Adria Young

Some people don’t just make music, they make movements. For 19-year-old Alex “Cunny” Ross, R&B helps him take positive steps in his world. “I’m from Uniacke Square, born and raised,” he says. Last year, Ross sold all 50 copies of his first mixtape Young Coming Up in less than 48 hours. Encouraged, he started Family […]

What does Nightbummerz like about playing loud? “It drowns out the booing,” says Grace Stratton, one-third of the gloomy post-punk band Nightbummerz. With lifelong friends Cameron Evans (guitar/vocals) and Alex Seminick (drums), both of whom Stratton met at a Freak Heat Waves show last year, Nightbummerz released a self-titled debut in April with tracks titled […]

Last fall, Fleet-Foxy folk singer Devarrow (Graham Ereaux) moved to Halifax from Vancouver after a six-month tour. Originally from Moncton, he says the Halifax community is one of the main reasons he came back east, and it’s been an inspiration to his music ever since. While he was away, he chronicled his adventures on a […]

“Our biggest problem is that I’m too funny, it’s hard for everyone to concentrate,” says Daniel Crowther, songwriter and singer of Halifax four-piece No Problem, which just finished a tour to Ontario, played Flourish Festival and put out a first full-length, The Honestly Hour. “My biggest problem is listening to other people chew,” says Mitchell […]

“It was like, why don’t we just get two drum kits and beat the shit out of them?” says Nick Dourado (XXVII, Century Egg) on the formation of EDDY. With drummer Nathan Doucet (Heaven for Real), EDDY is an experimental drum duo that pummels listeners with continuous, spontaneous and completely uninhibited music. In December, the […]

“It’s groovy, wacky and noisy in the right places,” says Brett Jarret, vocalist and guitarist of lazy pop indie-rock band Strongboy. Along with Seamus O’Neill, Alex Sheppard and Tyler Popwell, the four best friends from Cape Breton are anything but traditional Island fare, with their modern indie-pop flourishes and jizz-jazzy reverbs. Strongboy is currently working […]

Here’s the scoop on Electric Spoonful: “Rudy [Pace] and I began playing music together after recognizing our mutual love of ’60s and ’70s styles of rock and roll,” says guitarist Brently Campbell. “We have been described as a scrappy rock quartet,” says Pace, guitarist-vocalist. The Halifax-via-Cape Breton band, also with C.J. Hill (bass) and Jesse […]

After playing bass as a hired gun with almost every gigging jazz musician in the Maritimes, St. FX jazz graduate Willem Paynter released City Grit, his debut record of original music (and one jazz standard), in December. “It can be considered hard-bop, a direct descendent of bebop, but there’s a lot of funk, groove, blues […]

After his longtime Halifax three-piece pop-punk band The Fat Stupids split last year, guitarist Matt Grace (Outtacontroller) still had songs kicking around that he wanted to play. He asked his partner Heather Grant to start a new band, and then they added her Crossed Wire bandmate Dewayne Shanks, plus good buddy Coleman Johnson (The Scoop […]

Meeting at jazz master Jerry Granelli’s Creative Music Workshop five years ago, saxophonists Nick Dourado (Eddy, Special Costello) and Andrew MacKelvie released six spontaneous tracks on an album titled oo last year. “Everything you hear is improvised, and I think it highlights the connection that Nick and I have,” explains MacKelvie. “We love songs and […]

“I think we’ve all always had these feelings about smashing the patriarchy, critical sex-positivity and frustrations with being treated differently, especially in certain scenes like music, because we’re women,” says Jess MacDonald (guitar). In January, MacDonald, Camila Salcedo (drums) and Grace Stratton (bass) created Glitterclit, a feminist-punk band inspired by riot grrls, Bikini Kill, Spray […]

This is what inspires Dana Beeler, the vocalist and guitarist of new rock-based outfit Hello Delaware: “Shitty dudes, shitty breakups and t-shirts with fun sayings on them. I was sick of being pigeonholed as a sad-sack songwriter,” she says of her days performing as Dana Beeler, onstage with a guitar. “But I’m not sad, I’m […]