Whitehorse @ Horseshoe Tavern

July 23, 2021July 8, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : March 26th, 2021 : : .

Whitehorse has remained one of the hardest working, most visible bands during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The band had a weekly Happy Hour Facebook and Twitter streaming concert, put on for free, for about 3 months. They launched a Patreon, performed a couple of Christmas-adjacent sets from the head office of their record label, released an album, performed a set at a movie theatre drive-in, launched the Horseshoe Hootenanny live stream series with a record release party for their disc, Modern Love, and performed another set live with the Kitchener-Waterloo Orchestra.

This recording, of the aforementioned record release party at the Horseshoe Tavern, was the first full-band show (out of necessity, due to pandemic restrictions) since 2019 if I’m not mistaken, and features a familiar line up of Ryan Gavel, Johnny Obercian, and Gregory MacDonald (who seems to be a part of every second name-recognizable band in the country!) alongside husband and wife core duo Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet.

The performance was broken into two sets: the first, an introduction to the Modern Love album, with a selection of six of the dozen songs featured. The second was a quick run through of several obvious, greatest hits tracks from their earlier catalogue.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ Six Shooter Records

February 26, 2021August 31, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : December 4th, 2020 : : .

I’m not going to preface this particular entry with too much context on COVID-19, 2020, and live music. I ranted and raved about it in excess on my previous post.

I will take a minute to talk about Whitehorse, a band many visitors to this blog are now well acquainted with, and give some context on their 2020 (if you would be so kind as to indulge me).

Whitehorse is a husband and wife musical duo with decades long resumes that cover the gauntlet and have taken them around the world. Their talent is immeasurable, and their success remarkable — but not incalculable.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ Roy Thomson Hall

August 11, 2020April 22, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : June 15th, 2019 : : .

The most recently posted Whitehorse recording, about two entries back, came only a few short weeks after shuttering the previous version of this website.

My family had grown bigger, money tighter, and my web host was being a punk. I wasn’t getting any feedback from readers, leading me think everyone had (rightly) gone off to more fertile websites.

I also wasn’t entirely sold yet on Whitehorse’s full band dynamic, so when they announced their follow up Toronto date at Massey Hall — the MOST overrated venue in the city, if not the country — I skipped out on buying a ticket in the name of penny-pinching.

I justified seeing them two more times that year: once, the duo show with the erstwhile retired Kathleen Edwards opening in Port Perry (and it was free!), and another time in Ottawa at the historic National Arts Centre while I was in town visiting an old friend and fellow fan.

Although they came close, they never quite hit a public gig in Toronto in 2018, so I took a Whitehorse sabbatical that year. I likely would’ve taken 2019 off, too, given they had outgrown the best-sounding venues in the city and were moving on up to the bigger stages with the muddier sound systems, and ticket prices had inflated in tandem.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ Phoenix Concert Theatre

August 5, 2020April 22, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : April 20th, 2017 : : .

Memory’s a funny thing.

I’ve written (I think a couple of times) in earlier blog entries that this was Whitehorse‘s record release party for Panther In The Dollhouse.

I understand why I’m misremembering it as such. The band had been using social media to create some pre-release hype for the album throughout the recording sessions, making its release feel imminent. The lead single, Boys Like You, had been hit the airwaves three months prior. They’d previewed a couple of additional tracks from the disc at the end of the set, giving that exciting, brand-new feel. Luke Doucet and Melissa McClelland even used some in-between song banter to recognize and thank producer Gus van Go, who was in the audience (and I believe about 8-feet from where I was standing).

In retrospect, the biggest reason I likely made that mistake was because of how much this felt like the beginning of a new era for the group.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ [undisclosed]

July 22, 2020April 8, 2021 by haterhigh

To compliment the Whitehorse recording posted earlier this week, here’s a couple of songs from the archive, captured from the CBC Music Backstage Pass television program.

These tracks were recorded weeks before the release of their debut full length LP, The Fate of the World Depends on This Kiss at an undisclosed location (likely in rural Ontario, possibly at the Keelor family farm — but that’s merely speculation).

The videos are available on YouTube should you prefer a visual but if not, Mismatched Eyes (Boat Song) is recorded outdoors, presumably on the lawn of the interior cabin where Achilles’ Desire was captured, while a caramel and ash-coloured cat takes interest in the microphone cables, inches toward the couple, and eventually lies down comfortably at Melissa’s feet.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ Memorial Park

July 19, 2020April 8, 2021 by haterhigh

. : : August 12th, 2017 : : .

Having seen Whitehorse about half a dozen times before, you’d think they wouldn’t be able to surprise me. Especially for a free outdoor show in Port Hope, a quaint town about an hour and a quarter east of Toronto with a population of ~16,700, put on to celebrate Ontario’s 150th birthday.

I’d seen the band perform as a duo using looping pedals to build their songs up from the ground. More recently, I’d seen the band performing as a traditional four-piece, a configuration that seemed to be the new standard.

It was that iteration of the band I was expecting on that summery August evening, but the band pulled out a card that completely caught me off guard in the best way possible.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ Danforth Music Hall

October 27, 2016July 10, 2020 by haterhigh

. : : December 2nd, 2015 : : .

Not dead yet. Happy Halloween.

Live Recordings

Whitehorse @ Massey Hall

April 3, 2014July 10, 2020 by haterhigh

. : : March 2nd, 2013 : : .

I’ve held back on posting this recording for a while now for a couple of reasons.

First, it occurred only a week and a half before the birth of my son — so I was otherwise preoccupied much of the time. Secondly, the online hype you’ve read about the sound quality at Massey Hall is grossly overstated: its legendary status is more for the names and performances that have graced the stage rather than the quality of sound being pumped from the speakers. Third, the members of Whitehorse were making such a big deal of the performance, going so far as to name the entire tour and a EP of cover songs “The Road To Massey Hall” that I wasn’t convinced an official recording of the set wouldn’t be eventually released. And I wasn’t completely wrong, either; the band did sell a recording of Emerald Isle from this show to benefit the victims of the infamous Boston Marathon bombing victims.

Live Recordings