The Macro
Perhaps it’s a sign that I’ve finally, after many decades, become a Winnipegger and shed my Toronto affectations. But my love affair with locally produced music has gone from intimate to insane. Not sure why, but I can safely say that I’m a bigger fan of Manitoba music than I am of music from my other hometown, Toronto.
And I’m sorry to say that none of this outpouring of love has anything to do with the Guess Who. Great band, historic legacy. Not my cup of tea. My love affair started with the Weakerthans, the tremendous indie rock band that was formed in 1997, the year I got married and returned to Winnipeg from staffing the Free Press bureau in Ottawa.
I had lived in Winnipeg from 1986 until 1994, at which point I was assigned to Ottawa. I don’t remember much about the local music scene in my first stint in Winnipeg. But boy, Weakerthans frontman John K. Samson cured that omission with the album Reconstruction Site, and it’s signature song, “One Great City,” his mournful love song to Winnipeg.
It’s not just that Reconstruction Site is (IMHO) one of the all-time great albums by a Canadian artist, it’s that I don’t think I really understood Winnipeg until I heard Samson sing “I hate Winnipeg,” the chorus from One Great City. It perfectly captured the odd contempt with which Winnipeggers view their city, while cleverly mentioning many of the things that actually make this a great place to live. It’s a song about how we get so wrapped up in the small details of our lives we lose sight of the true value of this unique and dynamic medium-sized city.
From my love of the Weakerthans, I got deep into artists such as J.P. Hoe, William Prince, and Begonia. This is such a hilariously short list that excludes so many other great musicians. But these are the names at the top of my list.
And then, there’s Boy Golden.
After having ignored an opportunity last Thursday to see more great Manitoba music — Royal Canoe and the aforementioned Begonia at the Park Theatre on Osborne Street — we made a last-minute decision on Friday to attend Boy Golden’s big show at the Burton Cummings Theatre.
A single-run piece of merch from Boy Golden’s packed concert at the Burton Cummings Theatre on Nov. 24.
If you don’t know Boy Golden, and you love music, you really ought to take the time to check him out. And really, when I say him — frontman Liam Duncan — I really mean ‘them.’ For everywhere that Boy Golden appears, he brings with him a roster of rising stars of the local music scene.
The two most notable bandmates are Brandon diva Fontine (Fontine Beavis) and guitar virtuoso Kris Ulrich. Although both perform as solo acts, they count themselves as regular disciples of the Church of Better Daze, Boy Golden’s first album and now the code words to fans for performances by the expanded all-star band.
I first saw the Church of Better Daze perform on a side stage of the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 2022 and was mesmerized. And then, there was last summer’s Cinderella story of how Boy Golden and the Church of Better Daze stepped in at the last moment to fill a slot on the Folk Fest’s main stage. It was a legendary performance. Free Press arts correspondent Alan Small produced this fantastic tale of the whole experience.
How to describe the music? Imagine that Dwight Yoakam and Bonnie Raitt had a baby, and the godmother was Sheryl Crow. Something like that.
Show was fantastic. The most gratifying part may have been watching more than 1,200 screaming (yes, most were screaming) fans sing-along with every Boy Golden song, shriek whenever Fontine grabbed the mic, and groove to every one of the hymns of the Church of Better Daze.
There is something essential about this band and the way it is received in Winnipeg that should help explain why you came here, or why you stayed here. Maybe every Canadian city has a Boy Golden. I certainly hope so.
One last note on Winnipeg and music. Recently, I was digging through some playlists for songs by a wonderful American artist named Mark Kozelek. Performing sometimes under his name as a solo act, he also has a band called Sun Kil Moon and was a founding member of the Red House Painters. In 2020, he put out an unusual album called All the Best, Isaac Hayes, a collection of spoken-word songs about the cities he visited on a 2019 tour right before the pandemic hit. One of those songs is called “Winnipeg,” a tribute to his fall 2019 visit to the now-defunct Garrick Theatre.
I won’t give away all of the local references, or the narrative of the song, other than to say that it involves unsweetened iced tea and phone booths. But I will give you one of the first lines, recited over a melancholy piano riff.
“We’re no longer in squeaky clean Alberta. We’re in Winnipeg now. It’s everything a city should be.”
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