Night & Day

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 07/02/2002 (8889 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The New England Patriots weren’t the only East Coast institution to clean up on Super Bowl Sunday.

Jimmy Rankin, formerly of Cape Breton Island’s Rankin Family, was the big winner at the 2002 East Coast Music Awards, held in the shadow of the NFL championship this past Sunday in Saint John, N.B.

Rankin won best single for his tune Followed Her Around, a share of the best songwriter prize and also was named best country artist. Yet if you catch his show tomorrow or Saturday at Club Regent casino, you’ll find he’s more of a folkie.

“I’m a singer-songwriter, first and foremost,” said Rankin in an interview from Halifax a week before he scored his hat trick at the ECMAs.

“The voting for any awards show is never perfect. That goes for all of the ones I’ve been to. But the East Coast Music Awards are actually quite good.”

The recognition is a welcome bit of good news for Jimmy Rankin. First came the breakup of The Rankin Family, his longtime musical project. Then, in January 2000, his brother John Morris Rankin died in a car accident.

For Jimmy, recording a solo album was a cathartic experience. He flew to Italy, hung out in Tuscany cafs and went to work at night in his hotel room writing songs on his guitar.

“I definitely needed to give myself a jump start,” he said. “I highly recommend a change of scenery — but you don’t have to go all the way to Italy for that.”

The result of Rankin’s trip was a record called Song Dog, released in late 2001 on his own independent label. It’s also the album that won him the awards.

Jimmy Rankin performs this weekend with a four-piece band. They’ll play material from Song Dog as well as Rankin Family hits.

Advance tickets are available at Ticketmaster, 780-3333.

— Bartley Kives

Expect Slim pickins

Way back during the Carter presidency, a middle-aged couple living in the African island nation of Madagascar sent their kid off to Toronto to learn the exotic arts of accounting.

In Hogtown, young Randriamananjara Longin quickly found himself crunching out Hendrix tunes instead of crunching numbers. So he took the name Madagascar Slim, spent years in Toronto’s blues circuit — and eventually gravitated back to hypnotic folk music of his African homeland.

Today, Slim is a fixture on the folk festival circuit, performing both on his own and as one-third of guitar trio Tri-Continental. His current style incorporates both the blues and music of Eastern Africa, two genres that aren’t as far removed as you might think.

Madagascar Slim does the solo thing Friday at the West End Cultural Centre. Tickets are $15 in advance at Ticketmaster, 780-333, or $18 at the door.

The show starts at 8 p.m.