TARANTUELA with DEVIN CUDDY & THE SILVER HEARTS at the Horseshoe (370 Queen West), Friday (May 18), 9 pm. $10. 416-598-4753. See listing.
When the Cameron House changed management in 2010, the regulars worried that the Queen West landmark would turn its back on the artistic community it had given a home to since the early 80s.
But Mike McKeown and Cosmo Ferraro (nephew of original owner Paul Sanella) have done more than uphold the bar’s close-knit music and arts scene – they’re also fostering its next generation.
That next gen is on display on the Cameron House’s small front patio when I arrive to interview Tarantuela, who appear frequently on the venue’s back stage and, come tomorrow, become the third band to release an album on Cameron House Records. Lounging with Ferraro and Tarantuela’s Rob Viscardis and Steve Kerslake, I immediately recognize the bartender as lead singer/songwriter Jay Swinnerton.
“I moved to Toronto from Peterborough specifically to get involved with this scene, so it’s great to find a home here,” says Swinnerton. “I work here and live just across the street, so I’ve become pretty immersed in it all.”
Tarantuela’s “loose, rootsy, bluesy community vibe” fits the bar like a glove. Their upcoming debut album, Good Luck-Black Cat-Bad Luck, embodies the spontaneous friends-jamming-in-a-basement mentality of Bob Dylan and the Band’s legendary Basement Tapes. (The Band connection isn’t something they’re shying away from Swinnerton travelled to Woodstock and the Big Pink to help his friend Jeremy Kelly with an in-progress documentary about late organist Richard Manuel.)
Much of Good Luck-Black Cat-Bad Luck was recorded in a professional studio in Havelock (just outside Peterborough), but final track Rita May is proof perfect that the Cameron scene is alive and well.
“We recorded that one in the back room of the Cameron at 3 in the morning with 20 other musicians,” recounts Swinnerton. “I’d only been living here for a short time, but I called everyone I knew from the bar, some old and some new, and had them jam on it. We’d recorded a studio version, but it needed that big, drunken party thing to really work.
“It really sounds like an outgrowth of the scene here.”
music@nowtoronto.com | twitter.com/nowtorontomusic
