What’s up

Tofusmell album release

• The Handsome Daughter, 61 Sherbrook St.
• Saturday, 8 p.m.
• Tickets: $21 at showpass.com

A few weeks after he played to pindrop-silent attention at the West End Cultural Centre, opening for trailblazing Prairie icon Rae Spoon, it’s another Rae’s time to shine Saturday at the Handsome Daughter.

Originally from Florida, where he started recording under the tofusmell banner in 2021, Rae Chen has been wowing local audiences for the past three years with sincere, diaristic, acoustic-driven indie music, playing alongside and in support of artists such as Leith Ross, Phil Elverum (Mt. Eerie, the Microphones) and Living Hour.

All My Time — tofusmell’s latest LP, released in April through Hardly Art Records — finds Chen experimenting with more expansive production than ever before, partnering with producers Keiran Placatka (William Prince) and Paul Larson to retain command of quiet mastery while taking first footsteps into exciting new terrain marked by howling winds, choppy waters and swirling chimes.

Longstanding live favourites such as opening track Cravings and penultimate song Rock Collector showcase Chen’s inviting spirit, while cuts such as Voice Cracks and Walk Me Back to Nothing are furnished by the artist’s capacity for sharing vivid dreams and quotidian insights in a manner that makes listeners feel fundamentally included in the haze.

“I wanna be liquid, I wanna be stars, drifting,” he sings. On All My Time, as a songwriter, performer and producer, tofusmell defies any container to enclose the phases of self.

With opening acts Jamboree and Lull — the solo project of Talulah Schlegel — the music begins at 8 p.m. sharp in West Broadway.

— Ben Waldman

 

Erna Buffie book launch

• McNally Robinson Booksellers, 1120 Grant Ave.
• Wednesday, 7 p.m.
• Free

Civic discourse and infrastructure often prioritize built components of the city in which we live — roads, sidewalks, housing and the like. But in some ways we’re not seeing the forest for the trees — and with her latest book, Winnipeg author Erna Buffie hopes to change that.

Buffie’s Out on a Limb: Saving the Urban Tree Canopy is the third book in the City Project series of titles published by Great Plains Press and edited by Emma and Michael Durand-Wood; the book launches Wednesday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location.

In Out on a Limb, Buffie examines the trend of North American cities neglecting urban canopies; the ways in which the protection and maintenance of urban flora has been underfunded; the role urban forests play in the resilience of both climate and everyday life; and what civic leaders can do to improve the plight of natural landscapes.

At the launch, Buffie will be joined in conversation by author (and Free Press copy editor) Ariel Gordon, among whose books is the non-fiction title Treed: Walking in Canada’s Urban Forests and Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest.

Future City Project titles include Close to Home: Why Housing is in Crisis and What We Can Do About It by Dylon Martin (coming Nov. 3) and Decolonizing Public Places: Reclaiming Meeting Spaces Through Acts of Resistance and Resurgence (publishing Feb. 23, 2027). Previous titles in the series include You’ll Pay For This by Emma and Michel Durand-Wood and That’ll Never Work Here by Patti Wiens.

— Ben Sigurdson

 

Blippi on Tour

• Saturday, 1 p.m. and 5 p.m.
• Burton Cummings Theatre, 364 Smith St.
• Tickets $51-$74 at Ticketmaster

Don’t know who Blippi is? Count yourself lucky as here’s your chance to ignite the spark of curiosity that, as Blippi says, “lives inside very single one of us’.

Those with more than a passing knowledge of the irrepressible, high-energy orange-spectacles-wearing character Blippi and his friend Meekah are in for the time of their lives as the brand-new, all-singing, all-dancing Be Like Blippi train makes a stop in Winnipeg during its North American tour.

Packed with hit tunes beloved by fans everywhere, including classics such as The Excavator Song, Monster Truck, Dino Dance and Curious Like Me, this one-of-a-kind interactive adventure promises to inspire kids to move, play and explore just like their hero Blippi.

The show features flashing lights, haze (fog) and confetti. Children two and under do not require a ticket as long as can sit on a parent’s lap.

— AV Kitching

 

Crafts & Ceilidh 2

• West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.
• Sunday, 2:30 p.m.
• Admission $5

Over the past few years, a lot has been written about how we’re losing our Third Spaces, those spaces that aren’t home or work/school, but a third place to hang out, socialize, find community and become a regular — a loss that was amplified by a global pandemic where everyone pretty much just had a First Space.

It’s in the spirit of restoring Third Places that Crafts and Ceilidh at the West End Cultural Centre was born. Borrowing the Irish tradition of ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee), which comes from the Gaelic for “visit,” it’s a Sunday afternoon hang where you show up, listen to Winnipeg’s best trad players sing songs, do a craft or a crossword, or maybe read your book while having a beer. Sounds nice, right?

Admission is $5 and all ages are welcome.

— Jen Zoratti

 

Weekly Jazz Jam

• Park Alleys, 730 Osborne St.
• Tuesday, 8 p.m.
• Free

Park Alleys continues to be Winnipeg’s — the world’s? — foremost milieu for live jazz + bowling as a compound pleasure.

You can rock ’n’ bowl many nights of the week, with the venue hosting a revolving cast of roots, country and rock bands to the side of the lanes.

But on Tuesdays, the energy is more Cannonball Adderley and Sonny Rollins (the obvious potential for more bowling puns must be resisted) with some of Winnipeg’s finest jazz musicians striking chords while you score strikes (shoot, there we go again).

There’s no cover, and it’s happy hour all day and night. An excellent excuse to go out early in the week.

If you can’t make Tuesday’s Jazz Jam or would rather wait until the weekend to carouse and groove, there’s also local jazz singer-songwriter Mari Padeanu on Friday for your fresh fill of jazz and bowling.

—Conrad Sweatman