Words and music at Writersfest

In anticipation of this autumn's Writers' Festival M and I headed out to Southminster United Church for 'Vinyl Tap Storie s' with the legendary Randy Bachman. Known to me by reputation through songs such as 'You Ain't Seen Nothing Yet' but without having heard his Vinyl Tap radio programme, it was interesting to see and hear the man behind the hits.

Southminster United Church looked pretty much full as 7pm came and host Laurence Wall came onstage. The evening started by scene setting in 1960s Winnipeg and covered Bachman's early musical life with plenty of humourous 'on the road' stories. Most of the remaining time was spent discussing the origins of songs such as 'American Woman' and 'Taking Care of Business'. A very appreciative audience warmly applauded anecdotes and snippets of music. The 'B.B. King story' was one of my particular favourites, as well as the 'piano man' story related to 'Taking Care of Business'. The hour was over very quickly, but the book-buying and autograph queue looked to contain most of the crowd!

The 'festival proper' starts on 20th October with 'What My Grandma Means To Say' featuring JC Sulzenko, with New York Night later on. The musical speciality evening (for me, anyway) comes on Sunday 23rd in conjunction with Music and Beyond; Wendy Lesser and the Arthur-Leblanc Quartet perform music by Shostakovich in an evening entitled 'Music for Silenced Voices'. All in all a very interesting weekend to come.

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