CFXU fills the venue vacuum
Photo by Madeline Driscoll
March 25, 2010 6:00 AM
Recently, the StFX Art Gallery has proven to be useful for much more than visual art. Throughout the year, it has been developed by the staff at the campus radio station, CFXU (the Fox), into one of the most frequently used venues in town for music.
Just this past week, two shows were held there, both hosted by the Fox: Tanya Davis and Pat LePoidevin.
Davis was featured in the spoken word event on Tuesday, while LePoidevin headlined a show the last Friday.
It certainly isn’t the acoustics that draws the crowds: the tile floor and low ceiling make for a sound experience not unlike a basement apartment.
The aesthetic arrangement of the room is nothing to write home about either, with plastic chairs and a giant pillar in the middle rear of the audience. A nod, however, must be given to the beautiful art always adorning the walls thanks to the Gallery’s Director, Bruce Campbell.
The value of the gallery in fact does not lay in the room at all, but in the acts consistently brought in by CFXU.
In the last year, the room has hosted intimate and moving concerts month after month. The show last Friday was no exception.
Student and local artist Doug MacNearney opened the night with songs off of his newly released EP, Me and My Brother Went West for the Summer, strumming both the guitar and banjo.
MacNearney’s foot-tapping rhythms are especially catchy when he reaches for the banjo, and the instrument lends a measure of credibility to his down-East, hometown lyrics. His songs tend to focus on issues experienced by many people our age, like homesickness, family, and of course, love.
Babette Hayward was next, and her voice is perhaps best described in rhythm and timbre like that of Joni Mitchell except slightly lower. The lovely Hayward drew the audience in with her shy demeanor and understated guitar riffs that focused attention on her voice, of which she has incredible control.
No mention, however, can be made of voice control without jumping into discussion of the headliner, Pat LePoidevin.
LePoidevin made extensive use of a digital looping pedal to add layer upon layer of harmonies, sometimes using only his voice, and sometimes incorporating his ukelele, fiddle, guitar or clapping to create a whole backing band that could be summoned or dismissed with a button. Accompanied by drummer Matthew Sarty, he is embarking on a Canada-wide tour, ending in Kelowna, BC in mid-May.
LePoidevin’s performance was just the latest in a series of unmissable shows at the Gallery, and there are more scheduled for the future: this week (in the newspaper black hole known as Wednesday) Landon Coleman, Steve Brockley and Emily Brown performed.
Keep an eye out for future shows at the Gallery, because it looks like the venue is just getting warmed up.
