Manitoba Live Music Event

About

In the early 1900s unfortunate and irreversible mistakes bind Hermes, the god of travel, in gold. Now a statue, Hermes is passed from one continent to the next bringing bad luck and a feeling of "stuckness" everywhere he goes. World powers unite and decide the only solution is to send him as far away as possible to a place that no one cares about... a place in the middle of nowhere... Winnipeg, Manitoba. For over a century Hermes has perched atop the Legislature and we call him the golden boy, a statue reeking a feeling a apathy through the city and not letting anyone leave, even after they have passed away.

Enter our heroes, regular every day Winnipeggers who feel stuck but are sucked into an adventure exploring the city and meeting an infamous cast of characters (from Stephen Juba to the Grey Nuns and from Nellie McClung to Burton Cummings) who give them a new perspective.

A hilarious roller coaster ride through time, winters, socials, mysteries and many vacant floors of the Downtown Bay, 204FM is a uniquely Winnipeg buffet, created by top Winnipeg comedians and theatre artists for the citizens of our one great city.

Written by: Gwendolyn Collins, RobYn Slade, Toby Hughes, Ross McMillan and William Jordan

Performed by: Gwendolyn Collins, RobYn Slade, Toby Hughes, William Jordan and Gordan Tanner

There are special musical guests each evening in this order:

April 26: William Prince
May 3: Leaf Rapids
May 10: Red Moon Road
May 17: Joey Landreth
May 24: Slow Leaves and Carly Dow

Red Moon Road:

There are storms that stalk the water and storms that darken the heart, and from them come calms, and certain smallness too: so it was that time in 2009, when the wind hurled a sailboat beneath a churning lake and sent its two sailors plunging towards the shore.

So music flows from storms too, because after those two sailors climbed out of the water, they knew they had met to make something sing. And so Red Moon Road was born from a storm, and the bond that the two string-plucking Daniels - Daniel Jordan and Daniel Peloquin-Hopfner - forged inside one.

If you close your eyes and listen to Red Moon Road's brand new EP, Tales from the Whiteshell or their critically acclaimed self-titled debut album, you can hear this.

It's in what churns just below the surface, you see, the storms of head and heart and history that pull the Winnipeg band's songs into shape. It's in the strings - banjo, mandolin, guitar and fiddle -- that swell and sway beneath Sheena Rattai's twilight voice, and the harmonies that fill out the musical space.

Most of all, you can hear it in the flourishes of wilderness that flow through the trio's throats and fingers: the sparkling melody of "Mighty Glad You Came" borrowed with thanks from the white-throated sparrow. The swollen chords of "Do Or Die," crashing over delicate riffs like a sunrise breaking on water.

This is music made equally for fireplaces, festival stages and the luminous blue of a Canadian night.

Still, for all the singular focus of this vision, inside Red Moon Road are three musicians come together from very different directions: Peloquin-Hopfner got his start as a progressive metal guy. Jordan trained as a big-band jazz drummer. And Rattai, who fronted a funk band before this, grew up singing in church choirs, where she learned the mysteries of singing for the sacred and sublime.

So it isn't so surprising when, in the middle of their acoustic set, the trio busts out a delay pedal, or a loop track to lock the rhythm down: after all, they had this stuff lying around. And though the trappings of the band may speak of backwoods - they've been known to take the stage with pinecones in their hair - there's still a grace that flows from pop, and jazz, and the pleasures of the modern day.

This is what drives the band, then, what sends their music echoing down the roads that join coast and coast: at a house concert in the northern woods of British Columbia, with the sled dogs howling along outside. At a prairie bar deep inside Saskatchewan, where lyrics about Old World wars resonate in the history of farmers, come here from across the sea. In century old mansions on the rustic east coast, where tales of tragedy on the high seas tug at fisherman's hearts. And in between the dim-lit stages in the steel forests of cities, where those rattling strings call us back to the lakes, the seas and the storm.

And there is music in that storm, and it flows and it rolls, and it goes by the name of Red Moon Road.