The Great Canadian Artist
March 2, 2010
He's toured with Tom Waits and Billy Bragg, mastered the unlikely fusion of hip hop and country/blues flawlessly, and last Monday, CR Avery blessed Van Gogh's Ear with his ethereal presence.
He's a man who's reputation proceeds him, the hip hop/blues/beatboxing poet who's tagline might be Sex Drugs and Spoken Word, but he truly is both a gentleman and a scholar.
With honky tonk lines like "Folk singer, you make me wish that your mom never ****ed your dad", and Waitsian balladeering like "There ain't no money in rock n roll", he's got both the insight and the pop vernacular to break barriers across borders and waterbodies, but he toils away in his tour van, and he kills under-representative crowds nightly.
I watched him smoking a cigarrette on the steps, hoping to have some peace, not from the histerical fans (not that there weren't any, what fans and friends there are remain ravenously devoted), not from the stress and struggle of life on the road (it's clear that both he and his band are in love with the pavement), but to be able to remove himself from the pressure of performing, not in the sense of entertaining, but performing as a businessmen.
After all, everybody's going to make a living, and night after night, town after town, it's the CD sales after everyone else has gone home that keeps the gas pumping and the food off the hotplate.
The show started with 20 people even in the room built for 150, and by the end of the night nearly 50 ecstatic fans, musicians, and locals were hanging on Dr. Avery's every word.
For a man who played Hillside just the previous summer, Guelph's only and Ontario's best three day music festival, the turnout is certainly disappointing. Maybe you can blame the sound issues Avery had trying to hook up his Legal String Quartet, leading to some Hillside personnel shifting, and CR having to make up ground to fans and detractors (if there are any) at a spoken word event alongside Rheostatic great Dave Bidini, as well as performing in a Michael Jackson tribute with Zaki Ibrahim and Jah Youssouf.
The String sounded crystal clear however on this night, and Avery certainly felt the fruits of his labour from the appreciative crowd.
His album, The Great Canadian Novel, is just as advertised. Brilliant, poignant, diverse and indicative of a higher form of culture than we're used to in the Western canon. It's thoughtful and thought invoking, maybe even a little preachy, but it's just what the doctor ordered.
Go Canada, and CR Avery, too.
He's a man who's reputation proceeds him, the hip hop/blues/beatboxing poet who's tagline might be Sex Drugs and Spoken Word, but he truly is both a gentleman and a scholar.
With honky tonk lines like "Folk singer, you make me wish that your mom never ****ed your dad", and Waitsian balladeering like "There ain't no money in rock n roll", he's got both the insight and the pop vernacular to break barriers across borders and waterbodies, but he toils away in his tour van, and he kills under-representative crowds nightly.
I watched him smoking a cigarrette on the steps, hoping to have some peace, not from the histerical fans (not that there weren't any, what fans and friends there are remain ravenously devoted), not from the stress and struggle of life on the road (it's clear that both he and his band are in love with the pavement), but to be able to remove himself from the pressure of performing, not in the sense of entertaining, but performing as a businessmen.
After all, everybody's going to make a living, and night after night, town after town, it's the CD sales after everyone else has gone home that keeps the gas pumping and the food off the hotplate.
The show started with 20 people even in the room built for 150, and by the end of the night nearly 50 ecstatic fans, musicians, and locals were hanging on Dr. Avery's every word.
For a man who played Hillside just the previous summer, Guelph's only and Ontario's best three day music festival, the turnout is certainly disappointing. Maybe you can blame the sound issues Avery had trying to hook up his Legal String Quartet, leading to some Hillside personnel shifting, and CR having to make up ground to fans and detractors (if there are any) at a spoken word event alongside Rheostatic great Dave Bidini, as well as performing in a Michael Jackson tribute with Zaki Ibrahim and Jah Youssouf.
The String sounded crystal clear however on this night, and Avery certainly felt the fruits of his labour from the appreciative crowd.
His album, The Great Canadian Novel, is just as advertised. Brilliant, poignant, diverse and indicative of a higher form of culture than we're used to in the Western canon. It's thoughtful and thought invoking, maybe even a little preachy, but it's just what the doctor ordered.
Go Canada, and CR Avery, too.
Posted by Ken Cheesy.
