With kids back in school, the weather cooling down and the Rockies wearing white, now might be a good time for a double dose of post-summer blues.
Luckily, Canmore’s Good Earth Café provides that opportunity Monday (Oct. 7), when Declan O’Donovan and Sean Pinchin roll into town.
O’Donovan (vocals, keys), who splits his time between the Yukon and Montreal, will be joined by Ryan McNally, Lonnie Powell and Keith Picot, while Pinchin, who uses a couple of the most vintage guitars around, will perform solo.
O’Donovan’s 10-stop tour carries him from Calgary to Vancouver as he plays venues large and small – small being Good Earth, large being the Breakout West Festival at Cowtown’s National Music Centre.
“The large places are great,” he said, “but smaller venues are nice for a weekday show, you tend to get more of a listening crowd.”
What people have been listening to is O’Donovan’s self-titled debut album, which was recorded at the Old Crow Studio in the Yukon. The album roams from piano-driven blues to roots to jazz, pop and rock. The single “Cheap Souvenir” won a Westcoast Songwriters International award in the blues category; the only Canadian who won.
With his debut under his belt and available as merch at his shows, O’Donovan is working toward his next release. “I’m not in a big rush, I’m always working on new material, but my first album still needs support with tours. I’m content with it as I try to build a reputation.
“Songwriting depends on my road schedule. Mainly I do my writing on a piano and there’s not always a piano in the back of the van. Lyrically, I’m working on something all the time, it’s a huge part of my day-to-day rehearsal and life with a piano.
“It’s easy today to record on personal devices. You can take what you’ve recorded, put it in a hole in your back yard, then dig it up later to work with. I did a demo last week in a cool studio in the woods, because I wanted to get my ideas on tape.”
Currently, O’Donovan is pondering a move to Toronto for the sake of a different music scene and different culture. He’s also working hard to make his music a full-time thing and step away from work gigs like bartending and construction.
“In the new year, I’m hoping to make music my full-time career. It’s tough to make a living for new artists, so I’m going to take an artist entrepreneur course in Toronto. It’s a terrific program with not a lot of students and where there’s no set curriculum. You build on being an individual artist; you tell them what you’ve got and what you want, and they work with you.
“Long term, I’d like to be like Keith Picot, where if you tour and live in a hotel room all the time it wouldn’t matter where you lay your head.”
O’Donovan will play several showcases at Breakout West with up-and-coming talents and Western Canada Music Awards winners.
Sean Pinchin, meanwhile, is a Toronto bluesman who’s westbound with his iPod and plays Banff’s Samesun Hostel, Sunday (Oct. 6) as well.
He’s touring on the strength of RustBucket, a full-on re-introduction to the blues which was recorded on his 1934 National Triolian Resonator Guitar and a 1932 National Triolian Polychrome Resonator Guitar.
“I was kind of lucky, I just got copies of the album last week,” he said. “I’m also trying drop cards that a person can buy and download to get the music.”
RustBucket is Pinchin’s fifth album, but the first where he actually had it produced rather than go the do-it-yourself route he did with his first four.
“It was my first attempt with a real producer. I’m a recording and performing artist, but I’m nothing without my show and I thought some of my first CDs didn’t live up to the show. Now I feel I have a CD that will stand up.”
After starting out as a folk singer, Pinchin’s gone back to his love of the blues and he’s played 150 to 200 gigs each year for the past four or five. “I just love to sweat on stage for people and my car, guitars and joints are all rusty.”
As a guitarman, Pinchin’s music has been a blend of lap, slide and Delta blues, with a kickboard in place of drums when he performs solo. “I find you can get a pretty full sound out of guitar, foot and voice,” he said.
At 32, he’s a hard-working bluesman who wants to play and perform as much as possible. “I’m not young, but not old and there are no excuses anymore. You have to put in the time like a lot of road warriors in this beautiful country.”
In his younger days, Pinchin was a fan of Nirvana, Sonic Youth, post-punk music, “but I throw that in with the blues and fuse ideas. One of my worst ideas was to write songs myself, so I’ve been co-writing with Rob Szabo and we have six or seven tracks on the album.”
Pinchin’s songwriting inspiration ranges from a broken down car, to women, a dog – “High Heel Shoes” was written after walking his dog by a club and noticing that the women going in all had beautiful shoes.
“You’ve gotta have fun and you’ve gotta get out there,” he said. “My lyrics are personal, but not so direct that people can’t relate. You want people to ask you what a song was about; people hear different things in a song than you do.
“You need to get on a level with people and hitting the pavement is the best way possible.”
