It was a special one!

It’s been too long!  Bird City (solo) and Wax Mannequin are sharing a bill again!  Reunited with traveling pal Martti Mäkkelä  These three are playing FOUR shows together in March (joined by one of Jenny’s ALL-TIME-FAVOURITES “Andrew Vincent” for the Ottawa Show!!!!!)   And then towards the end of the month Bird City re-joins her bandmates and shares the stage with the delightful Rich Burnett in Flesherton.  Such a month to look forward to.  See the dates below!

Fri. Mar. 9th, “The Garnet”, Peterborough ON w/ Wax Mannequin & Martti Mäkkelä

Sat. Mar. 10th,”Pressed” Ottawa ON, w/ Wax Mannequin, Andrew Vincent, & Martti Mäkkelä

Sun. Mar. 11th, “Musiikki Café”, Kingston ON, w/Wax Mannequin & Martti Mäkkelä

Thurs. March 15th, “The Piston”, Toronto ON, w/Wax Mannequin & Martti Mäkkelä

Fri. Mar. 23rd, “The Bicycle Cafe”, Flesherton ON, w/ Rich Burnett

It’s here!  The day is finally here!

After more than three years recording, and the better part of a year preparing the release, Bird City’s album is available to the public.

Bird City is the banjo/tenor guitar project of Jenny Mitchell, a Guelph, Ontario-based songwriter who previously performed as Jenny Omnichord and fronted the band The Barmitzvah Brothers among her many other musical projects.

Mitchell crafted the debut album by Bird City, Winnowing, over a three-year period with producer/engineer Scott Merritt at his Guelph studio, with a host of notable friends contributing. These included Bry Webb (Constantines), Nathan Lawr (Minotaurs), J.J. Ipsen (Jim Guthrie, Two-Minute Miracles), and Merritt himself on a multitude of instruments.

Tying it all together is Mitchell’s musical vision of creating out-of- body experiences through stark fragility, no matter how many instruments are on a track.

With Winnowing, Jenny moves beyond her quirky Omnichord persona, playing these exposed and poetic songs of paranoia, heartbreak and self-examination developed for nearly 15 years. Although she likes to describe her work as “tiny songs,” Winnowing is a towering achievement from an artist long considered one of Canada’s unsung treasures, who is poised to at last get the recognition she deserves.

As of today you can buy copies on bandcamp, Coax Records, and by requesting them at your favourite local record stores (distribution through Outside records)  The BEST of course is buying them directly from Bird City at one of the upcoming release shows (see posted dates below)  Check out this article about the record, from “The Record” 

Upcoming shows: 

Oct 28 :: Heritage Hall :: Guelph ON [w/ Scott Merritt]

Nov 5 :: The Burdock :: Toronto ON [w/ Sandro Perri]

Nov 18 :: House Show :: Meaford ON [w/Culture Reject]

Nov 25 :: The Casbah :: Hamilton ON [w/ Eiyn Sof & Mayor McCa]

Dec 9 :: Catalina’s :: Peterborough ON [w/Joyful Joyful]

Dec 10 :: Pressed :: Ottawa ON

Extremely excited to get to share this with you!  Tune in to Grayowl Point for an advanced stream of Bird City’s “Winnowing”.

We’re getting closer and closer to release date folks.  You can check out the upcoming tour dates below

Oct 28 :: Heritage Hall :: Guelph ON [w/ Scott Merritt]

Nov 5 :: The Burdock :: Toronto ON [w/ Sandro Perri]

Nov 18 :: House Show :: Meaford ON [w/Culture Reject]

Nov 25 :: The Casbah :: Hamilton ON [w/ Eiyn Sof & Mayor McCa]

Dec 9 :: Catalina’s :: Peterborough ON [w/Joyful Joyful]

Dec 10 :: Pressed :: Ottawa ON

It’s been over three years in the making, and Label Fantastic Founder “Bird City”‘s debut album “Winnowing” is finallyALMOST HERE!!!  It will be released October 27th – Stay tuned to labelfantastic.com and coax.com for release details!  

Well friends – guess what you’re looking at?  Remember our friend Henry Adam Svec, the songwriter who drew our attention to projects such as “The CFL Sessions”, “Folk Songs of Canada”, and “Folk Songs of Canada Now”?   Well here’s what happened: Henry FINALLY moved away from London, and ended up in Fredericton.  And while there, he developed an OBSESSION with donairs.  Photos of donairs, sound-collages, even a donair-themed radio show.  THEN Henry moved down to the United States.  And while some of us might have expected the result to be something innocent like “Folk Songs of America Now”, that’s not exactly what Henry had in mind.  THIS was his vision:

Henry has made a VIDEO GAME ABOUT DONAIRS.  And it’s totally bizarre.  It’s totally Henry.  I should have seen this coming, but I’ll admit that I really didn’t.  Congratulations Henry.  Here are the details:

The donair has been gaining steam. Invented by restaurateur Peter Gamoulakos in the 1970s, when he was having trouble selling the traditional gyro to his Maritimer patrons, the sweet, milky beef wrap was named an official food of Halifax in 2015. Now the dish gets its own interactive digital game, entitled Donair Academy.

Created by Henry Adam Svec and Chad Comeau, Donair Academy lovingly and nostalgically hearkens back to the RPGs and digital encyclopedias of the 1990s, such as Final Fantasy and Microsoft Encarta. Players can explore the historical, gastronomical, and acoustic dimensions of this culinary artifact, which is a fascinating compromise linking Turkish, Greek, and Atlantic Canadian tastes. One struggles to describe the experience (surprising? enlightening? surreal?). In a sense, perhaps playing the game is just like eating a good donair.

“One never knows when donair knowledge will come in handy,” says Comeau. It is hard to elaborate further without giving away the game’s provocative conclusion, so the interested reader will simply need to play to find out how. But the game also probes bigger, more universal issues, using the Halifax donair as a springboard. “We wanted to make a game that mixed several dimensions of donair history and culture. Education, canonization, mobilization, mastication—it’s all in here,” says Svec.

Donair Academy is the first collaboration between writer and performer Henry Adam Svec (The CFL Sessions, Artificially Intelligent Folk Songs of Canada) and game designer Chad Comeau (La vie d’Arcade, Granny Games). Each having worked as Media Artist in Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton (Svec in 2014-2015 and Comeau in 2016-2017), the idea first came to light when Svec encouraged Comeau to make a game about donairs on his Facebook page. What began perhaps as a joke has finished as reality. Also featuring a tense, dramatic soundtrack by WL Altman and Andrew Penner, Donair Academy is available for free online at www.donairacademy.org.

Hey friends!

If you’ve visited us here in the past little bit, you would have noticed the site was glitchy.  Thanks to our pal Edwin over at Relaxe Ave Recording it’s now fixed!   What  a guy!  He’s currently working on Wax Mannequin’s new album (out this fall!) and in his spare time he just ever so casually SAVED LABEL FANTASTIC!’S site!!!  What a guy.  Check out his studio, he’s a gem.

The new Bird City record (the first official Bird City record) will be released this autumn on Label Fantastic! and Coax Records.  In the meantime, Jenny has teamed up with longtime pal/Constantines’ front man “Bry Webb” to accompany him on a bunch of his tour of small Ontario cities.  Bry is going LOTS of places, you can check out his post on facebook to see his full list of dates, the ones featuring Bird City are listed below.  Bry is carving out a beautiful reconnaissance mission of small town venue connections, quite a magical feat, and if the shows goes well hopefully many Label Fantastic! artists will return to these towns.  If you or your friends are near any of these places we’d love to see you out at the shows!

Bry Webb w/ Bird City:

May:

13 – Manitowaning (Manitoulin Island) – Debajehmujig Creation Centre

14 – Peterborough – Artspace

18 – Owen Sound – Heartwood Concert Hall - w/ Long Branch

19 – Sudbury – Fromagerie Elgin

20 – Durham - Garafraxa Cafe

25 Kingston – Next Church

26 Stratford – Montforte

June 18 – Grimsby – The Pumphouse

It’s here!  ”Saturn Return” by Old Cabin is officially released!  You can stream the album right now at Exclaim!   

Here’s the rundown: “The album opens with the previously shared addiction tale “Where Did You Go,” which is immediately followed by an accompanying suite cryptically titled “!?!” From there, we hear the stories of “Joe,” as well as “And Annie,” before Barr grapples with the absurdities of life on “I Got You,” and finally — and perhaps most powerfully — the aftermath of residential schools on “Don’t Leave Me Behind.”

Rich with layered characters and heavy themes, the album is am engaging exercise in modern musical storytelling told through a distinctly Canadian lens.”

It’s a great record – we were lucky enough to witness Jona perform it in its entirety on the Golden Bus earlier this month.  Be sure to keep an eye on his tour schedule.  If you’re out in western Canada, check out one of these upcoming dates: