Tag Archives: performances

A Couple of Upcoming Gigs! #OT2018 #music #performances #Toronto #OpenTuning #Festival and #CUPE3903 #YorkUStrike

04 Monday Jun 2018

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So I thought I’d mention a couple of gigs that I’ve got coming up that I’m very excited about! First of all, I’ll be performing once again at the Open Tuning Festival this Saturday (June 9). For those in the Toronto area, I’ll be on at 5 PM in the garage behind KOP’s Records at Bathurst and Bloor (see the schedule on the Open Tuning website for details). I’ll be the fourth or so act on the program at that venue this time!

Then, next Saturday on June 16, I’ll be singing again at a fund-raiser for my union local, CUPE (Canadian Union of Public Employees) Local 3903. It’s the local that represents the teaching assistants, contract faculty, and graduate assistants at my university, and the fund-raiser is to support the strike we’ve been on for 14 weeks now! We’ve been struggling for a fair and decent contract, and to push back against precarious working conditions, especially for the contract faculty. You can read all about it at here! Anyway, as you can imagine, the length of the strike has seriously depleted our funds. So we’re doing lots of things to raise money to continue the struggle, including this event! For those in town, it’ll be at the Glad Day Bookshop at Church and Wellesley on the evening of the 16th. And I’ll be contributing some of my songs to the effort, which I’m very excited about! For those of you not in town, there’s a GoFundMe campaign that folks can contribute to. And we’d be hugely grateful for whatever support you can give!

Anyway, apologies for not getting these posted sooner. In fact, though, because of the way this year’s been going for everyone involved in organizing these events, they’ve only just come together! So I really hope in-town folks can make it to one or the other!

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Very successful Open Tuning Fest! #OTFest2017 #MusicTheatrePunk

12 Monday Jun 2017

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So the show on Saturday went awesomely! It’s always tough doing an out-door gig on a really hot day. But it went really well in spite of that! And thankfully it wasn’t nearly as hot as it could have been. Not like today! Yikes!

So the water held out through my whole set thank goodness, and the tech behaved. And the songs I did seemed to go over really well too! I did a bunch from Dark Resistance, as well as some covers of a couple of my favourite songs. And the people working the PA/sound-board were really great! Thank them hugely! They did a fabulous job balancing me and my accompaniment tracks and generally making me sound smashing! 🙂 And huge thanks also to Ysabeault aka Sister Comrade (also aka Mom) who advised me on my costume. She did a great job making me look awesome as well as sound great! And I really rely on that because, although I’ve learned pretty well how to put together a sharp outfit that fits the style I’m trying to cultivate, it can still be all too easy for the idea I have in my head to not actually work in reality. And, as a Blind performer trying to work in a culture where image counts for so much, that help avoiding fashion gaffs is an incredibly critical piece of accessibility support!

🙂 Btw, one of the covers I did was of one of Ysabeault/Sister Comrade’s songs, the title track from her forthcoming EP World On Fire! Her own stuff’s much more country/folk, so I did up an accompaniment track to do it in my style. And it worked awesomely! And Sister Comrade came up on stage and sang it with me, which rocked! I’ll be singing on World On Fire when it comes out, too, so I thought it’d be great to bring that into my set!

Anyhow, we got some video, too, which I’ll get posted ASAP. So stay tuned for that! LOL It might be a couple of weeks at least, though, because I’ll need to renew my Vimeo Plus subscription to be able to host larger files again. And that’ll have to wait till pay-day! Also, the image-quality may not be great because it was an out-door venue. And, because of where the stage was set up, I was apparently kind of back-lit, which I know isn’t the greatest on camera! So I’ll have to go through the footage (with the help of some one with sight) and see if any of it’s workable. 🙂 But hopefully I’ll have some stuff to put up soon. And huge thanks again to Ysabeault/Sister Comrade for personing the camera while I was on stage, and to the person from the crew who ran it during our duet! Much appreciated!

My only regret about the day is that I wasn’t able to see/hear as much of the rest of the festival as I’d have liked. LOL, by the time I got off stage, Ysabeault and I were both really exhausted and starving! As I said, doing an out-door gig in summer heat can be tough. Plus, I’d been up late getting last-minute stuff done. LOL So we folded early! I did get to hear and support some of my fellow performers, though, which I was really glad about!

Anyway, that’s it for another year. 🙂 Though I’m looking forward to next year’s festival already! And huge thanks to Open Tuning and to Kop’s Records (the venue where I sang) for having me. I’m looking hugely forward to doing it again in 2018!

OK! Venue and Time confirmed for PhantomFemme at Open Tuning!

27 Saturday May 2017

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Wow! So it’s just two weeks till the festival! Two weeks from today, I’ll be preparing to go on and perform for all of you, and you’ll, hopefully, be preparing to come down to Seaton Village and hear great music! Seaton Village is the part of down-town Toronto that’s in the square bounded by, going clockwise, Dupont, Bathurst, Bloor and Christie. I’ll be one of around 130 incredibly diverse acts, ranging from acoustic singer/song-writer type things to full punk bands to hiphop artists, and from youth and amateur musicians to seasoned performers. It’s going to rock!

So where I’ll be in all this awesomeness is on the stage set up in the garage behind Kop’s Records. You can check out the Facebook event page to see where that is, and also to see who else is playing there. I’m the second act up, so I’ll be on at 3 PM. I’m really excited about it! It’s going to be a great afternoon! LOL Though, the next two weeks are going to be bonkers busy getting ready for it. 🙂 But I’ll be doing some great songs, both from Dark Resistance and, hopefully, beyond, and I’ll be sharing the stage with an awesome line-up of other bands! So check it out!

We’re also using this really cool app called Sched to share the festival schedule. So you can go onto the app, bookmark your favourite acts and when we’re on, and make yourself up a customized schedule that you can download to your phone, iPad, etc. And it has bios and info for all the acts as well! (Or it will as soon as we get everything filled in.) So you can find out all about us and decide who you want to hear!

Anyway, it’s going to be an awesome day. So be there!

Me at #OpenTuningFest again! #OpenTuningFest2017

23 Tuesday May 2017

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Uh, I really hope I’m doing this right (LOL this time)? 😦 This is my third try getting there to actually be text in this post instead of just the title! I’m trying out the WordPress app for my iPad, which I downloaded in the hope of making posting from said iPad easier. 😦 But, so far, not so much! So we’ll have to see if I get the hang of it eventually. Here’s hoping!

Anyway, LOL as I begin every post it seems, terribly sorry for being so long to update! Yikes! I checked my stats a while ago, and it’s been four months! Ye-Gads! But, A, school and “extra-curricular” political activities have kept me quite busy, and B, technical difficulties. 😦 Alas, the computer I was using has had to go into retirement, as it was starting to crash badly and often. So I’ve been getting set back up on a new system! The good news, though, is that said new system is much more powerful and has tons more storage-space. 🙂 So now I can finally get back into serious recording without fear of a massive crash, which is an enormous relief! LOL So I might actually, finally, be able to get Dark Resistance done now! Yeah, I know, not a moment too soon.

Anyway, as some of you know, I’ve performed for the past couple of years at the Open Tuning Festival in Toronto. And I’m really excited to announce that I’ll be doing it again this year! I don’t have my exact venue confirmed yet, so stay tuned for that here and on my social media (see my “Intro” post for links and handles). But it’s going to be a totally awesome day I can guarantee! 🙂 It always is!

Better yet, I’ve been volunteering on the planning team for this year’s Festival to work on accessibility. So this year, the day should be far more accessible than it has been! And, of course, we’ll keep working on it in years to come and keep improving. But I’m really grateful to everyone else on the team for really taking accessibility seriously, not letting themselves be (too LOL) daunted by the admittedly significant challenges of making a low-budget, DIY music festival (it’s all volunteer – no government funding or corporate sponsors) as accessible as possible, and for really taking to heart and trying to implement the recommendations I’ve offered. 🙂 You guys rock! And the Festival will be much awesomer and more fun for it!

Anyway, I’ll most definitely post again once I’ve got my venue confirmed. So do stay tuned for that! 🙂 And, of course, do come out to hear me and all my fellow acts on June 10th, as it’s going to rock!

ROBAM day 1.

12 Saturday Mar 2016

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So tonight was the opening of the 2016 Reclaiming Our Bodies And Minds conference, to which I’ve been looking forward all year!  It’s an inter-university Disability conference jointly put on by York (my university), Ryerson, the University of Toronto, and one other.  I want to say Humber College, but I’m not sure that’s correct.  Anyway, ROBAM’s always one of the highlights of my year, because you always get to hear about awesome and inspiring intersectional resistance to heteropatriarchal Capitalist White ableism.  So it’s one of the places I go to get re-energized!

 

Anyway, this year’s conference opened tonight with a community fair, in which various groups and organizations made themselves available for folks to come learn about who they are and what they do.  🙂 The coolest of these (at least that I know about, as, sadly, I didn’t get to check them all out as I was a bit late) was a group presenting a DIY alternative communications device called the Talk Box!  It’s aimed at making access-technology both affordable and easy to repair without specialized knowledge.  So, really trying to put it  in the hands of those who use it, rather than those of funding gate-keepers and other “experts”.

 

Then, after that, we had the keynote address.  It was given jointly by Vanessa and Lindsay Grey, the pair of awesome sisters  who’ve spearheaded resistance to massive industrial pollution and, thus, environmental racism in their community of Aamjinwaang – a First Nations community in south-western Ontario affectionately known as Chemical Valley.  So they talked about the effects on their community of being literally surrounded by petrochemical plants – polluted air and water, and, of course, all kinds of health problems.  It’s really appalling!  And, of course, and this is where the environmental racism part comes in, this has been allowed to happen because it’s an Indigenous  community.  The powers that be – municipal, provincial and federal governments and general society – would never tolerate that kind of pollution being inflicted on White settlers!  So, given that the ROBAM theme this year is “navigating our places, spaces and histories”, their talk really started us all off powerfully thinking about those navigations and their problems.  You can check out their website – Aamjinwaang Solidarity – to find out more about the situation and the community’s resistance to it.

 

🙂 Then, to close out the evening, they had an open-mike!  LOL Though, things were running late by then, so there was only half an hour left for it.  But it worked out, as it turned out only two of us had signed up!  LOL They sent the call out a bit at the last minute.  Though, 🙂 having been guilty of that myself on more than one occasion, I can hardly criticize!  So the first performer was a stand-up comedian.  And she was fantastic!  LOL Great dark humour!  Then, yours truly got up and did my version of the old protest-song Bread And Roses, which has been one of my favourites since the first time I heard it.  But I try to give it a bit more teeth than is usually done!  So my version’s closer to metal.  😦 Not sure it went over as well as I’d have liked.  Maybe my spoken intro was too long?  🙂 I did have at least one person tell me it was awesome, though. So that was great!

 

Anyway, tomorrow’s the full day with all the panels and presentations.  So I’d better go check the schedule and decide which ones I want to hear!  But hopefully I’ll have a chance to post about it afterwards too, either that or after the whole conference ends.  LOL What can I say?  I love these things, but they can be a bit tiring!  But I’ll definitely post about the rest as soon as I can!