A good sized crowd of approximately 50  at Henotic, Friday , April 23, helped kickstart a new Dodgeball league being started by Todd Lacharite.
“We have seven teams already signed up but we need 16,” Lacharite said.
Several performers started at 8 p.m. They already have a couple tournaments lined up. The first one will be  May 29 and 30 at a location to be determined.
 Matt Robinson was on the bill with a set of some of his more folky material.
 But the highlight was  a laid back set from Leeroy Stagger, who was playing with Indio Saravanja. They took turns playing their songs and helping each other out on them with guitar and the occasional harmonica solos
Stagger played a couple newer acoustic songs, and his minor hit ’Just In Case’ while Saravanja played a couple dedicated and inspired by his wife.
 Several acts were on the bill including Jenn Pellerin, Woodland Telegraph Jared Klok and The Necessities who ended the night with an upbeat set featuring the entire band.

Vancouver’s Arctic brought a little bit of ambient pop and a lot of energy to the Slice, April 22. They started their first set slowly, drawing a handful of excited fans into their music and up on the dance floor by the end.
Frontman Marcus Martin ended the first set with some weird sound effects he created by holding up a mini- tape recorder to the microphone.
The trio carried on the hypnotic and entrancing groove in the second set added a few different influences and got people on the floor. Bassist/keyboardist Kirsten  Starcher simultaneously played groovy bass lines and catchy keyboard parts.
They ran out of songs before midnight, but had the crowd calling for more , so the band held a contest allowing them to choose which one to redo. They played it reggae style and still had the crowd calling for more.

There will be ‘mammoth’ sized fun at Henotic, May 2  with 35 bands including numerous local acts playing  Mammoth Cave Fest 2.
“I thought the first one last year was pretty successful, but more than that it was a lot of fun,” said organizer Paul Lawton adding this year was slightly different as  several bands playing Mammoth Cave Fest 2 will be touring as part of the Wyrd Alberta Traveling Music Festival including Women, Cosmetics, Shearing Pinx, Nü Sensae, the Famines,  the Sharp Ends, Topless Mongos, JAZZ, Omon Ra II, Krang and D’eon plus local acts Fist City and the Myelin Sheaths as well as the last show ever from Edmonton’s the Wicked Awesomes.
“We’re expecting it to sell out,” said Lawton, who was panicking a little bit over ticket sales when he first started out on this venture
“We‘re not losing sleep over it anymore. Advance ticket sales are showing we can do interesting things in this city,” Lawton said adding he was inspired to start Mammoth Cave Fest last year after being inspired to start a similar idea to Calgary’s Sled Island music festival and wanting to start a similar idea here.

“The first 100 advance tickets have been sold, but there are lots of $25 tickets left. It’s still a really good deal. That’s  70 cents per band,” Lawton said.
This year Lawton and his record label Mammoth Cave Recordings linked up with both Sled Island and Weird Canada.
“Weird Canada is a website that reviews music from bands that fly below the radar for most people, but which still have an audience,”  Lawton said adding Mammoth Cave shares that ideal.

Even though there are horns throughout much of  her brand new CD ‘Across the Plains’ Jolene Higgins, aka Little Miss Higgins, says it is all about the songs.
She said there are some great horn arrangements from Calgary based clarinet player Cedric Blary throughout the CD.
“A lot of the music I listen to, especially jazz from the ’20s, ’30s, ’40s and ’50s  had great places for horns in them. they add such flavours and colours,” said the Brooks, Alberta born blues/jazz guitarist/singer from her home in Nokomis, Saskatchewan, where she is getting ready to continue a tour of Alberta and B.C. until the end of May which takes over  the Slice, tomorrow, April 29.
“It was a lot of fun recording them,” she said adding she co-produced the CD with the D-Rangers’ Jaxon Haldane in Bedside Studios in Winnipeg. The horns  are all over songs like ‘Wash Those Blues Away,” and turned out fantastic.
“It was great working with Jaxon. I’d never worked with him before, but I know him from Winnipeg and have hung out with him as a musician. He comes from that old bluegrass, folk and country . So I knew he would keep the CD close to the roots and a little less over-produced. He keeps it rooted,” she continued adding Little Miss Higgins is touring with Foy Taylor and stand up bassist Joey Lorer, who plays with the Cracker Cats and Heartstrings. They have worked with Lorer many times.