Friday, August 12th, 2005
Gibson Auditorium - Camosun College - Landsdown, 1300 Foul Bay Rd.
Showtime 8:00pm, Doors 7:30pm, Open seating
Tickets: $25 Advance / $28 Door (Tickets on sale June 1st)
Tickets available at: Lyles Place (cash only) 250-382-8422 & McPherson Box Office (service charge) 250-386-6121 For more info: high-tide@telus.net
Website: www.jessewinchester.com

American guitarist, keyboardist, vocalist Jesse Winchester spent his formative years in Memphis. He worked on a music scholarship at Williams College in Massachusetts where he eventually switched his major to German language. The new studies led to an opportunity to go to Munich, Germany before returning a year later to the US. With a personal distaste for the US Government policies on the Vietnam War he moved to Montreal, Quebec in 1967 as a draft dodger. In a little over a month Winchester found himself playing guitar in the band Les Astronauts before going solo as a regular at coffeehouses around Montreal. During one such foray in Toronto, he was spotted by Robbie Robertson of The Band and was enticed into recording an album that Robertson would produce. His self-titled debut on Ampex Records featured guest performances by David Rea, Al Cherney, Ken Pearson, Bob Boucher, David Lewis, Gary Black, and fellow The Band member Garth Hudson. After releasing 1972's 'Third Down, 110 To Go' Winchester began getting noticed for his songwriting with hits such as "Isn't That So". He became a Canadian citizen in 1973 and released his most successful album 'Learn To Love It' in 1974 featuring the nominal hit "Third Rate Romance" (which was a major hit in the US the following year by the Amazing Rhythm Aces). With inconsistent gaps between albums, Winchester found fame behind the scenes writing material that was being made into hits for others - The Everley Brothers, The Weather Girls, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Baez, and The New Grass Revival to name but a few. In 1977 Winchester was able to return home to the US to promote his LP 'Nothing But A Breeze' when the U.S. government gave draft dodgers amnesty. He retreated from the spotlight after 1988's "Humour Me". In 1999, after an 11-year absence from recording, he returned in typically low-key fashion with the amiable "Gentleman Of Leisure".
High Tide Upcoming Schedule "Nigerian Funky and Fiesty Afrobeat"
Femi Kuti
Opening act... Axe' Capoeira
Sun. July 31st, 2005
Centennial Square - "Open Air"
Showtime 7:30pm
Tickets: $30 Advance / $33 Door
Tickets available at: Lyles Place (cash only) 250-382-8422 & McPherson Box Office (service charge) 250-386-6121
Femi's Website is : www.liveattheshrine.com
Axe's Website is : www.axecapoeira.com

Treading in the footsteps of his famous father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Femi is now the standard bearer for Nigeria's funky, feisty afrobeat sound. Femi dominates the stage with his stirring saxophone, playing soulful vocals and groove laden rhythms. Continuing in the afrobeat tradition, Femi band consists of a solid, six-piece horn section and two strong percussionists. With guitar, bass, drums, keyboards, and four singer/dancers, totaling 17 members. The challenge of sustaining the musical legacy of a legendary parent can be a near-suffocating burden - just ask Julian Lennon. However, the chance to learn from a parent's mistakes and inject fresh artistic energy into one's sonic heritage could propel the student to transcend the teacher. Femi Anikulapo Kuti stands on the cusp of doing just that.
Thirteen years into a solo career that began in the daunting shadow of his father, Fela Anikulapo Kuti, Femi Kuti is facing the prospects of extending his father's legend by actually eclipsing it. This might be blasphemous to longtime fans of Afro-beat, the music that Fela created in the '70s by merging American funk with traditional African rhythms, but Femi Kuti is indeed improving on his father's work, both musically and politically. Since Fela died from AIDS in August of 1997, his stature has risen to god-like proportions among the international dance music community and especially among the millions of Nigerians on whose behalf Fela constantly prodded the government over his 30-year career. It is a widely held belief that since Fela was the most ardent protester against the injustices that occurred in both post-colonial Nigeria and on the entire continent of Africa, Femi will probably never reach the mythical status of his father. That said, he has never shied away from Fela's aura, and he is vocal about his desire to surpass it. "It's the heritage, and you can not take one piece without the other piece," he says. "It's about the African way of life and this is my life. My life revolves around the politics and the spiritual way and the way we live, so it's all part of it. And I think that the people here already see me like that."
One reason that Femi stands to be more of a galvanizing political force is that he is much less antagonistic than his father, who was famous for his biting diatribes on government corruption, military rule and other forms of oppression. Femi has certainly inherited his father's ability to be a thorn in the side of the government via political commentary within his songs, but it is more likely that the Nigerian government would seek to work in cooperation with Femi.

The reason for that fact lies in Femi's lifestyle choices, many of which are directly at odds with those of his father.
Fela's affection for polygamy (he once married 27 of his dancers during a concert), condom-free sex, his advocacy of marijuana use and his penchant for performing in only his underwear, provided the Nigerian government with the opportunity to repeatedly harass him, with the hope of suppressing his vocal political protests. Fela was arrested numerous times, mostly on unfounded charges, and was imprisoned four times.

Femi saw his father's lifestyle as a counterpoint to the dramatic impact his music was having on the politics and the culture of Nigeria and of Africa as a whole. He decided early on that he wanted to couple all of Fela's political potency with some righteousness and self-determination of his own. Femi has one wife, doesn't smoke or drink and is an advocate of safe sex, making him a much more palatable spokesman for the proletariat to President Olusegun Obasanjo's government. Femi was certain to maintain his father's anti-establishment sensibilities, though, and he founded MASS, the Movement Against Second Slavery, to spread the word of the effects of government corruption and American and European business interests on post-colonial Africa. He has since distanced himself from that organization due to strategic differences with those that led the group in his absence. Regardless, he continues his quest of educating the masses that the ideals of the democratic system imposed upon African countries by outside interests may not be in the best interests of African people. "I grew up in it and I've spent all my life in Nigeria and I know the politics of Nigeria, and the music is a big part of my goal to spread the message," he says. Although his eponymous release in 1995 was well received critically, it never really took off. However, Femi released his second full-length LP, Shoki Shoki along with his band Positive Force, on Barclay-Polygram in the fall of 1999, and the response on dancefloors in Africa and Europe has been incredible. At last year's Kora All Africa Music Awards, Femi won Best Male Artist and Best Song for the sexually charged "Beng Beng Beng," and the accolades haven't ceased. Polygram's merger with Universal last year allowed for a full U.S. release of the album on MCA Records, and the exposure that comes with a full-blown U.S. tour over the next two months gives Femi the chance to bring his father's music to a much wider audience. That was exactly the strategy going into making Shoki Shoki, says Kuti. While Fela had a penchant for 30-minute songs laden with sinuous brass and percussion jams, Femi made sure to keep his tracks taut and combustible, making them more accessible while maintaining their improvisational nature. "I wanted to do something very compact so that it wouldn't bore the new listener," he says. "Because imagine somebody who is not an Afro-beat lover. You have to catch their attention immediately. My father's songs were more for fanatics and for people who heard him over the years and heard his transformation, and those people are ready to listen to forty-five minutes or even an hour. But somebody who is going to listen to Afro-beat for the first time, what's going to catch his attention? Why would he want to go through an hour of listening to numbers, because he's already used to R&B, he's used to be-bop, he's used to hip hop, he's used to rock, he's not going to want to sit down anywhere for one hour listening to one track." The explosiveness and rhythmic call-and-response chants of Shoki Shoki made it an immediate darling with some of the top DJs in Europe, and an entire album of remixes, featuring the likes of Kerry Chandler, Chateau Flight and Da Lata, has already been released. "You can do so much with it," says Femi. "You can turn it any way you want, upside down, inside out. There are so many things that a mixer or deejay could use in it."
  Three remixes were added on to the end of the U.S. release of the album, one of which was a remix of Femi's black pride anthem "Blackman Know Yourself" by The Roots, carriers of the integrity torch within American black music culture. While Femi admittedly had little to do with most of the remixes, he actually met with The Roots in a studio in New York City last November while he was there for a performance. He came away from that experience with a newfound appreciation for the group's professionalism and consciousness. Likewise, he spent time in the studio with Common, another one of the artists who are bringing about a creative renaissance in hip hop, and contributed to a track on Common's forthcoming album Like Water for Chocolate. He has also spent time working with Lauryn Hill and D'Angelo, and is clearly open to the possibility of collaborating with other American artists in the future. "I really love to work with people who know what they are doing and who are very conscious and conscious of their surroundings," says Femi, whose sister, Yeni, and wife Funke, are both members of Positive Force as singers and dancers. "I would really love to work with any good artists really. I'm quite simple and free, and I like experimenting and I just love playing music at the end of the day. They all knew about my father, so it was like, 'Oh wow,' and we got to talking politics and things like that. They all wanted to know about Nigeria, so it was quite interesting." The infusion of elements of American hip-hop and soul music as well as modern dance music techniques have already helped Femi create his own style of Afro-beat for the modern era on Shoki Shoki. The aforementioned fellowships, as well as others that are sure to follow given his remarkable talent and willingness to experiment, are exactly the types of bonds that soul music needs. Whereas Fela created Afro-beat by incorporating both the James Brown-era American funk and the improvisational jazz attitude of John Coltrane and Miles Davis into his country's traditional music, Femi and those lucky enough to work with him could give birth to the next phase of international soul music. "I live for music. I mean, all I do in Lagos is just practice and write songs and think about what to do next musically," says Femi. "I can't imagine my life without it." "From Germany"
Merqury - Queen Tribute
Sunday, July 31st
Central Bar & Grill, 708 View St.
Showtime 9:30pm, Doors 7pm
Tickets: $18 Advance / $20 Door Tickets available at: Lyles Place (cash only) 250-382-8422, Central Bar & Grill 250-361-1700 &
McPherson Box Office (service charge) 250-386-6121 Merqury's Webisite is: www.merqury.com Merqury Bio If they didn't know better, even the most hardened Queen fans would think that Freddie Mercury himself had risen from the grave back to the stage. That's because there is a show band out of Dresden that combines unparalleled showmanship and musicianship with a passion for celebrating the music of Queen. It is hard to put in words what magic this music, these melodies create. The musical legacy of Queen is undeniable, and Dresden's MerQury perfectly revive the beauty and power of Queen with pyrotechnics, elaborate wardrobes and sets, and individual flair. Wherever MerQury have performed, at home or abroad, the brilliant combination of faithful reproduction and ground-shaking innovation has won them an ever-increasing audience over the last twelve years around the world!

Jesse Winchester
with opening guests... Allen Dobb
Friday, August 12th, 2005
Gibson Auditorium - Camosun College - Landsdown, 1300 Foul Bay Rd.
Showtime 8:00pm, Doors 7:30pm, Open seating
Tickets: $25 Advance / $28 Door (Tickets on sale June 1st)
Tickets available at: Lyles Place (cash only) 250-382-8422 & McPherson Box Office (service charge) 250-386-6121
Website: www.jessewinchester.com

American guitarist, keyboardist, vocalist Jesse Winchester spent his formative years in Memphis. He worked on a music scholarship at Williams College in Massachusetts where he eventually switched his major to German language. The new studies led to an opportunity to go to Munich, Germany before returning a year later to the US. With a personal distaste for the US Government policies on the Vietnam War he moved to Montreal, Quebec in 1967 as a draft dodger. In a little over a month Winchester found himself playing guitar in the band Les Astronauts before going solo as a regular at coffeehouses around Montreal. During one such foray in Toronto, he was spotted by Robbie Robertson of The Band and was enticed into recording an album that Robertson would produce. His self-titled debut on Ampex Records featured guest performances by David Rea, Al Cherney, Ken Pearson, Bob Boucher, David Lewis, Gary Black, and fellow The Band member Garth Hudson. After releasing 1972's 'Third Down, 110 To Go' Winchester began getting noticed for his songwriting with hits such as "Isn't That So". He became a Canadian citizen in 1973 and released his most successful album 'Learn To Love It' in 1974 featuring the nominal hit "Third Rate Romance" (which was a major hit in the US the following year by the Amazing Rhythm Aces). With inconsistent gaps between albums, Winchester found fame behind the scenes writing material that was being made into hits for others - The Everley Brothers, The Weather Girls, Jimmy Buffett, Joan Baez, and The New Grass Revival to name but a few. In 1977 Winchester was able to return home to the US to promote his LP 'Nothing But A Breeze' when the U.S. government gave draft dodgers amnesty. He retreated from the spotlight after 1988's "Humour Me". In 1999, after an 11-year absence from recording, he returned in typically low-key fashion with the amiable "Gentleman Of Leisure".


Trio!
Bela Fleck - Stanley Clarke - Jean-Luc Ponty
Thursday, August 25th, 2005
Royal Theatre, Victoria
Showtime 8:00pm
Tickets: $45-$55 Advance
Tickets available at: McPherson Box Office 250-386-6121
Website: www.ponty.com
www.belafleck.com
www.stanleyclarke.com

Trio! brings together the musical talents of Bela Fleck (banjo), Stanley Clarke (bass) and Jean-Luc Ponty (violin) in a stunning genre-crossing collaboration. All three musicians are world renowned, critically acclaimed and award-winning performers and collaborators and this joint venture is an exciting exploration of their collective musical backgrounds. STANLEY CLARKE has many titles: bassist, composer, conductor, orchestrator, arranger, songwriter, producer, and recording artist. In a career that has spanned more than thirty years, he has explored new territory and redefined the role of the bass as more than just a rhythm instrument. He invented the piccolo and tenor bass and is a virtuoso on both electric and acoustic instruments. Stanley has won many prestigious awards, including Grammys® and Emmys, has topped the charts and has sold enough records to earn multiple gold and platinum albums. Tracks such as "Lopsy Lu" and "School Days" have immortalized him in the Jazz world. He continues to work hard on his own recordings as well as scoring numerous film and television projects, such as Boyz 'N' The Hood, The Five heartbeats, and Pee Wee's Playhouse. Like his music, he remains a constantly evolving work in progress. Often considered the premiere banjo player in the world, BELA FLECK has virtually reinvented the image and sound of the banjo. His remarkable performing and recording career has taken him all over the musical map, both with his group Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and on a range of solo projects and collaborations. He has been nominated for a Grammy award twenty times, has eight wins to his credit and has been nominated in more different categories than anyone in Grammy history. Genre-bending albums like Flight of the Cosmic Hippo, Tales From The Acoustic Planet, Outbound, and Perpetual Motion continue to demonstrate why he is a powerful and creative force in Bluegrass, Jazz, Pop, Rock, World Beat, and Classical music, and everrything else in between. JEAN-LUC PONTY is a musical pioneer and the undisputed master of violin in jazz and rock. He is widely regarded as an innovator who has applied a visionary spin to his work and expanded the vocabulary of modern music. Born in France, the son of music teachers, he studied multiple instruments while growing up. He learned to play in the vibrant Parisian Jazz scene of the 1950s, where the violin was not necessarily an accepted modern Jazz instrument. As his talent and creativity became apparent, his notoriety grew. Over the last three and a half decades, he has toured the world many times over and worked with a variety of other musical greats, including Frank Zappa, Elton John, Al DiMeola, Mahavishnu Orchestra, and more. His solo works, including Aurora, Imaginary Voyage, Enigmatic Ocean, Cosmic Messenger, and Tchokola, have been continual chart-toppers since the 1970s and Jean-Luc Ponty remains a vibrant creative force in the Jazz-Rock world.


Acousticfest 2005
Peter Rowan's New Acoustic Trio (8:30pm-10pm)
Marc Atkinson Trio (7pm-8pm)
Zubot & Dawson (5:30pm-6:30pm)
Friday, August 26th, 2005
"Open Air" - Centennial Square, Downtown Victoria
Showtime 5:30pm - 10pm, Doors 4:30pm
Tickets Only $23, $25 @ Door
Tickets available at: Lyle's Place 250-382-8422 & McPherson Box Office 250-386-6121
Websites: www.peterrowan.com
www.marcatkinson.com
www.zubotanddawson.com

Peter Rowan Biography

A skilled singer/songwriter and musician, Peter Rowan has been a force in acoustic music for nearly 40 years. He toured the country as rhythm guitarist and lead singer with Bill Monroe and the Blue Grass Boys, and subsequently played and recorded in such groups as Jerry Douglas, Tony Rice, Earth Opera, Mexican Air force (featuring Tex-Mex accordionist Flaco Jimenez), Sam Bush, Yonder Mtn. String Band, String Cheese Incident, Alison Kraus, Ted Logan, Guy Clark, Don Edwards, and Old & In the Way, with David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, Vassar Clements and John Kahn. Rowan has made more than 20 albums, including the Grammy-nominated Yonder.

As a songwriter, Rowan's tunes have been recorded by such artists as The New Riders of the Purple Sage (Panama Red), George Strait (Dance Time in Texas), Michael Martin Murphy (Land of the Navajo), Ricky Skaggs (You Make Me Feel Like a Man), Desert Rose Band, Janie Fricke and many others

Peter has explored rock, Tex-Mex, Irish, country, rockabilly, folk and reggae—integrating all of these influences into his unique brand of acoustic music. He is currently one of the most in-demand artists on the folk-bluegrass scene. His tremendously successful 1988 collaboration with The Nashville Bluegrass Band was a Grammy finalist, and his 1990 "DUST BOWL CHILDREN" received unanimous critical acclaim and won two National Association for Independent Record Distributor Awards.

One example of Peter's cross-pollination of bluegrass, "Reggaebilly", Rowan mixes reggae and bluegrass together on a level never seen before. He went to Jamaica and recorded some original, and some traditional, bluegrass-based songs with a group of top reggae session musicians including bassist Chris Livingston, guitarist Chinna Smith, drummer Squidley Cole and keyboard player Robbie Lyn. He then brought the tapes back to Nashville and Austin and added layers of conventional bluegrass instruments played by such masters as Jerry Douglas on Dobro, Eddie Adcock on banjo and Stuart Duncan on fiddle. In Rowan's hands, the different musical worlds come together beautifully in a hypnotic fusion that's perhaps best exemplified by the glorious version of "The Cuckoo Bird," the traditional, minor key, Appalachian mountain song. Rowan's voice floats beautifully above the percolating Jamaican rhythms and bluegrass comping. It is a real treat to hear musicians of this caliber whose experiments at something new and different result in such a successful cross-cultural musical hybrid.

A follower of Tibetan Buddhism, Rowan is well-traveled and well-schooled. He compares Monroe and his pioneering music to the nature poets and painters of the seventh-century Chinese Tang dynasty, who similarly evoked the 'high lonesomeness' that he says is at the heart of Monroe and bluegrass. He always follows his muse, says Bev Paul, Sugar Hill Records' director of sales and marketing. He does world music projects, old-timey music, and now he's back to bluegrass, where his roots are. He's even starting to look like Bill Monroe, she says.
Rowan represents what is coming to be known as third-generation bluegrass, says Paul. Monroe and people like Earl Scruggs were the first wave, and then there was a flurry of activity in the mid-'60s. Now we're feeling the third wave roll into the 21st century --- and Peter's leading that charge. Marc Atkinson Trio Biography

The Marc Atkinson Trio, an acoustic guitar-driven trio, is an up-and-coming group from Victoria, BC, Canada, not to be missed. This virtuostic group's success has been leaping forward over the past couple years. Acoustic Guitar Magazine voted the trio's most recent CD, the Marc Atkinson Trio II, one of the top 5 five CDs released in North America in 2002. This CD was also nominated for best jazz album by the 2003 Western Canadian Music Awards. The Trio will be releasing their 3rd album in 2005. Warmly welcomed by folk, jazz and classical audiences alike, the group recently received a standing ovation as an official showcaser at the North American Folk Alliance Conference and is also a frequent performer at the acclaimed Festival International de Jazz de Montreal. The Marc Atkinson trio plays at many major folk and jazz festivals across North America. Marc, a Canadian instrumentalist/composer/arranger/ producer, is one of Canada's most talented musicians. Marc's hummable original compositions, found on both of the self-titled CDs I and II, take acoustic guitar to a refreshing new level. The tunes use a ferocious but elegant gypsy guitar style, infused with a catchy blend of influences ranging from folk to jazz to classical to world beat. All this while still maintaining the laid back humour and casual ‘good time feel' of Canada's West Coast. Marc's picking has been described as flawless, surprise-filled and sizzling. His music is original, complex and challenging in its conception and delivery but remains accessible and absorbing. The music of the Marc Atkinson Trio good-naturedly welcomes all listeners aboard for an intriguing, exhilarating and unforgettable ride. These days the trio's audiences are expecting to be wowed. They are well primed beforehand for the trio's appearances through glowing write-ups, reviews and interviews. The trio has built a robust fan base in Canada and they have begun to tour more extensively in the US. Marc is backed by Joey Smith on bass and Chris Frye on rhythm guitar. Perhaps what is most unusual about this jazz trio is that Marc and Chris are also the founding members of a completely different band. The Bills (formerly the Bill Hilly Band) plays spirited and eclectic folk music. Their second CD won the best folk/roots album at the Western Canadian Music Awards and was nominated for a Canadian Juno Award. The Bills released their new album, Let Em Run, on June 26, 2004, and it has recently been nominated for a Juno Award. The Bills can be found on main stages of folk festival across Canada and into the US. Zubot and Dawson

Jesse Zubot and Steve Dawson are rising stars on the folk and roots music scene. The award-winning Vancouver musicians have earned a reputation for playing “acoustic music that kicks ass”. Their music combines elements of jazz, bluegrass, world music and folk with brilliant musicianship. Their third album, Chicken Scratch won the 2003 Juno for Best Roots & Traditional Group Album and the 2003 Canadian Independent Music Award for Roots Album of the Year. 

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