Foster’s Meats – Morning Coffee
Weather forecast for Wednesday, September 5, 2018
Today – Mainly sunny. Fog patches dissipating this morning. Wind becoming southwest 20 km/h this morning. High 32. Humidex 41. UV index 7 or high.
Tonight – Increasing cloudiness early this evening. 70 percent chance of showers late this evening and overnight with risk of a thunderstorm. Wind southwest 20 km/h becoming light this evening. Low 19.
Heat warning remains in place
A hot and very humid airmass remains in place over the area with maximum daytime temperatures near 32 degrees and humidex values near 41, forecasters say.
Isolated showers and thunderstorms are possible which could locally reduce daytime highs. However, maximum daily humidex values are still expected to be near 41, Environment Canada officials say.
“A cold front is expected to move through tonight bringing an end to the hot and humid weather. The risks are greater for young children, pregnant women, older adults, people with chronic illnesses and people working or exercising outdoors. Never leave people or pets inside a parked vehicle.”
Heat warnings are issued when very high temperature or humidity conditions are expected to pose an elevated risk of heat illnesses, such as heat stroke or heat exhaustion.
Please continue to monitor alerts and forecasts issued by Environment Canada. To report severe weather, send an email to ONstorm@canada.ca or tweet reports using #ONStorm.
Stacy Mitchhart Band performing in Wallaceburg on Friday
WEBCAR Productions and the Wallaceburg & District Council For The Arts have teamed up to bring the world renowned Stacy Mitchhart Band to the Jeanne Gordon Theatre on Friday, September 7th.
Mitchhartās new album is titled Live My Life and it stakes out bold new territory for the veteran entertainer. The setās 12 tunes are raw, direct and visceral ā just like the high-energy concerts that have won Mitchhart a devoted international following and made him the ambassador of the Music City blues scene.
āThis album is really about where I am today,ā says Mitchhart. āIām more transparent, just loving what Iām doing and feeling comfortable with myself, and playing the music straight from my heart.ā
The results are a mix of down-home blues with a splash of soul that serves as a springboard for Mitchhartās canny storytelling and meanly elegant guitar. The setās a departure from his mostly soul-blues flavored catalog, reflecting his deepening connection with the genreās primal Mississippi roots.
Live My Life kicks off with the grinding blues howler āI Drink Whiskey,ā showcasing his dirty licks ānā tricks and culminating in one of his trademark raps ā a tongue-in-cheek discourse on the bourbon family. Mitchhartās off-the-cuff verbal riffing is a beloved signature of his shows. It comes from the deep blues tradition, following in the footsteps of Muddy Waters, Howlinā Wolf and other historic figures, but always boasts his own distinctive contemporary flavor and flawless comedic timing.
āLive My Lifeā ā the title track ā is another beacon of the artistās newly stripped down approach. In the song, which doubles as the albumās first video release, Mitchhart affirms the joys of life in his cask-cured voice while churning up his own style of mud-caked virtuosity on a blend of raw-boned electric and cigar box guitars. Three tracks on Live My Life include cigar box instruments, which he embraced several years ago after finding a three-string model in a Nashville shop.
āGetting a cigar box guitar made me approach music differently,ā he explains. āYou have fewer options, and sometimes that can be an advantage. The cigar box is also tuned differently ā especially if itās just got two or three strings. Every instrument sounds different and plays different. Theyāre real and rootsy.ā
While the cigar box guitar brings Mitchhartās high-powered slide technique to the fore, yet another side of his playing powers the instrumental āSoul Stoll,ā which teams an elegant, funky soul-blues groove with flashes of jazz and a sinuous melody.
For Mitchhart, āSoul Strollā is a flashback to the classic music that was his first love, conjuring visions of Booker T & the M.G.ās, the famed Stax Records house band. The entire album is also a showcase for his own lightning rod group, whoāve developed a telepathic level of musical communication accompanying their leader on a whopping 275 dates a year.
The discās biggest surprise, besides its unfiltered hard-core blues sound, is Mitchhartās interpretation of the Beatlesā āCome Together.ā Using the cigar box, he sidesteps the tuneās famous riff and reinvents the song as a Delta blues thatās true to his own roots and the sprit of the original recording.
āWe played āCome Togetherā on stage one night, just messing around, and the cigar box was so nasty and rocking that I knew I had to record it,ā Mitchhart recalls.
The words ānasty,ā ādirty,ā āraw,ā ārocking,ā āhonest,ā āimmediateā and āgrittyā pop up frequently as Mitchhart talks about his new disc. To capture all of that, he cut most of its tracks live with his band to actual two-inch recording tape and then played just a handful of guitar overdubs. And he chose to record at Nashvilleās Fry Pharmacy, a dusty studio with crumbling cement walls on the cityās north side thatās known for its juke-joint vibe and impeccable analog sound.
Scott McEwen, who owns Fry Pharmacy, co-produced the project with Mitchhart and played upright bass on a few tracks. The rest was played by Mitchhart and his band: drummer Darin James, bassist Michael Dearing, trumpeter Cory Distefano, saxist Jules Caldera and keyboardist Jacob Tipton.
āUntil now, everything Iāve done has been a lot more R&B flavored, with horns and layered backing vocals,ā Mitchhart explains. āThis time I wanted to be more naked and rootsy ā less slick. In general I want to strip down my life right now and simplify things. And I want to do the same with my music.ā
Mitchhartās musical journey began in his native Cincinnati, Ohio, in a home where jazz guitar masters like Wes Montgomery and Johnny Smith were played on the stereo. Therefore it was natural that he gravitated to the six-string. As a child he saw the outrageous Little Richard on a TV show and was captivated by his showmanship. Little Richard looked and acted differently than anybody he had ever been exposed to. Today, Mitchhart has created his own brand of showmanship that brings audiences back again and again.
āI heard Springsteen, Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, but that stuff never moved me,ā he recounts. āWhen I saw Bobby āBlueā Bland and B.B. King, I knew what I wanted to do. Since then, my playingās just gotten more focused and aggressive with time.ā
Another serious inspiration was Cincinnati guitarist and singer Frank Hedges, a musical preacher whose sons were also in Mitchhartās first band. āHe played guitar in a strange, almost drum like style, which taught me to concentrate on the groove.ā
Mitchhart has always been a bandleader. He developed his sound and stagecraft at the helm of four groups in Cincinnati ā climbing the pinnacle of the cityās blues scene. He also began his recording career there, with 1993ās Blues Transfusion.Since then heās made a dozen more albums, culminating until now in 2009ās critically heralded Grown Ass Man and 2010ās Live From B.B. Kingās. By the early ā90s he was the top blues act in Cincinnati. But when he played his first gigs in Nashville 18 years ago, he knew heād found his musical home.
āThe very first time I came to Nashville I sold 24 CDs off the bandstand and the audience was amazing,ā Mitchhart recalls. āThey were alive!ā In short order he was offered the house band slot at Printers Alleyās famed Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar.
āVery quickly, because there are so many tourists in Nashville, I realized I was seeing different people in the audience from all over the world every single night, and because this is Music City, they were really coming to listen,ā he continues. āThe Stacy Mitchhart Band has become known as one of the top live acts in Nashville because our sound is different and we bring a lot of energy to the stage.ā
Nearly two decades later, that hasnāt changed. Mitchhartās name is still synonymous with ābluesā in the most rapidly growing city along the Cumberland River and heās still playing 200 of his annual dates without leaving home. Thanks to the international following heās largely built in Nashville at Bourbon Street Blues and Boogie Bar, Mitchhart has also performed in eight other countries.
āIāve played everything from 50,000 seat, sold-out arenas to 5,000-to-15,000 attendance blues festivals to 1,500-seat theaters to 250-seat clubs to a 40-seat grocery store to backyard barbecues and weddings to corporate parties,ā he relates. āThe bottom line is that every gig is important to the people that booked you and the audience always deserves your best.
āThe truth is,ā Mitchhart continues, āIām more comfortable onstage entertaining than I am in my own living room. Iāve spent my whole life there. And I feel like the stripped down approach of this new album lets other people get inside my music almost as deep as I do every night when Iām on stage.ā
Buy your tickets, here.
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