Strung is releasing their debut CD “Band of Gypsies” this month (January 2009), and will bring their contemporary acoustic roots music live to the Almonte Town Hall on Sunday February 22. Showtime is 7:30 p.m (doors open, 6:45). Tickets are $20.00, available by calling The Miller’s Tale,(613-256-9090), Mississippi MusicWorks (613-256-7464) or Couples Corner (613-256-1171). This concert is part of a tour that brings Strung to Ontario and Quebec immediately following a January performance at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall in Scotland, a BBC TV shoot, and a BBC Radio live appearance.
Strung is a new project, but it’s no “baby band”. Doug Cox, Tony McManus, April Verch and Cody Walters are the artists collectively known as Strung. These artists share more than 50 years of experience and choose their projects carefully. Doug Cox is described by the Boston Globe as “one of the worlds most expressive Dobro players.” BBC Radio described Tony McManus as “The finest guitarist Scotland has ever produced.” And Sing Out! Magazine said “April Verch…is a marvel to behold,” and the Ottawa Citizen detailed, “Her voice…swings easily from contemporary country to traditional gospel…her fiddling at once articulate, crisp and spunky - is an endless delight.”
April Verch
returns to her Ottawa Valley roots, this February night.
For a “new world” country, Canada has a lot of different fiddle traditions, Some are centuries old and some are being born right now. April Verch’s musical roots are in a tradition that not even hard-core folk music listeners can tell you much about. Like Cape Breton or Quebec, the settlers in the Ottawa Valley were Scottish and French, but unlike them, the settlers were just as likely to be Irish, German or Polish. After two hundred years of playing together, a very special and unique repertoire, style of playing, and stepdance have evolved. April grew up in this tradition, step-dancing to traditional fiddling for three long years before her parents finally relented and got her the fiddle she’d been asking for when she turned six. The longest, and probably hardest, part of her path as an artist led her to becoming the first woman to win both the Canadian Grand Masters Fiddle and Open Fiddle Championships.
Songs from the new CD, Band of Gypsies, can be heard online at http://www.myspace.com/strungcanada
Strung delivers an eclectic blend of roots music styles with an expressive depth and intensity. “Strung is a [group] you want to keep an ear out for, and one you want to be in the room with when they get deeper into the music.” - Dugg Simpson.
The Almonte concert is in support of Almonte’s Celtfest 2009, a celebration of the music, song and dance of the Ottawa Valley, scheduled for July 10-12th.