Ottawa guitarist learns more every gig

By: Emma Renda    Post Date: Fri, 12/03/2010 - 3:06pm
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“My name was an accident, like my music,” says Kirk Ramsay, the young man behind Giant Hand.

Ramsay was 20 when he learned to play his first pawn-shop guitar, and just two months older when he played his first gig. At the time, Ramsay didn’t have much in the way of music: a sparse set-list of minimalist folk music he was writing almost on the go.

But those quirky observations set to three (or so) chords, including one about forming a band called Giant Hand, were enough to cement his name and reputation at once.

The next step, a daunting one, was translating the instant hype into a career. So despite some stage fright and a little bewilderment, Ramsay booked every show that came his way. Immaculate Machine, Born Ruffians, Bluesfest, and the list goes on.

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Boats! crossing international waters

By: Catharine Tunney    Post Date: Fri, 12/03/2010 - 3:05pm
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Mat Klachefsky and his band Boats! recently found themselves in a position not uncommon for musicians: tired, dirty, broke and with no place to stay. However, the gods of pop music shone on the band that night and presented them with what seemed to be a perfect fix to their situation.

After finishing a set, a woman presented the band her keys and told the members to crash in her apartment, Klachefsky says, the lead singer and songwriter for the band.

“So we went to her apartment and fell into bed and around 3 a.m. she came in on all kinds of drugs, but we’re not really down with that whole thing and we were tired. Then she started demanding that we watch with TV with her. It was really awkward. My biggest fear was that she would not remember that she lent us her keys and start beating us with a frying pan,” he says. “We don’t have crazy followers, but we have seen crazy people.”

Sometimes when you’re a band trying to make it in Canada you got to do what you got to do.

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No Blackberry for a day

By: Elise A. Milbradt    Post Date: Fri, 05/03/2010 - 1:15pm
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A day of absence from the cellular world was a strange experience.

I do not love my phone. My BlackBerry ownership has almost nothing to do with an actual desire for the device, and everything to do with my pathetic inability to say “no” to pushy salespeople.

I use my BlackBerry as a phone. I call people; people call me. Sometimes we text. I haven’t even set up my e-mail.

I thought a phone-less day was going to be walk in the park.

But, I have to admit, I cheated a little bit in the early parts of my day.

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By the moment Tweeters

By: Heather Wallace    Post Date: Fri, 05/03/2010 - 1:14pm
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I have serious beef with social media. In my eyes, it gives people with no expertise and nothing to say a platform to share their ill-informed, uninteresting ideas with the world. So when I took the assignment to tweet everything that happened to me for an entire day, I came out with teeth barred, claws out, ready for a serious battle.

Twitter offers anyone a chance to create an account and post 140-word micro-blogs (equivalent to Facebook status updates) called tweets for the world to see. You can also follow and be followed by other tweeters, tag your tweets as they relate to certain topics, and now you can even tweet on-the-go by texting Twitter your updates.

I was quick to learn during my day of tweeting that as a university student of no importance, I have very few things worthy of being broadcast to cyberspace. In the time between tweets, I would worry about what I would tweet next because, as I lack Shaquille O’Neal’s hilarity and the New York Times’ ability to inform, I had nothing interesting to say.

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Walking a mile ... blindfolded

By: Ally Foster    Post Date: Fri, 05/03/2010 - 1:13pm
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I don’t see my bus pulling up to the stop. Even if I had, I would not have been able to reach it in time. I don’t see the snow bank right in front of me, and I trip over its frozen slope, hitting my knees and pushing my bare hands through an icy crust.

It takes me several minutes to safely navigate my way around the snow bank, and tapping my white cane across the ice, I make my way to the shelter to wait for the next bus.

I don’t know someone is standing right next to me, and when their cell phone rings, it makes me jump. I feel vulnerable and out of control.

As I try to get on the bus, I miss the door and walk into the side of the bus. Again, I trip going up the stairs and the chatter and laughter on the bus immediately dies. Since I can’t see everyone’s eyes, I assume they’re focused on me and my lumbering attempt to find a seat.

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A Future Presentation of acapella

By: Daniel Link    Post Date: Fri, 26/02/2010 - 5:20pm
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Barbershop quartets have a dapper quality similar to those old-style change belts and salt-water taffy: they’re so quaint, niche and such a throwback to yesteryear that you forget they’re still around. And not just around, mind you, but thriving in a manner both quiet and old-timey charming.

Seth Bocknek, Ryan Lindsey and Chris MacMartin are three quarters of Future Presentation, part of the Ottawa-based Capital City Chorus. While not usually decked out in the bowties, striped vests and boaters of their forbearers, this quartet is one of many keeping the tradition alive.

“For the singer, barbershop is a very rewarding style of music,” MacMartin says. “You can take four average voices and when they sing in tune, the sound is expanded far beyond what any singer can do on their own.”

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