gig review - Daryl Shawn with Ted Harms in Toronto, Sunday

[ditch wrestler <ditchwrestler@yahoo.com>]

Sunday was my turn to ride on the Daryl Shawn 2008 N. American tour train as it hit Toronto.

 

Daryl and I got together a few hours before the show for a quick feeling-out session and I think things went swimmingly.  I brought my double bass, a dl4, a distortion box, and two delay/pitch shifters.  Daryl had his travel guitar, his double four-track set-up and a few other goodies.

 

The venue will be generously described as a hole in the wall as it was barley twelve feet across with a semi-circular stage in the middle of one wall. But it was long and, I think, there were about 50 people at the peak.
 
The evening was the Bread Cabaret (the venue was Bread'n'Circus) organized by Lisa Pijuan-Nomura.  First up was a duo that was sampling and glitching sounds (couldn't tell what program  they were using on the laptop) made by using and hitting an espresso machine.  Then a solo dancer dancing to some salsa, followed by a pretty funny faux-Miss America contestant, following by another dancer (this time dancing to some pretty cool sparse electronica), followed by a girl with an acoustic guitar doing satirical folk songs poking fun at folkies, boyfriends, and racist gramma's.

 

Then a short break and then Daryl and I were on.

 

Daryl did two solo bits and then invited me up and we managed to unleash some wild'n'woooly improv on the crowd but still managed to keep things kinda mellow.  After a tune or two, we were joined by two dancers which added quite a bit to what we played.

 

The crowd was appreciative and almost rawkus.  At one point, Daryl did a very swift eject, flip, and replace a cassette in a single motion and a gasp went up from the crowd...

 

Daryl's a wonderful and open-eared player.  If I could swing it, I'd follow him to Montreal for his gig there on Tuesday night. ;-)

 

 

ted

Enemies are good for self-definition. Werner Herzog