I see London, I see Francey In terms of starting a music career, David Francey is a late bloomer. His debut, Torn Screen Door, was released in 1999 when the roots artist was 45 years old. “I wrote for myself and was happy doing so. It was my wife, Beth Girdler, who convinced me to […]
Arts + Music
Live theatre, art exhibits, comedy, literary, spoken word – The Coast guide to Halifax and Dartmouth, NS . The downtown, local arts scene – plays, writers, actors, artists and performers. Painting, sculpture, photography, stand-up, stage.
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Road to nowhere
Even though HRM has been one big, amalgamated SuperCity for going on 10 years now, transportation is still a bit of a fractured affair. You’ve got HRM Council responsible for transit services, bikeways and most of the urban and suburban roads in the region. Then you’ve got the provincial department of transportation responsible for roads […]
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Thumbsucker blues
Mike Mills is 39 years old. At 18 he moved cross-county, from Santa Barbara, California to New York City, New York, where he attended The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He was a bad student, but he could draw. Art school led to an internship with influential design company M & […]
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Eyes on the prize
“Our lives have become very long,” says a man named Karma. He’s Tibetan, a dweller on the high plains some 15,000 feet above sea level, and he, with two of his cousins, has gone blind. Four percent of the Tibetan population over age 40 has cataracts due to high levels of ultraviolet radiation that prematurely […]
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Sister act
It’s 24 degrees and sunny and Kate McGarrigle —one-half of the Canadian folk duo known as Kate and Anna McGarrigle—is looking through the stash of albums in her Montreal home, trying to find Richard Verreau’s Chantons Noel. Her favourite Christmas song is on it—or the first favourite that comes to mind, anyway—and she can’t remember […]
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Serenity
Serenity risks being slighted as a big-screen TV episode. It’s a continuation of 2002 space-western series Firefly, which was shelved early in its run by the Fox network. Firefly gained a cult following on DVD, and the film attempts to give those fans some closure. Serenity is consistent with the series tone, but it’s a […]
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Tiny Town adventures
Matthew Reichertz sits squeezed behind a table in a windowed nook, a sandwich and salad in front of him. A tiny lamp lights the surface of the rickety table. Gottingen Street foot and car traffic flows by in the angled panes of glass behind him. He looks a little hemmed in, a contrast to the […]
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Green as Moss
The craziest thing about CocaineGate 2005 is not that Kate Moss does cocaine. (Girl, please! Even if she weren’t a model, her boyfriend, Pete Doherty, is an honest-to-goodness crackhead!) It’s not even that she was photographed doing so (which was awesome). It’s that the waste-of-life fashion industry is pretending that this is an isolated case, […]
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Bragg brings the rock
A steady succession of Halifax ex-pats have been playing in clubs around the city for the past month, and October is starting off no different. Mt. Pearl, Newfoundland’s Mark Bragg will return to promote his sophomore album, Bear Music, on October 2 at Gus’ Pub. “I moved to Toronto after Halifax, but didn’t enjoy it […]
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Roll Bounce
It’s easy to lose hope when theatres get overrun by heavily promoted flight plans and wedding crashers, exorcised epileptics, guys wasting their lives gardening and something advertised as being like heaven that’s closer to two hours in purgatory. But we should keep watch of the movies being thrown on screens without fanfare. Arriving without much […]
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Tried and Trews
The last time The Coast spoke with Antigonish natives The Trews, it was December of 2004. They were heading home to Canada for the holidays following 10 days of demo sessions in Austin, Texas with their friend and collaborator Gordie Johnson (Grady, ex-Big Sugar), who also produced the band’s gold-selling smash, House of Ill Fame. […]
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Shacked up
Tom Wilson and Bob Lanois will forever be distinguished as founding fathers of their hometown’s rich and influential musical history. Citing the differences in their reputations, however, one could accurately describe the Hamilton, Ontario, natives’ recent collaboration as surprising. Wilson is known as the notorious party animal behind several critically acclaimed roots-rock projects including Junkhouse […]