Nick Macmahon, staff
Venus Murphy
The Irish Club Nov. 3, 10 p.m.
The Manitoban: What is your musical philosophy?
Venus Murphy: As a band, we’re very committed to our music being GOOD: we set very high standards for ourselves and really try to bring something new to the stage with songs and arrangements that people haven’t heard before. People always tell us we look like we’re having so much fun on stage — music’s too important to all of us for it to ever be work!!!
M: What is your musical style?
Venus Murphy: Celtic-folk rock.
M: What are your musical influences?
Venus Murphy: Folk, rock, classical, and country, Oysterband, The Pogues, and The Waterboys, Pink Floyd, Rush, and The Drive-By Truckers.
M: What Inspires you?
Venus Murphy: Coffee, our families, our road trips, our overactive imaginations,
cartoons (Bugs Bunny, Family Guy, and Spider-man, mostly), sugar, (Kyle’s girlfriend bakes really well) single-malt scotch, English beer and Irish whiskey (we are committed to our roots, after all), shiny things and loud noises (all of us have really short attention spans . . . hey, wanna go ride bikes?).
M: Who’s in the band?
Venus Murphy: Courtney Welch: vocals, guitars, mandolin, penny whistles
Jenn Walton: accordion, vocals, penny whistle
Mike Webster: guitars, mandolin, vocals, bass
Kyle Chartier: bass, vocals, guitar
Brendan Jowett: fiddle, vocals
Kevin Swan: drums, cajon, tenor drum
M: How does a song become a “classic”? Is it overexposure or is there something universally appealing about it?
Venus Murphy: People know “good” when they hear it, most of the time. Overexposure can’t make a classic, as overplayed pop-radio crap has proven over and over again. Good music lasts, that’s why traditional music can still pack a dance floor in 2007 and why we love to play it!
Electro Quarterstaff
The Royal Albert Arms, Nov. 2, 8:30 p.m.
The Manitoban: What is your musical philosophy?
Electro Quarterstaff: To find the most interesting route or passageway to the end of the song and also to explore routes never travelled instead of just repeating a winning formula. It’s easy to get caught up in familiar patterns or sequences on an instrument. I constantly try to break free of the comfort zone with respect to certain chords, rhythmic inflection, and melody. Otherwise you just become a stagnant parody with a limited “bag of tricks.”
M: What is your musical style?
EQ: progressive, instrumental aggro-fusion.
M: What are your musical influences?
EQ: Early ’90s East Coast schizoid death-thrash merchants: Ripping Corpse, Human Remains, and Lethargy.
Mystic jugglers of Canadian dissonance and atonality: Voivod and Gorguts.
Avant-garde bebop: Henry Threadgill, Andrew Hill, John Coltrane, and Ornette Coleman.
Number-crunching hyper-syncopated math rock: Breadwinner, Confessor, and Meshuggah.
Brutal ’70s prog: Magma, Mahavishnu Orchestra, Univers Zero, Area, and Frank Zappa
Honeysuckle harmonies: Thin Lizzy, Queen, and early Metallica.
Funk, jazz, tango, ethnic-world music and”risky rhythms” as a general aspiration.
M: What inspires you?
EQ: I think that in this musical climate right now, we all need to just sit down in front of an amp stack, with a guitar or a saxophone or whatever, and just stare at it. And we need to think, “What can I do to shake some shit up within myself?” If you can’t do that, don’t pollute the circulatory system of the independent music industry with some patronizing cat shit. Turn up, rock out, and fuck some shit up. I really think that physicality, truth, honesty, passion, and vision are essential in the music underground right now. Forget about making a living from music. Music is not my job. It’s something I can share, something I don’t have to count pennies for or bank on pennies coming in for. Ideally, it should always feel like waking up from a dream. I want people to create music that’s truly schizophrenic, challenging, unabashed, and unselfish. Something that’s very organic, something that speaks one very simple language that says, “I have to play this music. If I don’t play this music, I am going to be very uptight.” There will always be those people out there. Let’s hope that we keep hearing from them.
M: Who’s in the band?
