Happy Music Year!

Hope all the BobCat friends had a great Christmas. I've been thinking about some of the great music we were treated to here at BobCat. We had:

• Ana Miura
• Amanda Rheaume
• Janine Stoll & Paul MacDougall
• Rhonda Stakich
• Peter Elkas
• Andrea Simms-Karp
• Kate Weekes
• David Ross MacDonald
• The Undesirables (Sean Cotton & Corin Raymond)
• Corin Raymond
• Jonathan Byrd

grace us with amazing music. What a gift for us all.

But now it's time to start looking forward, and we've got some amazing people coming to play in 2010, starting with a show at the end of January with the amazing Nathan Rogers.

Nathan Rogers carries a family name with resonance -- and maybe with some baggage too. But once you hear him, you'll add the term "powerful performer" to the terms "son of Stan" and "nephew of Garnet". He's produced two CDs - 2005's True Stories and 2009's The Gauntlet. Both feature that rich Rogers voice, his Grit Laskin guitars, and songwriting that moves from the more conventional folk idiom you might expect to incorporate Tuvan throat-singing, beatboxing, and god only knows what.

Here's a sample of a traditional blues-styled song from Nathan's first record. "Can't sit still" was recorded at a concert Rogers did in Canmore:





Nathan's going to have a full weekend in Eastern Ontario. In addition to the BobCat show, he'll be playing a dinner+concert event in Merrickville at the lovely Yellow Canoe Café on Friday January 29, and doing a songwriting workshop on the Sunday afternoon. You can contact me for information on those events as well.

WHO: Nathan Rogers
WHERE: BobCat, 214 Northwestern Avenue
WHEN: Saturday, January 30
WHAT: $20 suggested donation. If you choose, bring some snacks to share at intermission and/or a donation to the Ottawa Food Bank.

I've no doubt this show will be FULL. So please ensure you've got a seat by reserving and providing your donation in advance. Pay by paypal or Interac money transfer by using the e-mail bob-dot-ledrew at gmail-dot-com, by cheque in the mail, or by cash in person.

And a couple of weeks after that, we have three of the brightest young women in Canadian roots music coming to the house for valentine's weekend. If you haven't heard of the Good Lovelies yet, you really need to. Kerri Ough, Caroline Brooks and Sue Passmore formed up as a unit at the Ottawa Folk Festival a couple of years ago, and this year launched their first full-length CD (Good Lovelies) and a Christmas CD (Under the Mistletoe). Both are wonderful items, capturing both their instrumental skills, their truly incredible harmonies (think the Andrews Sisters at a jam session with the Carter family), and their great original songs. But it's live where you get the full Good Lovelies experience, combining all the music with an infectious joie de vivre and good humour that would make Leonard Cohen giggle like a schoolgirl. It's rare to see an act that just seems to be having so much FUN doing what they do.





And now's your chance to see them here.



WHO: Good Lovelies
WHEN: February 13
WHERE: BobCat Love Canal
WHAT: $25 suggested donation by PayPal, Interac Money Transfer, cheque, or cash in advance please.