Oshawa Based Band District Down

We recently did a photo shoot with the Oshawa based band District Down.  The five guys who comprise this band are total pros (they even showed up early for the shoot), and we had a great time shooting them.  They had just finished playing the KOI Music Festival the night before so the fact that they arrived ready to go, and still managed to be very photogenic after that was very impressive. 

You can visit their myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/districtdown to hear a sample of their music and find out where they will be playing next.

The ‘We Love Aussies’ Series: Kim Churchill

 

To those of you who think you’ve got this whole multi-tasking thing down because you can email, answer calls, schedule (and reschedule) appointments, AND plan dinner all at the SAME time, let us introduce you to Kim Churchill. 

Kim is a musician (in every sense of the word) from New South Wales, Australia. He is currently on North American tour with two friends (Elmo who does his sound engineering and Lockie who is an all purpose roadie with an awesome hat). We were fortunate enough to meet the three of them on the leg of their tour that brought them to Toronto to perform at Scotiabank BuskerFest, The Horseshoe Tavern and The Rivoli.  

Kim plays guitar (6 and 12 string), lapsteel, harmonica, stompbox, tambourine, chimes and he sings – well. Kim’s multi-talent is somewhat remarkable in itself, but he takes it one step further and plays many of these instruments at the SAME time. He is in essence a 19 year old one man band whose performance sounds like many seasoned musicians playing in complete sync.  Kim writes the music that he plays, music of both quality and soul, and if you listen – you’ll find that he actually has something to say.  We are impressed.  We are more than impressed.  I, for one, have been waiting to find a musician like this for a long time.

And – as you can see – he photographs really well too.

To hear and see a little of what Kim is all about, play the video below.  Give it until 1:50 to get going, then if you like what you hear, visit his website and order his CD ‘With Sword and Shield’ – we’ve had it in heavy rotation for a week now.

 

 

 

The ‘We Love Aussies’ Series: Bendy Em

As I wrote in my last post, we really enjoy BuskerFest each year partly because we always wind up meeting the nicest people over the course of the festival. Each year Scotiabank BuskerFest brings street performers from all over the world to Toronto and at the end of the week we usually find that we’ve made at least one new friend from – Australia. This year we were very fortunate to have made a number of new friends from down under; one of them is Emma Kerger. Otherwise know as Bendy Em, Emma is the contortionist whom you might have seen this summer on the BuskerFest stage or at the CNE cramming herself (skillfully) into a 16 inch perspex box that is balanced on a 7 foot aluminum stand.

There is a lot more to Em though than her contortion show, so we thought we’d try to uncover a new side of her.  Em is a fantastic model, we think she might have a future in it, and we also think we did a fairly good job of bringing out her dark side – just ask Orbax, the pained looking fellow (from the Monsters of Shlock) whom she is laying waste to in the middle shot!