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This article was published 07/11/2024 (346 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Residential school novel republished 40 years later

• Brown Tom’s Schooldays book launch
• With editor Mary Jane Logan McCallum, in conversation with Jill McConkey
• Tonight, 7 p.m.
• McNally Robinson Booksellers, Grant Park location (1120 Grant Ave.)
• Free

In 1985, a slim novel chronicling the life of a young boy at a residential school, was quietly self-published at a Waterloo, Ont. copy shop. Now 40 years later, Enos Montour’s novel Brown Tom’s Schooldays has been reissued by University of Manitoba Press in an expanded critical edition.

The book, whose title riffs on the 1857 book Tom Brown’s Schooldays by Thomas Hughes, was published just months after Montour died in 1984, and was based on his own experiences at Mount Elgin Indian Residential School between 1910 and 1915. While only a handful of copies were published, the book managed to survive the test of time, and was cited in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for its depiction of the plight of students.

U of M Press’s new critical edition was edited by Mary Jane Logan McCallum, who also penned an introduction to Brown Tom’s Schooldays. The new edition includes a foreword by Elizabeth Graham, the book’s original editor, as well as an afterword by Mary I. Anderson and Margaret McKenzie, Montour’s granddaughters.

McCallum will discuss Brown Tom’s Schooldays and talk about the writer-editor relationship at the event; she’ll be joined in conversation by Jill McConkey, a senior editor at U of M Press. The event is free and will be streamed on McNally Robinson’s YouTube channel.

— Ben Sigurdson

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Tenille Townes

• Thing That Brought Me Here Tour
• Burton Cummings Theatre
• Wednesday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets: $30.70 to $72 plus fees at Ticketmaster

She’s toured as an opening act for the likes of Stevie Nicks, Miranda Lambert, Little Big Town and Shania Twain, but make no mistake: Tenille Townes is a main event.

The Grande Prairie, Alta.-born, Nashville-based country singer-songwriter is making her way across Canada on her Thing That Brought Me Here headlining tour, which stops at the Burton Cummings Theatre on Wednesday.

The much-feted musician — she’s got two Junos, 17 Canadian Country Music Association Awards and two Academy of Country Music Awards to her credit — is also beginning a new era as an independent artist; she left her record label, Sony Music Nashville, in August after seven years.

“It’s creatively been a struggle waiting on green lights in a corporate system that doesn’t make sense anymore,” she said in a TikTok video announcing her departure.

But Townes, 30, has never been afraid of taking risks nor of winding roads. The Thing That Brought Me Here tour is named after her 2024 single of the same name, an ode to the truck she made the 47-hour drive from Alberta to Tennessee in as a young artist with a big dream more than a decade ago.

— Jen Zoratti

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Nickybaby

• Handsome Daughter
• Friday
• 161 Sherbrook St.
• Tickets: $18 at reallovewpg.com

“It was the spookiest day in the month of October / I’m afraid that I’m drunk because I’m bad at being sober / And I’m dressing up young to disguise I’m getting older / Got a twist in my tooth and a chip on my shoulder. I sit for eight days, eating bread on Passover / I’m looking for luck, comin’ up three-leaf clovers.”

These aren’t the words of David Berman but lyrics from October Song, a standout track from the debut album of Nicholas Goszer, a Winnipeg outsider artist and poet who releases music as Nickybaby, a nominal hat-tip to Christopher Owens of Girls. Goszer, who played guitar as a young man before putting it down, picked it up again a few years ago, connecting a simplified, but no less sage, understanding of chord structures with lyrics overflowing with honest self-reflection.

Backed up by friends Gilad Carroll, Adam Soloway (Living Hour, who engineered and produced the album) and Brian Gluck (Amos the Kid, Trio Telfær), Nickybaby generally performs once or twice per year as a vocalist, and on Friday night he joins the bill at the Daughter alongside a few favourite artists. Jamboree — the band behind 2024’s Summerland — and Meanspath, the ethereal recording project of Riley Hill (who mastered Nickybaby’s album), will have Sherbrook Street buzzing.

— Ben Waldman

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A Night with David Francey

• West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.
• Saturday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets: $30 to $35 at wecc.ca

Multiple Juno-winning folk poet and singer David Francey will perform his heartfelt songs and stories in concert at the WECC on Saturday.

Francey, who released his first album in 1999, worked in rail yards and construction sites across the country. A natural poet, he would write in his head and set the words to melodies, singing to himself as he toiled.

The Scottish-born Canadian songwriter’s heartfelt lyrics champion the ordinary, exploring the human experience through simple yet profound depictions of every day life.

He has since released 13 more albums; the latest, The Breath Between, which came out in 2023, is an introspective and intimate reminder of the passage of time.

— AV Kitching

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Bruce Springsteen comes to Winnipeg, finally

• Canada Life Centre
• Wednesday, 7:30 p.m.
• Limited tickets available starting at $115 via Ticketmaster

After a career-long omission and a year-long delay, Bruce Springsteen is set to perform in Winnipeg for the first time next Wednesday.

The Boss was initially scheduled to make his local debut last November, but was forced to cancel the remaining dates of his 2023 world tour last fall due to a peptic ulcer.

Springsteen and his E Street Band returned to the stage in March, but again postponed several European concerts in late May owing to vocal issues.

These days, however, the 75-year-old entertainer appears healthy and ready to rock following recent well-reviewed shows in Toronto — likely reassurance for Winnipeg fans who spent years lobbying Springsteen’s management and campaigning on social media for a local concert.

Hailing from New Jersey, Springsteen gained widespread popularity in 1975 following the release of Born to Run. He has recorded 21 studio albums over the last five decades and has become one of the bestselling musicians of all time for his catchy and often political depictions of life in America.

— Eva Wasney

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Lilith Fair Night

• Music Fundraiser for We Rock Winnipeg
• Sidestage, 700 Osborne St.
• Friday, 8 p.m.
• All ages tickets $20 online and at the door

It’s hard not to succumb to a case of the curiosities about a band with a name like Bicycle Face, who play at this Friday’s Lilith Fair Night.

(Bicycle face, we’ve learned, refers to just one more sexist diagnosis made up by the Victorians, this one to scare off women from the newfangled gadget known as the bicycle. Put it down beside “hysteria” and “penis envy.”)

The synth-pop duo (Ava Glendinning and Theresa Thordarson) bring a devil-may-careness to their music school chops. They’re too punk to get fussy about auto-tuning or Melodyning when it comes to their ornate baroque vocals.

Bicycle Face is the headlining act for this Friday’s Lilith Fair Night at the new Sidestage venue in South Osborne. Or rather it’s the first act listed in a lineup of mostly women and non-binary artists, where the poster’s typeface is the same size for everyone; an egalitarian touch for an event inspired by the all-women late-’90s music fest. The other artists on the bill include local heavy hitters Rayannah and Fontine, along with 12 — yes, 12 — other acts. It’s nearly winter after all, best to pack a festival into one night and hibernate the rest of the weekend.

Lilith Fair Night raises funds for We Rock Winnipeg, a non-profit “dedicated to the empowerment of female, trans, two-spirit and gender variant (people)” that hosts camps and workshops for adults and youth.

— Conrad Sweatman

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