Apartment613

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.

Born in February 2009 out of a number of other music project,  Loon Choir is still a relatively new band. They are still in the process of carving out their place in the music community. Just recently four of the band members traveled to the East Coast on what they called a “networking project”, busking on the streets, playing open mics, placing CDs in music stores, just to get their name known and make valuable contacts while there. Given their upcoming show at the i(heart) music festival organized by Matthew Pollesel with bands like the Most Serene Republic, it looks like their networking is beginning to pay off.

Their first studio album, “Expansion Forces” released in May 2010 was recorded in a couple of people’s houses, including Rolf Klausener of the Acorn. The album was produced with the help of James Bunton from Ohbijou and mastered by Ryan Mills. Singer and guitarist Derek Atkinson cites everything from jazz to bluegrass to hip hop to avant-garde music as the band’s influences. “But at the same time,” he notes, “I’m not trying to trick people into thinking that we’re making crazy jazz-core music or anything like that. It’s pretty straight up dance-rock with folk influences…”

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.”