Time: 9:30 p.m.

Cover:

www.myspace.com/geoffberner   or http://www.geoffberner.com/

Geoff Berner's latest album, “Klezmer Mongrels” released this October on the 9pm label in Europe, and January 27, 2009 in Canada, is the ultimate expression of his aggressive kind of klezmer. It's a klezmer punk folk dance album about mixed-breeds of all kinds.

This is the third album of his "Whiskey Rabbi" trilogy, all recorded with the rough sound of blaring accordion, the virtuosic, scraping fiddle of Diona Davies, and the thumping, insistent rhythm of Wayne Adams' percussion.

This trilogy declares that the 'klezmer revival' is over. There's no need to revive. Klezmer is alive and infectious, and voracious, and mutating again. The evidence is there in the international radical klezmer scene that's sprung up in the last few years, with artists like Berner, Montreal's Socalled, Daniel Kahn in Berlin, Klezmic Zirkus in Belgium, Michael Winograd's band Jewish Princess in NYC, and literally scores more popping up in the wake of bands like these.

Rae Spoon  www.raespoon.com or www.myspace.com/raespoon 

Rae Spoon was born on the Canadian prairies of the 80’s. In his early twenties he hit the road as one of the world’s only transgendered country singers and toured Canada, Europe, Australia and the USA. When the obvious dangers and contradictions of this role caught up to him he hid in a small town in Eastern Germany for a winter. There he was inspired to write an album about his darker experiences of Canada and it’s highways. superioryouareinferior is Rae’s fourth solo album, and his first in over two years. It was co-produced by Lorrie Matheson in his Calgary studio. Lyrically the album is his most revealing to date. His voice walks the highways from the Yukon to Newfoundland singing of whales that have gotten lost, the wolves in our imaginations, the Great Lakes, cabin fever, dancing with grizzlies, the psychology of a haunting ghost and the issues of ongoing colonialism. Musically he traverses new territories from art folk, to indie-rock, to electronic/experimental and noise. Being in Europe influenced him to trade his banjo for a computer and his acoustic guitar for an electric. superioryouareinferior is an album of the times in that it doesn’t stick to one genre, but it retains Rae’s respect for well written songs and his folk music roots that keep him connected to his audience.