Post by Gloria Song
The i(heart)music festival begins this Thursday, August 26, and runs until Saturday. Run by Matthew Pollesel, the creative force behind one of Canada’s most popular music blogs (check out our interview with Mathew from last year), the festival has become one of Ottawa’s best showcases for Canadian indie music. This year, with over half of the bands being from the city - including Giant Hand and Amos the Transparent - the festival promises to be an exciting celebration of the Ottawa music scene. From now until Thursday we will be featuring a different Ottawa band that will be playing at the festival.
Today we have “stoner country” band Old Crowns. Since Apartment613 interviewed the band a few months ago, they’ve kept themselves quite busy, touring in Southern Ontario with musician Brett Caswell, and releasing the vinyl edition of their new album.
Fronted by Steve St. Pierre, Old Crowns joins the new crop of musicians like Kathleen Edwards, Adam Puddington, and Proof of Ghosts, returning to the introspective songwriter tradition. They have the chilled out reflective country-tinged narrative style of a male Lucinda Williams, combined with memorable lyrics like “I’m getting drunk like a sailor, I’m getting stoned with your wife.” They released their self-titled debut album in April 2010, recorded by themselves and mastered by the legendary Ryan Mills. They also re-released the album on vinyl in June, and indeed, the warm sound of vinyl seems to be the perfect medium for a band like Old Crowns.
They look forward to playing with other Ottawa bands at the upcoming festival, as they have grown quite at home in the Ottawa music scene. “It seems a lot less cut-throat than other cities seem to be,” commented Sam Seguin, one of the guitarists and backing vocalists for the band. “It’s a good sense of community. The Love Machine, Amos, and Oceans, we’re all buds and we share musicians now and then. Everyone is definitely supportive of each other.”
This applies to i(heart)music organizer Matthew Pollesel as well. “Matt’s got a great head in the Ottawa music scene,” said Sam. “He knows what’s going on and what’s what…He’s really supportive.”
Post by Gloria Song
