ as well as relative obscurities like ‘Touched Too Much.’

 Their enthusiasm and love for the music carried into the packed house and had them dancing and singing along.

The drummer was a sight to see, spinning his sticks and grinning ear to ear. It was a bigger crowd than Friday  and Who Made Who was happy to party with them.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor

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Tod Robinson and the Gleu played to a good sized crowd at the Slice, April 24. The band, including guitarist  Tyson Wiebe, drummer Brad Brouwer and bassist Jason Schultchen plus special guest vocalist Shawna Romolliwa, played an array or original music  spanning several genres from country rock to pop and ended their last set of the night with a  credible version of Michael Jackson’s ‘Billie Jean’ and a country version of Britney Spears’ ‘Baby Hit Me One More Time.’ Robinson  did double duty on guitar as well as keyboards, singing throughout and joking with the audience.

— By Richard Amery, L.A. Beat Editor

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Mike Spencer always brings wicked guitar players to the Geomatic Attic. So the April 24 show featuring Gaye Delorme was no exception.
The Albertan born Delorme cracked jokes and played a lot of finger bleeding guitar licks traversing all styles and continents.
He played his first set on the acoustic guitar, concentrating on some mindblowing Spanish and flamenco influenced music which featured fast runs, crazy harmonics and beat some pretty impressive percussion out of his poor old battered acoustic.
 He cracked crazy jokes about selling the tunings he was using and spoke of hanging out in Los Angeles with Cheech and Chong, played quite a few instrumentals and sang a couple numbers.

One of the most impressive numbers was three different versions of an old Chet Atkins’ song  “Wind and Walking’ which has been performed by numerous different people including Paul Simon.
 One of his stories about traveling around Alberta in -40 weather, lead him to segue into a couple different versions of the his infamous ‘Rodeo Song’ (made famous by Showdown) including a lounge version of it replete with ‘cheesy’ reverb which had the crowd howling in their seats.

 Then he played an extended version of an old Mississippi John Hurt standard ‘Candyman’ which the audience absolutely loved then switched tunings to take them on an instrumental musical journey from Ireland to Japan and back to Canada.
His second set was played on electric guitar and was  mesmerizing. It began with an extended blues jam which included the classic ‘Who Do You Love’ and a lot of other really sweet licks. But he soon expanded into an instrumental medley of French, Creole and swampy New Orleans blues.