Aaron and the Sea of Stories

T-Tigers, toasters,
flowers and fistfights
Mahogany Frog get moody
on Do 5

Jesse Warkentin hoped to be famous by now.

Growing up listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana, he had high expectations when he formed Mahogany Frog with Graham Epp in 1998.

“We had grand ideas of being rock stars and playing music that everyone loved. Then we listened to jazz,” said Warkentin, 28, drinking beer in an Osborne Village bar.

“If we had never heard jazz, I bet we’d be famous by now.”

Hearing jazz inspired the instrumental quartet—which in addition to Warkentin and Epp on guitars and keyboards also includes Scott Ellenberger on bass and trumpet, and JP Perron on drums—to incorporate new sounds into the psychedelic rock they started off playing.

The addition of jazz, lounge, prog and electronic elements resulted in a sound uniquely theirs. The band releases its latest CD, Mahogany Frog Do 5, at the West End Cultural Centre on April 27.

As its title suggests, Do 5 is the band’s fifth release. Their third, 2004’s Mahogany Frog Vs. Mabus, was a one-hour affair consisting of five complex, experimental songs. The follow-up, 2005’s Mahogany Frog on Blue, featured songs that were faster, shorter and more concentrated. Do 5 lands somewhere in between.

“Vs. Mabus was an experiment in composition,” Warkentin said, noting the band has “boiled down” its sound in recent years. “With On Blue, we said, `Screw it, we want to be heavy and we want to rock.’ On Do 5, we found a median. It’s still heavy, but we were able to saturate the sound a lot more.”

Saturated, lush, tight, explosive—these are all words Warkentin uses to describe Do 5. The album was recorded in seven months at Winnipeg’s MCM Studio. The relaxed recording schedule and unique environment, which is usually used to record acoustic and choral music, allowed the band to experiment with different mic set-ups and amplification techniques.

The resulting 47-minute, nine-song disc kicks off with “G.M.F.T.P.O.,” a brief rocker with a crushing, triumphant gallop that disintegrates into feedback. “Last Stand at Fisher Farm” is a prog-rock Spaghetti Western score, and “Demon Jigging Spoon” is a loungey rocker built around Warkentin and Epp’s ever-present analog keyboards.

The highlight, however, is “T-Tigers & Toasters,” an 11-minute track that seesaws between haunting, ambient passages and guitar-driven, fuzz-infused freak-outs.

“They’re quite capable of writing very beautiful music, but they’re also quite happy to jump on you with feedback and noise,” said Mike Petkau, who produced, recorded and mixed Do 5 and also worked on the band’s last two discs. “It’s like the album gives you flowers, and then rips them out of your hand and punches you in the face.”

Most musicians he knows wouldn’t be able to keep up with the band in terms of both musical chops and songwriting creativity, Petkau said. The guys in Mahogany Frog even have trouble keeping up with themselves.

“They’re constantly writing music that’s beyond their ability,” Petkau said. “It forces them to become better players—to let their hands catch up with their brains.”

But as much as they challenge their musical limits, Warkentin said the band tries to write songs that audiences will be able to relate to and connect with emotionally.

“The actual melodies we’re playing are supposed to be catchy,” he said. “When we orchestrate the songs, we’re trying to make it a lush, palatable experience.”

Mahogany Frog is currently on a Canadian tour promoting Do 5. Ten years after starting the band, Warkentin isn’t concerned about whether or not their music will ever make them famous.

“We just want to be involved with music,” he said, “and be surrounded and inspired by people and bands we respect.”

See Mahogany Frog at the West End Cultural Centre on April 27 with guests The Hummers and Slattern. Visit www.mahoganyfrog.com.

From the April 3, 2008 issue of The Uniter.

Settling into the mystery
Matt Epp’s latest CD hinges on faith, friends, and connections

Why Winnipeg singer-songwriter Matt Epp chose to title his 2005 debut You’ll Find Me Alone is a mystery, because it’s unlikely there’s a musician in the city with more friends and acquaintances.

When it came time to record 2006’s Love in Such Strong Words, Gilles Fournier, Dan Frechette, Kristjanna Oleson, Ron Halldorson and members of The Duhks, The Waking Eyes and Twilight Hotel were just some of the people who showed up to help. The assembled cast of musicians filled out Epp’s folk sound, creating a disc more musically diverse than his first.

While the 27-year-old is grateful for the contributions his friends made, he admits now that he was “hiding behind a lot of stuff” on that album. He thought performances by better-known musicians would equal more listeners. He was wrong. When it came time to tour, Epp couldn’t play most of the songs because he didn’t have a full band with him.

Instead he turned to solo acoustic material like “She’s High Water” and “My Love Will Come.” Both songs appear on Epp’s latest CD, Orphan Horse, which he’ll release Wednesday night at the West End Cultural Centre.

“I know this album is more like me than anything has been before,” Epp said, sitting in an Osborne Village bar, sipping a pint of Fort Garry Dark. Recorded live-off-the floor in five hours this past December, Orphan Horse captures the essence of Epp’s live show: just him, singing and playing the guitar and harmonica.

San Francisco-based singer-songwriter and Epp confidante Jesse DeNatale describes it as an album “where Frank Sinatra meets Ryan Adams and walks with Sam Cooke to Woody Guthrie’s house.” It’s an apt description, as Epp manages to tap into a variety of musical traditions to create 10 tracks that sound simultaneously classic and new.

Lyrically, the disc covers similar territory as his previous efforts: faith and relationships. God and girls always seem to be on Epp’s mind, and nowhere is that more apparent than on “Sophia,” in which the titular character commits suicide after her lover leaves her, and “Love is a Camel,” in which Epp sings, “The prairie ocean was whipping the beach without mercy / And ‘Oh my God how great thou art’ was all that I could say.”

“My faith infects everything in my life, but it’s not like I have an agenda,” said Epp, who became a Christian around the same time he started playing music just over five years ago. He doesn’t pretend to have all the answers, and he certainly doesn’t aim to evangelize. “It’s about connecting with people’s hearts, and writing something that teaches me as well.”

He points to “Faith the Bow” from his first disc as an example. The song, which deals with Christian themes, has resonated so deeply with a friend of his who practices Buddhism that she got the refrain, “Knowledge the arrow, faith the bow” tattooed on her arm.

“It’s just a testimony to the idea that connecting with people is the most important thing,” Epp said.

DeNatale has witnessed the connections Epp has made, and describes him as gracious and humble.

“Matt does his music 100 per cent,” DeNatale said, “meaning if he’s trying to make a connection [with the audience], it’s Matt the musician, but at the same time, it’s Matt the person.”

Dan Donahue, who has worked with Epp on all three CDs, agrees.

“Amongst his peers, Matt is highly respected,” Donahue said. “I’m not just limiting that to a musical perspective. His whole persona, and his devotion to the way he lives his life… Matt’s the real thing.”

Now that Orphan Horse is ready to be released, Epp is looking forward to touring—and making more friends and connections.

“At my shows I usually share what’s on my heart,” Epp said. Sometimes that means saying a lot, and sometimes that means saying nothing at all—it depends on what he’s sensing from the crowd.

“Music is mysterious,” Epp concluded. “Doing this whole thing is a mystery.”

See Matt Epp at the West End Cultural Centre on Apr. 9 with guests Kerri Woelke and Brian James. Visit www.myspace.com/mattepp.

From the April 3, 2008 issue of The Uniter.

Brock Tyler
Unclosing
Independent

Singer-songwriters are so common, one can’t help but wonder if it’s all been done before. With Unclosing, Edmonton’s Brock Tyler hardly makes a case to argue against this statement. He borrows from Ben Gibbard, Sufjan Stevens, and many others who have come before him throughout this 11-song disc. Still, it’s hard to resist a CD that was made with such care. That’s not to say it sounds laboured or forced. Rather, it means that from the sweet love songs, to the ornate production, to the screen-printed CD packaging, Unclosing is the work of someone who took the time to fully realize his vision. Tyler wrote, recorded and performed everything himself, augmenting his nearly-whispered tenor and gently strummed acoustic guitar with drums, bass, banjo, claves, bells and the occasional horn part. Standout tracks include “It Will All Come Right,” “The Devil’s on Horseback,” and “Hangman,” in which he uses the children’s game as a metaphor for the breakdown in communication between two lovers. It’s hard to say sometimes when a singer-songwriter’s doing just a little too much soul-baring, but Tyler seems to have found the balance. Catch the Winnipeg expat live when he plays at Canadian Mennonite University on April 27.

4 out of 5.

From the April 3, 2008 issue of The Uniter.

Is the world watching?
An interview with The Waking Eyes on the merits of YouTube

When their record company told them they needed to create content for YouTube, local rockers The Waking Eyes decided to keep things simple. They performed two new songs—“All Empires Fall” and “Wolves at the Door”—live in their friends’ Albert Street loft, with friends from a handful of Winnipeg bands singing along. Within days, the videos were edited and uploaded to the popular video-sharing site for anyone with a computer and an Internet connection to watch.

“I think it’s interesting that what’s successful on YouTube are the simpler things,” said Steve Senkiw, the band’s drummer. “Set-up and punch line—that’s what I want to see when I watch something on YouTube, and that’s what we wanted to do with our video. We wanted to play our songs, with maybe some lights and our friends singing along.”

Founded in early 2005 by three PayPal employees, YouTube accounted for three billion of the over nine billion videos viewed on the Internet this past January, according to a recent report by PCWorld.com. The site also made stars of Chicago rock quartet OK Go in 2006 when the video for their song “Here It Goes Again,” which features the band performing a synchronized dance routine on treadmills, went viral and became a pop culture phenomenon. Since then, the video has been viewed more than 30 million times.

YouTube’s appeal, Senkiw said, is that if you make a music video, it’s guaranteed to be seen. “With MuchMusic, you’re waiting for a programmer to play those videos—you’re counting on someone else to show the world,” he said.

“On YouTube you get to put something up that you created, that doesn’t have to cost anything, and the response is instantaneous.”

Jason Smith, owner of Winnipeg-based Smallman Records, agrees with Senkiw, citing Comeback Kid as an example. The video for “Broadcasting,” the title track from the hardcore quintet’s latest CD, has been viewed on YouTube over 190,000 times in 11 months.

That’s the kind of exposure the band could never hope to get on MuchMusic or MTV, whose strict formats would relegate the band to “maybe one show,” Smith said. “[YouTube] is good for bands that aren’t quite mainstream,” he said. “You know for sure now that if you make a video, people will see it.”

This has created opportunities for different budgets and more creative ideas, since labels, bands and directors no longer have to worry about what will appeal to MuchMusic or MTV’s demographic, Smith said. As Senkiw put it, “Three guys in a business meeting aren’t deciding what’s trendy this month.” YouTube has forced people to be creative and make things people have never seen before.

Whether a video clip by a Winnipeg band will go viral and become a huge hit a la OK Go remains to be seen. For The Waking Eyes, the site has already served its purpose: their new CD doesn’t come out until the summer, and the two videos they shot on Albert Street have already each got more than 1,500 views.

“For doing nothing,” Senkiw concluded, “that’s pretty good.”

From the March 27, 2008 issue of The Uniter.

Yoav
Charmed & Strange
Phi Group/Universal

Born in Israel and raised in South Africa, singer/songwriter Yoav has been described as “Damien Rice produced by the Neptunes.” All the sounds on his debut CD were made using an acoustic guitar. He drums, taps, picks and strums throughout the 47-minute disc, using loop and delay pedals to create percussive soundscapes. Overtop, he sings trite lyrics about things like beautiful lies and not being alive (but not being dead, either) in a competent tenor. Tracks like “Club Thing,” “One by One,” and his cover of The Pixies’ “Where is My Mind” are highlights, but after awhile the songs all begin to sound the same. Yoav should be commended for trying something different, but no amount of percussive tapping and looping can make up for forgettable songwriting. In the end, his style comes off more as a gimmick rather than the invention of a talented musician pushing the boundaries of his instrument. Charming? Sure. Strange? Yeah. Worth repeated listens? Probably not.

3 out of 5.

From the March 27, 2008 issue of The Uniter.