Steve's Blog
Tuesday January 8, 2008

Hi everyone

Happy New Year!

You can read all about our January events in the brand new edition of the Rogue Folk Review, now available for download.

We are mailing them out tomorrow from Cap College, so you should receive one by Wednesday or Thursday.

We have two outstanding concerts in the next week or so. They should appeal to any fans of folk, bluegrass, gospel, blues, old time music, and extremely fine singing.

Laura Love concert this Saturday, January 12th at St. James Hall (3214 West 10th Avenue) at 8pm

Laura Love is a powerful singer and bass player from Seattle. She has recorded several CDs over the past decade or so, and has played a couple of times at the Rogue Folk Club. Her one and only appearance - to date - at the Vancouver Folk Music Festival saw her outselling everyone else in the CD tent and her performances were very well received, with lots of people dancing (or at least, waving their shoes in the air!) Surprisingly, she has never been invited back to the festival. We, on the other hand, are very big fans and we are delighted to be able to bring her back this week, especially since her latest CD is so great!

Anyone who saw her and Jo Miller open for Del McCoury at the Chan Centre a year ago will know that she is an extremely versatile singer, with a particular penchant for bluegrass and old time music. She traveled down to Nashville last Winter to record "NeGrass", a stunning collection of traditional field hollers and folk songs plus a few originals, which trace the stories of freed slaves after the American Civil War. Laura's great (great?) grandparents were freed in Texas two years after the war and the abolition of slavery. Many Texas slave-owners defied the law and refused to free their slaves, and kept from them any word of their liberation. In those troubled times, Canada was a beacon of hope for many African Americans, and Laura Love has written a song called "Saskatchewan" to celebrate this connection. She teamed up with former Ranch Romance fiddler Barbara Lamb, and they assembled a fine band including Tim O'Brien and Rob Ickes to record these songs. Laura will be joined by Barbara as well as guitarist Jen Todd for this special concert. You can read more about the show on Laura's website www.lauralove.net Tickets are on sale online, and at Rufus' Guitar Shop and Highlife Records. You can also reserve tickets on 604-736-3022 or online. Concert Details

Ollabelle and Martha Scanlan, Tuesday January 15th - also at St. James Hall, at 8pm

Ollabelle is a quintet named after the great old time singer and banjoist Ola Belle Reed. The five band members each write songs, and their voices blend beautifully in every possible grouping of two to five parts as they cover gospel, blues, old time, and traditional and original songs. They have two CDs to date, their eponymous debut (2004) and last year's Riverside Battle Songs. I had the good fortune to see them at last year's Folk Alliance conference in Memphis and again at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival in August. I was there when they met Colin Linden for the first time, too. The jam session was incredible! One of Ollabelle's singers is Amy Helm, daughter of The Band's Levon Helm. Colin knows the music of The Band intimately, and he was immediately captivated by Ollabelle's glorious vocal sound and tasteful accompaniment. So was I! So too were the producers of "Across The Universe", the new movie which features over 30 Beatles songs, recorded by the cast members - with the backing vocals handled by Ollabelle. It's a fine film and the soundtrack is wonderful! Chris Smither invited Ollabelle to sing on two songs on his latest CD, "Leave The Light On", as well.

They also contributed to the excellent debut CD of American songwriter Martha Scanlan, who is joining them on a short tour of Alaska - and hence to the Rogue Folk Club next week. Martha has a strong background in bluegrass and old time music, having spent 6 years with The Reel Time Travelers. Now she is making her mark as a solo performer and her CD, "The West Was Burning" is a supreme example of Americana at its best. It was produced by Dirk Powell (Balfa Toujours) and, along with "Riverside Battle Songs", is one of my favourite albums of the last few years. Don't miss this show! I guarantee you an evening full of memorable songs with some of the first young musicians on the continent displaying a reverence for traditional music and showing the way forward to keep the music alive in the new millennium. More information www.ollabelle.net and www.marthascanlan.com Tickets are on sale online, and at Rufus' Guitar Shop and Highlife Records. You can also reserve tickets on 604-736-3022 or online.
Concert Details [including YouTube videos of Ollabelle live]

Radio Rogue - a new playlist

I just put together a 600 song playlist on Radio Rogue, our 24 hour internet radio station. There are heaps of songs by all the performers coming to the Rogue in the first few months of 2008, as well as a few hundred songs from a variety of genres and countries - all with a strong sense of Roots. Tune in any time and enjoy some of the best music on the planet! Just point your web browser to radio.roguefolk.bc.ca:8000/listen.m3u When prompted, enter the following Username: Radio Rogue Password: Roots Radio! (include the spaces, exclamation mark and capitalization)

See you at the Rogue!