Along with Haunted Souls, the Saskatchewan side features local faves Feral Children as well as Caves, Eyebats, Stephen Cooley, Auld Beak and Trees. The Manitoba side even brings some SK flavour, with Winnipeg’s This Hisses (featuring Saskatoon ex-pat JP Perron on drums).

Now you can check out a bandcamp page that features all the songs to appear on the release. See below to stream, then head over to Mammoth Cave’s website to purchase!

Tickets will be available HERE starting at 10am, Friday, February 3rd! They’ll go quickly, so be sure to set your alarms and/or rooster(s).

And as always, stay tuned to CFCR for a chance to win tickets! Just make sure you’re a CFCR Member to win!

Photo: Francis A. Willey & Sanja Lukac

*This is an updated post originally published on January 30, 2012

Saskatoon’s favourite band of twang-o-leers The Deep Dark Woods are once again on the road, touring the eastern parts of the US of A in support of their critically acclaimed (and oft-played) album The Place I Left Behind. They’ve been recording their performances and have started posting songs on their on their website as free downloads.

On January 19th, The DDW rolled into Alexandria, Virginia for a show at a venue called The Birchmere. Last week, the band made eight songs from the performance available. Tracks include stand-out tracks from their last three albums as well as a cover of early blues standard “Trouble In Mind.”

Second in the live series is a recording from a show at Union Transfer in Philadelphia, PA on January 25th, featuring a cover of The Grateful Dead’s adaptation of the old Scottish folk tune “Peggy-O.”

The boys have a few more US dates before returning home to prepare for their first trip across the pond, playing a smattering of dates across the UK and one in The Netherlands. See below for the band’s schedule over the next month:

01-31-12 Annapolis, MD @ Ram’s Head On Stage
02-02-12 Wilmington, NC @ Brooklyn Arts Center at St. Andrew’s
02-18-12 Winchester, UK @ The Railway
02-19-12 Brighton, UK @ Sticky Mike’s Frog Bar
02-20-12 Manchester, UK @ The Castle Hotel
02-21-12 London, UK @ The Lexington
02-22-12 Brixton, UK @ The Windmill
02-26-12 Apeldorn, NL @ Gigant
02-28-12 Glasgow, UK @ Captain’s Rest

Stay tuned to CFCR.ca to get the low-down on the next edition of The Deep Dark Woods’ live concert series!

The album will be available digitally and on CD on March 20th (which makes sense, being the first day of Spring and all), so watch for it spinning on CFCR and appearing in your locally-owned record shop around then. Or you can just pre-order it here.

The “Barefeet” video features the band as a coven of witches (or nuns?), exploring an abandoned rural house (or church? or doctor’s office?) as well as a graveyard. You can see for yourself below:

Space is limited at this show, but you may still be able to get tickets by visiting Picatic.com. And hey, maybe you’ll get to be on the teevee.

The Low Anthem’s newest album Smart Flesh gets spun pretty regularly around here, but if you haven’t heard the band before, see below to check out a live session they recorded for HearYa.com, a Chicago-based music blog that featured a session by Saskatoon’s very own Deep Dark Woods a while back. Heck, you can check out a video of their cover or Bruce Springsteen’s “Factory” from that session below too.

The Low Anthem – “Boeing 737”

Deep Dark Woods – “Factory” (Bruce Springsteen Cover)

Six Degrees of Jazz is a film series presented by the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival designed to celebrate and explore the history of jazz and other styles of music.

All films screen Tuesdays at 7PM at The Broadway Theatre. Tickets are $8 ($5 for Broadway Theatre or SJS members, card required), and are available at the door starting at 6:30pm.

Six Degrees of Jazz is organized in partnership with the Broadway Theatre, and is sponsored by St. John’s Music. Promotional support is provided by CFCR 90.5 FM.

One of the bands featured on the Saskatchewan side is Saskatoon garage-pop-punk band Haunted Souls. Originally started as a bedroom project of Auld Beak drummer Aaron Scholz, the band also features Pearson frontman Will Robbins, as well as former members of Mechanical Separation and From Chimpan-A to Chimpan-Z. The band penned a 54-second opus called “Hairy Prairie” for the Bloodstains compilation, which can be downloaded for free from their Bandcamp page. Have a little listen to the tune below:

I was at a little gathering the other night with some members of The Browntones and Shooting Guns, and Steve Reed from Shooting Guns suggested I check out I Think We’re Alone Now. Yes, you placed that title correctly — it was the hit song from 80s teenage mall tour celebrity, Tiffany. Thanks Steve; it was a great recommendation. The movie only clocks in at about an hour, but it was a quirky look into stalking and obsession.

The story follows two different men who are stalking Tiffany as she navigates her post-success life, doing shows at state fairs and porno conventions (she was in Playboy some years back). Jeff Turner is a 50-year-old man with Asperger’s Syndrome, which basically means he can retain all sorts of information, but he has trouble reading social cues from people. He is convinced that he and Tiffany are great friends that go way back. He seems like a nice enough guy throughout most of the movie. Kelly McCormick is a 38-year-old hermaphrodite that became obsessed with Tiffany after taking a conk to the head (that explains it!). He is a bit scarier than Turner, mostly because he has anger issues and seems to really believe that he and Tiffany were meant to be together.

The movie is full of interesting anecdotes, but perhaps one of the most telling is the story of Turner being arrested for showing up at a Tiffany show with a sword and flowers. Of course, that seems downright scary when I say it that way; however, he doesn’t understand what the fuss is all about. He says, somewhat confusedly, “Presenting someone with a katana and six white chrysanthemums is the highest honour you can give someone in Japan.”

The movie starts out strong, stumbles briefly with some choppiness, and then kicks back into high gear towards the end as they put Turner and McCormick together in a Vegas hotel room at a Tiffany show. Then it just becomes bizarre. Sure, it’s humourous, because it’s a movie about people who just want Tiffany to love them (and who would want that?) — but it’s also a sad portrait of mental illness, something that isn’t all that funny.

It might be easy for someone to call a movie like this “exploitive”, but I don’t think it was. It isn’t urging us to laugh at them — it’s merely showing their lives as they are. Watching stuff like this, not avoiding it, is how we come to a place where we can understand each other. That being said, watching the ending, with the two men (well, sort of) arguing over who loves Tiffany more is like watching crazy talk to crazy. It’s surreal. But the next time I read an article about some crazy stalker, it’ll be easier for me to realize that it’s a real person, who most likely needs help.

It’s not the greatest doc of all time or anything, but for music and pop culture geeks, as well as those with any interest in mental illness, I Think We’re Alone Now is an interesting movie with some good access to its subjects.

Craig Silliphant
CFCR Board Member

Today, Laramee posted a link to his Soundcloud on Facebook that features four tracks from the first self-titled cassette. That’s the cover art to the left.

The news is being met with online praise, the best quote being from Saskatoon ex-pat Shaun Mason, aka Dumb Angel, who pointed out that Laramee is “still drone-y after all these years.”

So curl up with a Hot Toddy and treat your ears to some much-needed solace:
Wasted Cathedral – s/t by dubditchpicnic