28/10/10 Luke Doucet + Mat Wale + more @ The Grapes

[Amsterdamned]

On Thursday October 28th WagonWheel Presents... welcomes another of Canada's finest to The Grapes when Luke Doucet brings his new album "Steel City Trawler" to the Steel City. Following two fantastic performances as part of the Triple Barrel tour in 2007 and with Melissa McClelland last year, Luke returns for a solo show with his trusty Gretsch White Falcon. Support comes from Mat Wale and more. Advance tickets priced at £6 are ...available now from wegottickets.com ( http://www.wegottickets.com/event/81923 ) or entry will be £8 on the night. Doors open 8pm.

 

 

***LUKE DOUCET***

 

On Steel City Trawler, Luke Doucet turns to classic themes of place, love and the existential labyrinths of human understanding. With a tendency for total candor in both the personal and political, Luke navigates everyday life with finely honed senses of irony and skepticism. On Steel City Trawler, this signature grain-of-salt-seasoned songwriting comes to the fore. Mixed with atmospheric rock ballads, Manchester-esque melancholy, tender revelations and even more tender accusations, from start to finish the album is Luke’s idea of a rock and roll record, pure and simple.

 

With first-time producer Andrew Scott (Sloan) at the helm, Steel City Trawler emerges as a cleverly assembled balance of Luke’s courageously straightforward assessments with the essential components of classic rock and roll. Luke’s observation-driven commentaries are found in songs such as Thinking People, an homage to blue collars, The Ballad of Ian Curtis, an examination of suicide and creative legacy, and Dusted, which takes direct aim at metaphysical answers to earth-bound questions. Not one to rest on his guitar playing laurels, Steel City Trawler is more about the song than the strum.

 

Hamilton’s own Harvey Pekar, David Collier, brings a Being John Malkovich style approach to Luke’s biography, with a kind of “inhabitation” of Luke’s world and experience. Alternately free from irony and at the same time somehow tongue-in-cheek Collier’s work is an original comic book interpretation of lyrics from the new songs, Hamilton’s geography and history, as well as Luke’s own life, past and present.

 

A new behind-the-scenes video offers insight into the record, from Luke’s take on why Hamilton is such an attractive place to settle (hint: it has everything to do with Winnipeg), interviews with Andrew Scott and David Collier, and intimate acoustic snippets of songs. Hear Some of You Folks, which Luke describes as an experiment in “shared uncomfortable intimacy,” Hey Now, which tells a story of unease with announcing one’s intentions to the world, and Magpie, a post Elliot Smith acoustic ballad à la Dust in the Wind, a song that lets the sounds of a city in to create a sense of solid ground in its otherwise atmospheric feel.

 

 

 

Luke has recently been in the UK performing with Blue Rodeo. "Steel City Trawler" is his fifth solo release on Six Shooter Records, following up the critically acclaimed "Blood's Too Rich".

 

 

"Doucet’s album “Blood’s Too Rich” sounds to me as if it comes straight out of 1977 — not the Ramones/Talking Heads/ Clash take on that year, but the Graham Parker/Dire Straits/Tom Petty version of it. Somehow, punk managed to reinvent rock music too, made it sound fresher and less pompous. Doucet is a terrific guitarist, as fluid and as melodic as Mark Knopfler back in the day; but he’s a proper songwriter, too." - Nick Hornby, (author of High Fidelity, About a Boy) who also placed "Cleveland" on his list of favourite songs in 2008.

 

" 'Blood's Too Rich' is a landmark album, Doucetdeserves praise for the power in these songs, for the evocative and quite fearless guitar work that makes this album a country rock marvel. Four Stars." - Toronto Star

 

http://www.lukedoucet.com/

 

http://www.myspace.com/lukedoucet

 

 

***MAT WALE***

 

Mat Wale has been writing, producing and recording with various band projects since 2004. His current output includes the albums 'Head aches, Heartbreaks and Drink problems', '17' and 'Les Album Arrogante' (with Arrogant Whale) plus a handfull of EP's including 'The Wilderness and Back Home Again', 'Viva Las Misery', 'God Hates Us All' and The 'All Time Space Cadet' EP. He also produced the 'Medieval Death Folk' EP for Mexican Kids At Home which remains to this day their definative work. In 2008 Mat Wale toured the US and UK with experimental indie band 'avanGaad'. In 2009 he provided the soundtrack for Welsh indie film 'Big Font, Large Spacing'.

 

Mat formed 'The Rackets' in late 2006. The band played neally 200 shows and recorded 4 EP's together until their eventual demise in late 2009.

 

More recently he's been performing solo shows in support of latest EP 'Long Cold Lonely Winter'.

 

 

http://www.myspace.com/matwale

 

 

Facebook Event page:

 

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=161483427213018

 

Last.fm Event page:

 

http://www.last.fm/event/1565231

 

 

[Amsterdamned]

The '+ more' will be one David J. Roch kka Little Lost David who'll be doing a solo/acoustic spot trying out some new material:

 

 

***DAVID J. ROCH***

 

In his own words... "Formed from the remains myself after everything around me came crashing down. I fell out of love with music for a good 6 months and think that the world may well have fallen out of love with me. After 6 months of falling over words and melodies in my mind I started to write and perform again, first solo, then with a drummer and eventually with a full band. The songs I wrote and still write are chapters from my life put to music to allow me to make sense of what I have done and what I will do. I hope that this has given you an insight into why i perform and play, until we meet again this is a very humble David; saying goodbye. take care.x"

 

"An attention-grabbing mix of the confessional, low-key melodies and baroque arrangements" - Q Magazine

 

"Gifted with a voice that can soar to ethereal heights as effortlessly as it plumbs red-raw depths, and he does indeed "lose" himself in the sound:. - The Guardian

 

"An intensely dazzling performance" - Sandman Magazine

 

 

http://www.myspace.com/davidjroch