Hamilton, ON's Kyle Pacey's New Road Songs EP Is A Soulful, Funky, Rollicking Rhythm & Blues Romp

The veteran singer/songwriter and virtuoso guitarist mixes together funky grooves, bluesy backbeats, and jazzy guitar licks with a classic pop sound for a unique R & B stew. The mainstay of the Hamilton music scene has strung together five great original songs that will keep the fingers snapping and the dance floor hopping.
 
Front and centre is Pacey’s authoritative, smoky voice, a bluesy howl that only comes from years of experience on the road and in the studio. On this set he leads a crack band of seasoned players, including bassist Howard Ayee (Moe Koffman, Eddie Schwartz, Rough Trade), drummer Michael Sloski (Ben E. King, Long John Baldry, Bruce Cockburn) and Rob Gusevs (The Arrows) on keyboards.
 
The title track opens things off, a “little story about what love can do”, as Pacey sings. This song sets the tempo for the rest of the collection, with blasts of trombone from Jay Burr giving the track a bit of a New Orleans feel. “Road Song” winds down with Burr bringing the song home for the final 40 seconds as the band plays on behind him.
 
A brief scat vocal run from Pacey opens the next song, “Once Again”. Pacey says this number laments the state of our environment as governments push economic boundaries to their limit during an ongoing struggle for power and control of the land and its resources. 
 
“There's a method to my madness,” he sings, “now you might say, let's end it now, let's seize the day, anytime now no one knows, truth or dare now, this horror show”.
 
For Pacey, who came of age in the 1960s and 1970s, it harkens back to the protest movements of that time, when ecological worries first hit his generation.
 
Pacey’s career goes back that far, from being the first local musician to play Hamilton Place, where he was featured as the opening act for the Duke Ellington Orchestra, to opening shows for legendary Canadian rock band Crowbar. Later, he worked with Jacqui and Lindsay Morgan and guested with the likes of Robbie Lane and the Sugar Shoppe and was offered a chance to join the Buddy Rich Band and to audition for the band Chicago.
 
The EP continues with another love song, “This Minute”. It’s a celebration of a love that is eternal and true, one that brings pure joy and inspiration. “I'm so glad that I met you, makes my mind sky clear blue,” sings Pacey, “this minute turns to a lifetime, I'm so in love with you”.
 
Another message song, featuring Burr’s trombone once again, “Sad Days” takes on the economic situation and the hopelessness felt by so many just trying to get by amidst rising inflation and economic peril. Though the track laments the state of our times, it’s just as upbeat and enjoyable as the rest of the collection.
 
Road Songs concludes with “The Damage is Done”, a song Pacey has been playing live for over a decade with various combos. To experience his playing on this number is magical, both hands flying lightning fast across the fretboard. It’s no surprise from a man who won a number of local and international guitar championships before he was even 18 years old.
 
Here, the song gets the full band treatment, expertly recorded at Grant Avenue and Pine Street Studios. Pacey’s production and the band’s playing punches it up that extra notch, as they groove the blues away to wrap up the EP.
 
For the Hamilton Music Awards nominee, Road Songs is sure to keep the momentum going for the esteemed veteran. Give it a listen now, and if you have a chance to see Kyle Pacey live, don’t miss it. You gotta see him to believe him.

Glenn Foster

After four decades in the music business, Glen Foster has earned the right to break any rule he wants. And this happy iconoclast shows no signs of compromise on “White Funeral,” a whimsically morbid country-blues number that appears on his latest album, the trend-bucking Unnatural Tendencies. 

 
Like a winking eulogy to a vanishing era, the song finds Foster chronicling the impending demise of one Old Snake, a “hardened old metaphoric character” who gets stranded in the desert just as it’s starting to snow.
 
It’s a sure sign of winter, the geese are flying south 
A sure sign of winter, when you see that harvest moon full out
A sure sign of winter, it don’t leave much room for doubt
It’s going to be a White Funeral if Old Snake don’t make it out
 
Snake’s truck isn’t the only thing that’s breaking down here: It’s his life itself, as Foster’s plaintive yet sardonic vocal makes painfully apparent. All the while, the singer-songwriter-instrumentalist’s Dobro curlicues circle like hungry buzzards over the tasteful burial plot of a backing track laid down by his bandmates in the Glen Foster Group: Marg Foster (harmony vocals, percussion) Marty Steele (keyboards, harmony vocals), Colin Stevenson (bass guitar, harmony vocals) and James McRae (drums).
 
Playful elegia is just one of the many moods to be discovered on Unnatural Tendencies, a nonconformist manifesto of a record that plays like a defiant response to the winnowed attention spans and fixation on salability that are setting the direction of today’s musical culture. Few marketing consultants, after all, would encourage an artist to begin his album with a title track that’s nearly 17 minutes long and moves fluidly through three different songs, each in a different key but with the same chord progression and tempo. Nor would an A&R executive be turning cartwheels if said artist chose to include another number that incorporated a rapped intro, heavy guitar riffs, a satirical sitar hook, an accordion solo set to a polka beat, a bluegrass banjo break, and a highland bagpipe solo—oh, and a disco finale, complete with walking bass and falsetto vocals. Throw in some lyrical references to the plight of First Nations peoples and the pitfalls of religious obsession, and whammo! Instant anathema to the TikTok generation.
 
And Foster couldn’t be happier about it. This far into his career, he’s still willing to risk it all to remain genuine.
 
“Natural tendencies are what we tend to gravitate towards in life,” he says. “My concept of Unnatural Tendencies includes thinking outside the box and attempting things that we would normally shy away from. It involves taking risks and trying different things that could be glorious or disastrous.”
 
But then, it’s been that way for the Nanaimo-based rock/folk maverick since he burst onto the scene in the ’70s with his original band, Falcon, whose 1980 single “Los Angeles” won a talent contest on CKOC Radio Hamilton. Since then, Foster has worked with the likes of Daniel Lanois and Ray Materick (“Linda Put The Coffee On”) and has taught more than 20 years’ worth of students in his side gig as a professional music teacher, receiving two silver medals from the Royal Conservatory of Music in the process. But the biggest feather in his cap has been his stellar run as a solo artist, which encompasses 10 albums of music in a breathtaking diversity of styles—from the “Rockabilly Fever” of 2020’s Not Far Away to the seasonal side he explored on The Spirit of Christmas the very next year.
 
Now he takes another bold step into the great unknown with Unnatural Tendencies, which he co-produced with Rick Salt (The Irish Rovers, Kerplunks, Jack Connolly, Gerry Barnum, Phil Dwyer) at Nanaimo’s Mountainview Studio. It’s seeing release on Foster’s own Rescue Records label, which is part of the reason he felt the freedom to stretch out in multiple directions at once.
 
“This is my tenth album (which prompted the word ‘Tendencies’ in the title), and I’m making it fit for me,” he says. “It’s the way I like to hear music, in album form the way I believe my fans do. These are some of my best songs ever; I’m singing and playing guitar better than I ever have, and I brought in the best musicians I could find, rather than use synthesizers and samples.”
 
So even though the devil-may-care approach he took to composition this time might not have been devised expressly with the stage in mind, he and his band still have all the ammo they need to further their reputation for killer live work when they do take the new material on the road. Venues across Canada have witnessed the little miracle Glen is live, both on his own and sharing the bill with the likes of Lighthouse, Sammy Hagar, Dr. Hook, Jose Feliciano, Valdy, Jesse Winchester and Stan Rogers. With the new album done, look for them at a showroom, festival, park concert or pub near you. Anything else would be … well, unnatural.

3-Time GRAMMY Nominee and Blues Legend Eric Bibb's Live at The Scala Theatre Is Out Now

Stony Plain Records, under an exclusive worldwide license agreement from Repute Records, has released the new album from 2024’s “Best Traditional Blues Album” GRAMMY nominee and Blues/Roots music legend Eric Bibb, Live at The Scala Theatre. The disc follows 2023’s Ridin’, which has also received two Blues Music Award nominations from The Blues Foundation, whose winners will be announced May 9^th in Memphis.

Eric Bibb also recently taped a performance at the SiriusXM Radio studios In New York City that will premiere on BB King’s “Bluesville” channel in April around his live album release, and then air shortly thereafter on “The Village.”

Performed in front of a live audience at Stockholm’s Scala Theatre in 2023, the atmosphere captured in these recordings is electric. Live at The Scala Theatre contains a selection of songs cherry-picked from Bibb’s history, infused with the folk and blues tradition with contemporary sensibilities. The performance features an all-star lineup of musicians including Eric's longtime collaborator, musical director and producer Glen Scott on bass, keys, drums and backing vocals; Olle Linder on drums and acoustic bass; Johan Lindström on pedal steel and electric guitar; Christer Lyssarides on electric guitar and mandola; Esbjörn Hazelius on fiddle and cittern; Greger Andersson on harp; Lamine Cissokho on kora and vocals; special guest vocalists Sarah Dawn Finer, Rennie Mirro and Ulrika Bibb, as well as string arrangements by Erik Arvinder and David Davidson, performed by Hanna Helgegren and Sarah Cross on violins, Christopher Öhman on viola and Josef Ahlin on cello.
 
“The Live at The Scala concert was, without a doubt, the most ambitious gig and recording project of my career,” says Eric Bibb. “Captained by my super-talented friend, musical director and producer, Glen Scott and graced by an amazing array of musicians, the resulting album is one that defines me as an artist. I couldn’t be more pleased and eager to share it with you all.
“In selecting the album’s songs we wanted to cover three categories: 1)Tried and true fan favorites that had not appeared multiple times on previous live recordings; 2) A few songs from the recently released studio albums, Dear America and Ridin’; 3) At least one song that I’d never before recorded.
 
“Every song on the album holds a special place in my heart. I’ll elaborate on three of them: ‘Rosewood,’ which tells the story of the horrendous massacre in 1923, that wiped out the African American community of Rosewood in Florida, is both an important history lesson, particularly relevant today in the current climate of disunity in America and the world and hopefully, a story that encourages us to face and learn from our past.  ‘Whole World’s Got The Blues’ is, in the way that songs can sometimes be, prescient. It is both a lament about the current state of the world and a warning. ‘Things Is ‘Bout Comin’ My Way,’ adapted from ‘Sittin’ On Top Of The World’ and written by Walter Vinson, is a bluesy affirmation that resonates with my own journey.  And one of my fondest memories of that night at The Scala Theatre was being surrounded by the spirited singing, on stage and in the audience, of ‘Mole In The Ground.’“ 
 
With a career now spanning five decades, three Grammy nominations, a multitude of Blues Foundation awards and countless more accolades, Eric Bibb has secured his legacy as a legendary figure in the blues and roots genre.
 
As Eric reflects on his musical journey, gratitude pervades. Evolution is evident in his voice and guitar playing, with his words grounded in truth and fostering a vision of unity in a world filled with divisive rhetoric. Eric Bibb is more than a blues troubadour – he is a storyteller and philosopher. His legacy is not just in the notes he plays or the stages he graces but in the questions, he poses and the hope he instills.

Live at The Scala Theatre is a continuation of the vision that informs Bibb’s artistry as a modern-day Blues troubadour. Grounded in the folk and blues tradition with contemporary sensibilities, Bibb’s music continues to reflect his thoughts on current world events and his own lived experiences, whilst remaining entertaining, uplifting, inspirational and relevant.

Eric Bibb summarizes the new album by saying: “To all the wonderful players, singers and facilitators who contributed to this triumphant endeavor, I can only say, from the bottom of my heart: 

Thank You! Merci Mille! Tusen Tack!”

Feenstra and Simpson

Feenstra And Simpson is a British pop roots-rock duo comprising award-winning songwriter/lyricist/promoter and author Pete Feenstra and former Wilko Johnson championed Feelgood Band main man, multi instrumentalist and former indie recording artist John Simpson.So far the duo have recorded 7 singles, 4 of which have entered Mike Read’s Heritage Chart and the Netherlands Hit Tracks Top 100 John and Pete met in their respective roles as a musician and promoter/nascent songwriter.As Pete explains: “John quit the Wilko Johnson championed Feelgood Band after a 10 year stint. He told me he was going back to recording at his home studio. Many years before he achieved power plays on Capital radio etc.

He also mentioned he could do with some lyrics, so the die was cast.”John adds: “We started off as a pop rock roots project inspired by The Beatles with what later turned out to be Eagles, Squeeze, Tom Petty & Travelin' Wilburys influences, but we also got sidetracked by the well received homage to Wilko Johnson called "I Don't Get It".“A little Wilburys …..nice song.” Will Birch (Producer)“If some famous boy-band or successful The Voice contender was looking for material far above and beyond the usual drivel, they might find it here."Alan Clayson Reviewer (author / musician) “Reminds me of Squeeze in their melodic heyday.”Dave Lewis – (Musicologist /author)“The tunefulness of acts like Tom Petty & The Travelin Wilburys. Velvety guitar layers, & the nuances of love” (Neil Mach Ed Raw Ramp mag).

The duo’s last single ‘Blue Plaque’ attracted media attention because of its original subject matter about the historical marker of the achievements of people in the past with buildings of the present.

Darryl Scotti

Driven by his passion for songwriting and recording, Darryl formed his band ‘Big Yard’ in 2002 to tour in the Northern California CCM market while winning the NACAS Song of the Year title for ‘Take out the Trash’. He was then signed to Fair Oaks Records in 2005 and released his first solo CD ‘The Will & The Way’ produced by Bob KIlptarick featuring guest appearances with legendary Christian Artists Randy Stonehill and virtuoso guitarist Phil Keaggy. Today, Darryl lives with his wife, Yvonne in Cave Creek, AZ enjoying an Arizona lifestyle while actively writing and producing new music. 

With his sights set on developing new upcoming artists while supporting and collaborating with other songwriters and producers for BigYard Nation, the future is bright. “God’s not done with me yet”, so he says. The new 6 song EP release '54th St. on BigYard Records produced by Alex Chacon and mixed by Aaron Howard features co-writes with Bill Dutcher and Arizona blues legend, Chuck Hall. You can join and follow Darryl & BigYard on FB, IG, YouTube and TikTok @BigYardNation.