Laura (formerly of Said the Whale) and her band will play with guests Treelight Room, Kingdom Cloud and David Blair on June 4th at Habitat.
Laura has been selling out shows in Victoria and Vancouver recently as well as opening for bands such as Mother Mother. Don’t miss her as she plays the first stop on her cross-Canada tour.

Join us Sat May 30th at the Post Haus Pub and support the 24 Hour Relay for Kids!

There will be cash prizes, 50/50 draws, silent auction, dinner, poker and whole lot more!

Cost will be $35.00 which includes buffet dinner and poker – OR $20.00 for just Dinner and $20 if you would like to join just for poker…

Hope to see you all there!

Join us Sat May 30th at the Post Haus Pub and support the 24 Hour Relay for Kids!

There will be cash prizes, 50/50 draws, silent auction, dinner, poker and whole lot more!

Cost will be $35.00 which includes buffet dinner and poker – OR $20.00 for just Dinner and $20 if you would like to join just for poker…

Hope to see you all there!

I’m heading to the Gorge in Washington for the Sasquatch Festival, so no blog posts till mid-next week. There’ll be lots of updates then!!

Tonight at the Kelowna Club

Video of Joel Plaskeet at the Habitat

If you were one of the lucky people to get a ticket to the Sold Out Joel Plaskett show at the Habitat last night (May 12th) you were treated to well over 2 hours of classic Plaskett. After turning away nearly 75 people at the door looking for tickets (buy your tickets early folks, I reminded you) the show was underway by 9pm. Joel played some solo acoustic tunes, was joined by his Dad for a number of songs, and had the stellar backing vocals of Ana Egge and Rose Cousins (who also play on Joel’s new album Three). See setlist below.

Joel – solo
true patriot love
work out fine
television set
face of the earth

joel, ana and rose
lazy bones
precious, precious, precious
run, run, run
you let me down
through & through & through
farmer’s daughter – ana’s song
rollin, rollin, rollin

joel, bill plaskett
natural disaster
nothing more to say to you
Bill’s song
heartles, heartless, heartless (cut short)

joel, bill, ana and rose
rewind, rewind, rewind
deny, deny, deny
pine, pine, pine
in the blue moonlight
nowhere with you
all the way down the line
lost in the valley – rose’s song
happen now

encore:
love this town – joel solo
before you leave
fashionable people
wishful thinking

11:20pm time to go home….
Joel handled himself in stellar fashion when playing his infamous song “Love This Town”. Once and for all nobody should actually believe that Joel hates Kelowna.

Don’t miss Joel if you get a chance to see him on this tour.

Did you see Joel open for the Tragically Hip in Kelowna, Nov. 15th, 2004?
Did you see Joel play at Big White in March 2005?
Did you see the infamous Flashback’s show that Joel sang about?
Did you see Thursh Hermit and Sloan in Kelowna, Sept. 9th, 1994?

This Tuesday night (May 12th) you can see Parkinsong Records artist, Ana Egge, performing alongside Joel Plaskett, Rose Cousins, and Joel’s Dad, Bill Plaskett.

Singer-songwriter, Ana Egge, singings vocals on Joel Plaskett’s latest album Three, and she has her own CD that was just released in March, Entitled Road to My Love, the album was reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine, and Lucinda Williams calls her “the folk Nina Simone”.
More about Ana:
In Robert Frost’s iconic poem “The Road Not Taken,” the narrator looks back wistfully on a lifetime of choices and how the “road less traveled . . . has made all the difference.” Ana Egge has been forging her own path for over a decade now. In the tradition of her parents, who Ana says were “motorcycle-riding hippy farmers in North Dakota, who created the unconventional life they wanted,” Ana’s path as an artist has been much the same — challenging herself to follow her instincts rather than trying to fit into any particular mold. This honest approach has produced an impressive body of work and earned Ana a reputation as a musician’s musician, with unforgettable live performances and lyrics that paint vast landscapes and stories in her singular style. It’s no wonder she’s been compared to legends like Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, and Bonnie Raitt. But, perhaps USA Today said it best when they wrote, “[Ana] can write and sing rings around” her contemporaries.

See Ana live with Joel Plaskett this Tuesday night at the Habitat.

Half based in London, half in Toronto, the Flowers Of Hell are a trans-Atlantic rock orchestra made up of 16 or so experimental independent musicians. They mix orchestral and rock instrumentation while mainly creating wordless pieces that explore the intersecting points of classical and psychedelic blues based music (e.g., the Velvet Underground and Spacemen 3). Their name comes from the old blues ideal that the pleasure of the listener is born from the misery & toil of the musician.

Their second album, Come Hell Or High Water, has somehow turned out rather epic. It took a full year of work and involved recording 30 musicians in over 40 sessions that they pulled together in London, Toronto, Prague, Detroit, & Abilene, Texas. A lot of the people on it have played in acts vastly larger than them, including the Patti Smith Group, John Cale’s band, Spiritualized, Spacemen 3, British Sea Power, Bat For Lashes, Broken Social Scene, The Earlies, Guided By Voices, The Clientele, Do Make Say Think, The Hidden Cameras, The Ecstasy Of Saint Theresa, Tindersticks, The Early Years, and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra amongst others. But they insist they are not to be mistaken for a supergroup. It isn’t Patti Smith working with Jason Pierce, Natasha Khan, Kevin Drew, Stuart Staples & Robert Pollard – rather it’s Patti’s bassist, Jason’s sax player, Natasha’s violist, Kevin’s violinist, Stuart’s saw player, and Robert’s drummer working with the other guests and Flowers.

About Ben Nielsen
I got an electric guitar for my 19th birthday… but I didn’t really play it much. At the time I was into punk and metal bands like Iron Maiden and MegaDeth…. that’s freak’n hard to play. About a year later I moved to Lake Louise and bought an acoustic guitar. That’s where I heard John Mayer and Jack Johnson for the first time– not to mention Ben Harper and Dave Matthews. That was when I really decided to learn how to play guitar. There’s been a lot of great experiences between then and now… with European backpacking adventures, relationships, university and numerous jobs… and I look forward to seeing what’s around the next corner. I believe a great song is the essence of capturing a moment in life and explaining it through melody. So I continue to live, love, and learn in hopes of reaching my highest goals. Experience life for every minute: be kind with your words, don’t take it personally, don’t assume, and always do your best.