Two Toronto treasures, orchestral indie pop singer-songwriter Nick Teehan and jazz-pop innovators The Jessica Stuart Few play Toronto’s Supermarket, 268 Augusta Ave, Thursday February 3 to celebrate the official launch of the title track video from The Jessica Stuart Few’s widely acclaimed CD Kid Dream. Check out the making of the Kid Dream video here!
Often likened to the fun, quirky genius that is Rufus Wainwright-cum-Tom Waits, Nick Teehan found some success as a saxophonist – playing the MuchMusic Video Awards, Ottawa Jazz Festival, Summerfolk Festival and performing with Toronto funk/rock bands Barbarella and Pure Finesse – before finding songwriting was his true calling. Nick plays supported by a talented six-piece band that includes two brass players, guitar and drums, and sometimes even includes a string section. Nick’s older brother, Juno-nominated composer Rob Teehan, plays sousaphone in the band. The pair enjoy a fruitful collaborative relationship and plan to co-produce Nick’s first full-length album expected in 2011.
Growing up in suburban Oshawa, Nick felt most free after dark, whether he was watching rented Charleton Heston movies, wandering the city’s forest paths, or trekking south to yell and throw rocks at the 4:00 a.m. train. His teenage afternoons were spent pushing carts at the local grocery store and cruising his rusty old bike across town on the sidewalk.
The Jessica Stuart Few, who’ve received accolades from eye Weekly, AOL Spinner and CBC’s “Big City Small World”, among others, spent 2010 touring across Canada in support of the organically evolved album Kid Dream, co-produced by Mischa Chillak, well known for his hip hop productions & remixes for Notes To Self (BBE Records), Sweatshop Union, K-OS and a number of indie film scores. With Mischa’s urban influence, and Jessica Stuart’s folk/jazz sensibility, the result was an epic pop experiment that brought the band to new heights.
Kid Dream is a whimsical and engaging video based on a highly collaborative technique called Lunamation, which is a form of rotoscope animation using carbon tracings of video stills. Under the guideance of Jessica and director Evan deRushie who pioneered Lunamation, over 80 animators participated in a number of “animation parties” at which most of the over 2,700 individual drawings used in the video were created. Many of the animators were children and guitar students of Jessica’s.
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 3rd @ SUPERMARKET
Nick Teehan & The Jessica Stuart Few celebrate the premiere of “Kid Dream”
268 Augusta Ave., Kensington Market
9 pm show
$8 advance, $10 at the door
416-840-0501 / www.supermarkettoronto.com
Advance tickets: Available Jan 15 @ Soundscapes (572 College St.),
Rotate This (801 Queen St. W.) + Circus Books & Music (866 Danforth Ave.)
With the release of his debut EP Sidewalk Friend, 2010 has proven to be an exciting year for Toronto singer/songwriter Nick Teehan. A natural singer with a clear, lazy baritone – equal parts Tom Waits and Frank Sinatra – Nick Teehan is a unique voice, his songs fresh, energetic and unpredictable; his lyrics imaginative, irreverent and arrestingly insightful.
Moving to Toronto to study jazz saxophone, Nick found himself drawn not to the city’s glittering lights but to its in-between places: abandoned factories, parks, boarded-up churches, rusting bridges. Nick cites the loneliness and solitude of post-industrial Ontario as one of his biggest sources of inspiration; other inspiration comes from legendary songwriters like Rufus Wainwright, Leonard Cohen, and Irving Berlin. When filtered through Nick’s unconventional imagination, the results are vivid dream-images: benevolent robots in a post-apocalyptic world; love-starved raccoons; an undead orchestra marching down Queen Street.
Check out Nick Teehan’s “Sidewalk Friend” LIVE on the ferris wheel at the CNE!
www.myspace.com/nickteehan
www.twitter.com/nickteehan
