Posted by Back in 2010 Bruce Peninsula was still a rather new band on the scene, having just released their nifty and sonically diverse debut album A Mountain is a Mouth just a year before. Journalistically speaking I too was just a young buck at the time, having recently landed an actual paying gig doing interviews and writing little blurbs for some online entity called Soundproof Magazine, which led to writing weekly paragraphs for a free daily print paper called 24 Hours.
Never in all my dreams could I imagine that there was a profession working hobby that paid worse than being a musician but lucky me: I found one. Can you believe that I got paid $5 per article for those 24 Hours pieces? Seriously, getting a free beer for playing at an open stage was significantly more lucrative, but to be honest I was probably getting a little bit more than my writing was worth.
Anyway, one of the big upsides to this menial avocation was gaining exposure to music that I hadn’t already come across. Along the way I interviewed Tanya Tagaq, dude from Gogol Bordello, members of The Secret Machines, The Stills, and Bell Orchestre, all of whom I had not previously heard. And whattya know, this new conglomerate of upstarts from Toronto called Bruce Peninsula was new to me too. As our interview came to a close bandleader Neil Haverty offered to guestlist me for their upcoming Ottawa show so on October 16th, 2010 m’lady and I walked downtown to Maverick’s to check ‘em out.
For those unfamiliar with the ensemble, Bruce Peninsula is an amorphous band+choir that features anywhere between five and a dozen musicians and singers, depending on their collective schedules. I don’t remember exactly how many Bruces were on the Peninsula this evening but it was a great concert for sure. They have a knack for weaving clever songs into unique and interesting arrangements that you just aren’t going to hear on your average night out. Certainly, having a choir at your disposal doesn’t hurt, nor does stacking the stage with a whole bunch of multi-instrumentalists, but really, the songs are good enough that they could be played by a trio and still be interesting. Having a crowd of them up there on stage just made it that much more interesting.
For those unfamiliar with the peninsula, Bruce Peninsula in a chunk of land that juts about sixty kilometres up into the armpit of Lake Huron*. Geographically part of Bruce County, it is a popular camping/hiking/fishing/scuba diving destination that encompasses two national parks, one of them underwater. It drives me kind of bonkers to think that I’ve never gone wreck-diving in Bruce Peninsula and I’m a bit mystified as to why I never saw Bruce Peninsula again after this show.
Yet. And yet.
*The Great Lakes have always looked to me like some odd-shaped creature – maybe some sort of big-headed dog – facing west. For what it’s worth, Australia looks to me like a kid wearing a baseball cap looking at the sky and I think Kansas looks like a Post-It note.
Todd Man Out 