On an otherwise quiet and unassuming night, when all the streets of Nanton seemed fast asleep, Main Street Café was just coming alive.
Brock Zeman and Dan Walsh were back in town to play the café once again, and this time they brought a new bass player with them, Dawson Willsey.
A small but appreciative crowd packed the modest café for the show, which featured two sets of about an hour each that ran the gamut of old fan favourites, new songs heard for the first time by those present and a slew of as of yet unrecorded carnival songs.
The band displayed a distinctive brand of rough edge country, bluegrass and folk with a slight blues tinge.
“It’s a lot of everything,” Zeman said of the band’s musical style.
Regardless of what you call it, the music definitely rocked, and when coupled with Zeman’s raspy, almost Leonard Coen-esque voice and often poetic writing, it frequently hit chords of raw emotion scarcely glimpsed in more mainstream acts.
With the ease of an experienced showman, Zeman never let the evening get too heavy as he interweaved strands of humour throughout the show through both his song selection and in his numerous comical interludes between songs.
“Sorry for getting all serious on you,” Zeman said after one particularly heavy song, “I thought we needed a good cry.”
The band, which has been playing a show a day for the past two and half months, heads to Calgary next then off to B.C. for 10 days before making their way back to Ontario where the tour started.
This busy work schedule is exactly how the band prefers to operate.
“That’s how we like it,” Walsh said, “the goal is always to work all the way down and all the way back.”
Zeman and Walsh, who have been playing together for a little over a year now, will record their next album in Walsh’s home studio where they recorded their last album, The Bourbon Sessions.
The carnival themed album is still between a year and half to two years away, according to Zeman, who noted that they want to take the time to make it right.
“It’s a big undertaking,” Zeman said, noting that the album will require numerous new instruments.
The band, after adding a new bass player this time through, is hoping to add a drummer for their next tour.
“That’s the goal,”
Zeman said.
AARON CARR - NANTON NEWS (Sep 12, 2007)
BROCK ZEMAN & THE DIRTY HANDS -- WELCOME HOME IVY JANE (BUSTED FLAT RECORDS)
Ottawa singer/songwriter Brock Zeman joined Kitchener's Busted Flat Records just in time to release his fourth album. Produced by Prairie Oyster guitarist Keith Glass, Welcome Home Ivy Jane is reminiscent of Steve Earle circa Guitar Town.
Zeman has a firm grasp of alt-country as both a songwriter and a performer. Whether breaking your heart with an acoustic ballad like Boxcars or raising hell with a roots rocker like Storm's A-Comin', Zeman doesn't surrender an inch to any Texas singer/songwriter you care to name. Closer to home, he has the chops to join the likes of Fred Eaglesmith on the lonesome outskirts of town after the street lights some on.
ROBERT REID - THE RECORD (KITCHENER) (Jan 4, 2007)