I MADE THIS FOR YOU
The Mountain & the Trees
Indie
8-out-of-10
Jon Janes is what can best be described as a modern folk minstrel who performs his solo act under the somewhat strange The Mountain & the Trees label. Yes I know it sounds like a band, but when on the road, and his tour schedule is a busy one, he is on stage alone with his guitar.
From Newfoundland, The Mountain & the Trees has a sound reflective of his minstrel lifestyle. There is the feeling of a lot of road dust on many of his songs. You get the feeling of nights in the backseat of cars, the floor of friend's living rooms, and cheap hotel rooms, this guy didn't sleep until he had taken the time to scratch out a song on some small picture of life he had seen that day.
The results are childhood memories in Fear of Ghosts, love in Crossing Crows, and small town realities in Goodbye Little Town, the latter could be an anthem for a generation of young people living in small communities across this country.
Now while The Mountain & the Trees performs solo, as he did recently at 5th Avenue Cup & Saucer in Yorkton, on the CD he has several musicians adding their talents to various cuts, and even some added vocals too. That's a good thing. The sound is certainly fuller on the disk.
That said a soloist can survive on the road far easier than a band, so it is easy to understand why The Mountain & the Trees has made the touring choice to go it alone.
Back to the recording, if you like life vignette, folk with what feels like free form poetic lyrics, this is it. The Mountain & the Trees has a knack for making songs which come across as photographs of a moment in time in life, the musicians, or the listeners. He may have lived it, or merely observed it, but there is an element of realism here because the listener can relate.
Very well done.
Check him out at www.myspace.com/themountainsandthetrees
- CALVIN DANIELS
SELF-TITLED
Kerri Senkow
Indie
6.5-out-of-10
Kerri Senkow, who will perform at the Parkland Mall in Yorkton April 2, is really an interesting musical story.
When you get to know most musicians they relate stories of piano lessons at age eight and performing in church or school projects from an early age. Rare are singers which come to the craft after their teen years, but that is the path Senkow took.
"I've always wanted to be on a stage and perform since a child, but never started performing until I was 20," she recently told Yorkton This Week. "I started out in front of Regina Liquor Stores as a way to make money between jobs and found the response to be encouraging. In September of 2009 I took it beyond a few coffee shops and stores and was booking steadily and since made it my career."
Senkow is somewhat unique in regards to coming to music older than most do.
"I started playing guitar at age 19 with no musical background," she said. "Within two weeks of having no idea what I was doing, I had already begun writing my own songs."
So when Senkow's five-song EP disk arrived, it was one which admittedly was of guarded interest.
The CD is solid if not spectacular.
If you think about it being Senkow's first effort, and that she has limited experience, especially on the song writing side of things, the material comes out in a brighter light. A song like Washington is actually hauntingly beautiful, and shows just what Senkow can achieve. There is a slightly Evanescence quality to the song and that is high praise in my book.
That said, the rest of the disk lacks anything to grab you, and struggles to hold form. Graduation 2004 has a sort of country vibe when Senko sings, and more rock when a male gust picks it up. The harmonica work adds to the country flavour. The song is a miss-matched mishmash. On a five-song effort one bad apple is a very bad thing.
Check her out at www.reverbnation.com/kerrisenkow
- CALVIN DANIELS
Past reviews are archived online at http://calmardan.blogspot.com/
