Backstage Pass

The new album “HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENTS” by Dominic Quarto is fresh music but with hints of nostalgia from the many artists that influenced him since he was a kid, like the Beatles, Aerosmith, Rick Nelson, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams III. This album is laced with touches of humor, great melodies and catchy lyrics while paired with a completely unique vocal style which all help make this a extremely well balanced collection of get off your chair tunes. “HAPPY LITTLE ACCIDENTS” includes premier players like Doug Pettibone, Kenny Aronoff, Jorgen Carlsson from Govt Mule, Brent Harding from Social Distortion. Produced by Dave Jenkins (producer and co-writer, studied under Brian Wilson – produced Dolly Parton’s version of “Magic Man” with Howard Leese). Recorded the old fashioned way with stand up bass and vintage condenser microphones.

Coming off two acclaimed studio albums (Black Dawn, Tightrope), and an energized historic live album, Birth of Cactus, founding member and world-renowned drummer Carmine Appice returns with the ultimate tribute to his legendary rock band, CACTUS. Temple of Blues- Influences & Friends, merges the members of Cactus with a super ensemble of guest artists, all of whom have called the group among their biggest influences. Once heralded by critics as America’s answer to Led Zeppelin, Cactus recorded four hard rockin’ albums for Atco Records before Appice and bassist Tim Bogert left to form their own supergroup: Beck, Bogert & Appice.

“The music of Cactus has always been steeped in blues tradition,” says Appice, who wanted the group to re-visit its best songs within a modern rock approach to traditional blues. “We kept hearing from so many of our music celebrity friends how much Cactus influenced them and how they would love to be a guest on a Cactus album. Even our label President, Brian Perera from Cleopatra Records, suggested to us that this album happens. So, Temple Of Blues was the logical next step.”

In addition to Appice on drums and vocals on all tracks, original Cactus guitarist Jim McCarty also appears on Temple of Blues. Current band members vocalist/ guitarist and harmonica player Jim Stapley and bassist Jim Caputo also appear on many of the tracks. Appice announced today a new member to the band’s line-up: guitarist Artie Dillon will handle guitar duties for live tours and plays on one track for the new album. Founding member Jim McCarty currently contributes as a writing and recording member of Cactus on occasion but no longer does live tours.

On this record Devil Talking, David Myles cuts loose, bares his soul, and leaves it all on the table. The New Brunswick-based song and dance man has never been one to shy away from heavy topics like love, loss, and faith, but over his career he's tried his best to stay positive. Amongst the soulful, bluesy, rockin', and countrified grooves of Devil Talking, Myles knocks down the walls he's constructed to protect his vulnerable self, and instead dives headlong into what makes him—and all of us—human: suffering, and all the many ways we cope with it. Aptly, the album contains some of Myles' most intimate and honest songwriting, buoyed by the liberating power of accepting your flawed self. He's grown fond of calling Devil Talking his sinnin' record.

The Janzen Boys have been playing music together since the very beginning, but it started as “The Janzen Boys” shortly after they moved back to Canada from Japan in 2012. They’re a rootsy, harmony-singing folk trio from Winnipeg, Manitoba, consisting of brothers Simon and Mick, and father JJ. Whether they’re playing at music festivals, theatres, venues, or intimate house concerts, they’ll have you laughing, crying, and singing along to classics that you know and love, and catchy original tunes that’ll be stuck in your head for days! https://www.thejanzenboys.com/

“We started playing music together from the very beginning, but it really only started as “The Janzen Boys” after we moved back to Canada in 2012 after a childhood spent in Japan. I (Mick) was 9 years old and Simon was 12 and he wanted to try busking at The Forks in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Dad (JJ) likes to talk about how I would never sing when we played together, so for me to join them at The Forks, I would have to sing harmonies. That was the condition. It was here that “the father-and-sons trio, The Janzen Boys” started.

“In the summer of 2014, sticking with what we knew, we went on what we call our “Western Canada Busking Roadie.” This “tour” took us all the way to B.C., playing in music venues, farmers markets, on the street, and public spaces from Winnipeg to Kelowna, where we bought a baritone guitar from a friend and then turned around. It was the beginning of realizing that we could have a lot of fun doing the thing we love while getting paid for it.

“In 2018 after a successful showcase at the Manitoba Arts Network Emerging Artists series, we booked concert dates in towns and cities all around Manitoba. We didn’t know what to expect but it turned out to be a great series of shows, in little historic theatres, many of them in the out-of-the-way parts of the province.

DON ROSS

During fingerstyle guitar legend Don Ross’ spring, 2024 tour, I had the incredible opportunity to have long conversation with Don about his latest album, 2023’s “Water”, a stunning collection of tracks which includes “Seabright” and “Three Views of a Secret” (a rendition of the Jaco Pastorius classic).

His 17th solo release—not counting numerous collaborations with other artists— “Water” was inspired by the aquatic vistas that surround Ross’ home in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island. The 10-song collection is a thoroughly modern version of a Don Ross album, blending solo guitar music with instrumental and vocal touches from pedigreed collaborators like Bruce Cockburn, Brooke Miller, Sean Hall, Atlantic String Machine and The City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra.

Ross possesses almost supernatural skills, which made him the first two-time winner of the prestigious U.S. National Fingerpick Guitar Championship. In his 36 years as a recording artist and performer, he’s become widely recognized as one of the all-time greats in his field, possessing an uncanny ability to slap out percussive backbeats while speeding through a dizzying cascade of melodic runs. Styles from new age to Americana to jazz to pop to folk all fall effortlessly into the repertoire he’s performed on stages across the globe—on his way to picking up the Walter Carsen Prize for Excellence in the Performing Arts, administered by the Canada Council for the Arts.

In addition to his landmark work as a solo player, Ross has been a member of the combos Eye Music, Men of Steel and Don Ross Louder Than Usual. During the COVID pandemic, he earned a master of arts in orchestration that’s led to a thriving sideline as a scorer of orchestral and electronic music for video games, films and TV.

GRAVEN (Matty McKechnie) - Always Everything

Graven's first release was a basement recording in 1999, and since then, he's shared stages with the likes of Steve Poltz, Jim Bryson, Danny Michel, Sarah Harmer, Elliott Brood, Joel Plaskett, Kathryn Calder (New Pornographers), Stephen Stanley, Ron Hawkins and many more. Focusing on the guitar and vocals, and having eclectic and broad contemporary Canadian musical influences with more than 16 major releases under his belt, Matty has toured all the way across Canada thrice, with a powerful mission to empower his listeners to embrace their authentic selves without judgment.

Her new album, ‘RESONANCE’, is out now! Full of exciting new songs and sounds, Briar is clearly destined for national renown with her brand of infectious pop-rock. Nothing is stopping Briar’s ascendence into pop stardom!

Briar Summers is a singer-songwriter from Muskoka, and now based in Toronto.

Produced and mixed by Wayne Cochrane, mastered by Chris Crerar, at Metalworks Studios, Mississauga ON, it features the incredible talents of Ben Riley (drums), Drew Jurecka (viola, violin), Jack Gaughan (guitars), Cole Jodouin (bass), Daniel Dennis (cello), and Louis Tusz (trumpet).

Briar has performed on many stages throughout Muskoka and beyond - Summerfolk Festival, Muskoka Pride, Muskoka Music Festival, Bala Cranberry Festival and Huntsville's Festival of the Arts, and has played countless other concerts and venues as well. She is performing in Europe for the first time this summer.

Her debut album FROM THE ASHES (2021), was produced and mixed by 3x Grammy-award winner David Bottrill.

Adrian's fifth solo album released, February 27, 2024, ‘You’re Just A Place That I Know’, tracks the story of his Ukrainian grandparents’ flight from their homeland in the 1940s, settling to begin life anew in Montreal. Situated somewhere in Glynn’s usual wheelhouse of dark indie folk, the album has tinges of traditional Ukrainian folk music, featuring instruments like the bandura and the lira (or “hurdy-gurdy”), as well as strings, a full band and a young men’s choir.

Adrian Glynn McMorran is a Vancouver, Canada-based actor and musician. Raised in Vancouver, Adrian received a BA in Theatre from the University of British Columbia and studied acting at New York's Atlantic Theatre School.

Adrian also records and tours as a singer-songwriter ("Adrian Glynn") and has spent the past few years playing shows in Canada and Europe, both as a solo act and as a member of the Canadian modern folk group, The Fugitives.

The Fugitives 2014 release, Everything Will Happen, garnered them nominations for the Canadian Folk Music Awards and the Western Canadian Music Their most recent album ‘No Help Coming’ is a stunning reflection on the looming environmental crisis that we can’t seem take seriously.

Nothing ever really, truly ends. Even with our sights set on the future, once a significant event—a love lost, a love found, the birth of a child, the death of a friend—passes, we're bound to our memory's eternal return. On New Kind of Familiar, his second album under the Clever Hopes moniker, Andrew Shaver explores the texture of transition with lush folk-rock and poetic lyricism, from a liminal vantage point that offers both views of where he's come from and the places he might be headed.

Between writing his debut Clever Hopes album, Artefact, and the songs that comprise New Kind of Familiar, Shaver experienced his fair share of significant events—falling in love, moving to Nova Scotia, becoming a father. These are the things occupying his mind on the new record, and yet, they don't exist in a vacuum; Shaver rejects tidy narratives and time's linear arrow, and instead lets the album take shape with the same flow and verve of real life, bouncing back and forth in his lyrics between memory, the glorious, the complicated present, and anticipation.

The result is appropriately dreamy, drifting, rhythmic, and charged. On the record's soulful, simmering opener, "The Only One," Shaver's dusky delivery plays foil to longtime collaborator Eva Foote's airy vocals as he tentatively moves into new romance while acknowledging the lingering sting of a past breakup. The horn-blasted "Thrown It Open" finds him fully fallen into a big love and embracing the unknown; haunted pedal steel colours the reflective "Holes" as the relationship shifts and unsettles; with the quick-shuffling "Blue Parachutes," hazy memories of a lost year in Australia convince the songwriter's present self to pull it together.

"There was a lot of looking back on Artefact," Shaver says. "New Kind of Familiar is far more forward looking; there are songs on which I've been able to celebrate the place I'm in now - a place of stability and clarity.

As Shaver puts it: "I love a slow fade to black."

NATE SILVA RETURNS with ‘The Chase’

Nate Silva has made a name for himself as a consummate guitarist, songwriter, singer and entertainer. On June 07,2024, Nate will return to Huntsville, in concert, with his trio, showcasing a new album- ‘the Chase’, tour and triumphant set of songs at Canvas Brewing Company.

Known primarily for his virtuoso guitar stylings with the Slyde (2009-2021), an internationally successful recording band, he was much beloved for his exhilarating cover sets where he displays his artistry and melodic flourish on acoustic guitar. http://natesilvamusic.com/

Nate is also highly regarded for his extensive studio work as session player and producer. He has toured with an impressive variety of artists, in almost every genre available in today’s music scene, such as Gabrielle Goulet, Cindy Doire, Reuben and the Dark, Tim Piper and many more.

His powerful, multi-octave singing range, often compared to Geddy Lee and Freddie Mercury, is beyond thrilling. Above all, Nate is a dynamic, exciting presence on stage and engagingly charismatic considering how thunderous his music can get.

http://www.nathandasilva.ca/