To listen to Joel Plaskett’s music is to get lost in his world of denim shirts, ornate carpets, small towns and hospital beds, where cats sleep on ukuleles, rusted vans travel down lost coastlines, and ballads are always tinged with the necessary amount of high school nostalgia and Tom Petty twang.
It’s not a bad place to visit, and this week Plaskett, the East Coast’s patron folk-rocker, announced that he will be bringing this world to the Avening Community Centre on April 28 as part of his Scrappy Happiness tour along with his band, The Emergency.
Scrappy Happiness, the band’s latest endeavour, harkens back to the 1950s and 60s, when songs travelled from the studio to the public very quickly. And yet Scrappy Happiness is innovative – much like Plaskett’s music, which often fuses elements from different eras – in that it will be combining this old-school mentality of production with more modern means of distribution, taking advantage of social networking sites as a way to reach broader audiences more quickly. The band will be recording and digitally releasing a new song every week from January 10 to March 13, all the while documenting the process through videologs, twitter, and online chats.
To hear the songs as they premiere, tune into CBC Radio 2’s Drive with Rich Terfry at 5:15 pm every Tuesday, or CBC Radio 3’s The Craig Norris Hour on Wednesdays between 2 and 3 pm.
Plaskett’s last effort, Three – a triple album inspired by his 33rd birthday, which contained song titles consisting of three repeated words – was his most well-received album to date, winning a Juno, six East Coast Music Awards, an Indie Award, two Canadian Folk Music Awards, and three Music Nova Scotia Awards.
This concert adds another feather in the musical cap of the Avening Hall, which has become known far and wide as a premier venue for both bands and audiences. Refreshments will be served with proceeds going to the hall.
As the smallest venue on the tour the organizers expect tickets to go very fast and encourage locals to grab them as soon as possible. They cost $35 and can be purchased online through ticketscene.ca or by contacting Sara Hershoff at the Creemore Echo, 705-466–9906.