Went to hear Kevin Breit yesterday. This was an inexpensive night out at Lula Lounge at an enjoyably small venue in Toronto, but as far as packing a punch it might as well been a full-scale big name concert at the Rogers Centre. It was fantastic.
Kevin is a versatile, imaginative, highly skilled musician who has gone the distance. He plays amazing guitar, writes beautiful words and music, and his voice is just unique enough to match his other talents. I have known him mostly as a wildly experimental jazz guitarist, but the melodic vocal direction he has pursued in recent years has revealed a whole new musical facet.
Why this video is here is to remind me of how wide the creative opportunities are to do things beyond the normal or the expected. ( not that this particular video is so unusual, but I did like the old stone barn foundation)
Kevin opens the door to new ideas rather than relying on the same old predictable money-making musical formulas. I feel personally challenged to expand the parameters of this blog so as not to be trying just to fit it into someone else's notion of where it should be going.
The lyrics suggest a strange disconnect. My own stone-sided take on it is this.
Sometimes you can talk about lots of related things and yet never make reference to the fact that they are, or ever were connected. The crumbling stone foundations of rural Ontario are a fading reminder of how disconnected and diminished we have become. Most of us have little understanding of how integrally related proper land stewardship used to be. The food industry as it becomes more and more specialized and supposedly more 'efficient' has made us all too dependent and wasteful. Perfectly good stone material from fallen down barns and hedge rows continues to be bulldozed into the ground throughout this province as even ecologically minded people miss the connection that exists between local food, local initiatives and local natural building resources.
