Weather Station duets - Dakota Tavern (Feb 15/13)

Tamara Lindeman was the brainchild behind this intimate night of duets from a group of familiar faces from the Toronto indie music scene. Tamara plays a key role in Bruce Peninsula but takes center stage as a solo artist under the moniker The Weather Station. However on this evening she was more than willing to share the limelight with deserving artists that run within the circle. For as she mentioned off the top during her introduction, music is something often written from a very personal, and even lonely, space yet it then becomes an integral part of a musician's identity and the conversations that they then have. She looked at this duet project as a way to open up that conversation from the beginning. This evening was the display of the fruits of this attempt.

It began in an understated manner as Tamara simply went from soundchecking to picking her small acoustic guitar lightly until the crowd, diners and drinkers alike, realized and cut conversation completely. She played two lovely solo songs to set the mood before inviting her first guest of the early evening show - Simone Schmidt (who plays in One Hundred Dollars and Fiver). Coupling this country twang voice with Tamara's excellent, but delicate, sound worked amazingly well as they both picked away. Things were off to a sweet start and they did a second number together before passing the baton to Misha Bower.

Misha and Tamara must be used to singing together from their roles in Bruce Peninsula so it wasn't surprising to hear the great harmonies they could produce with just the two of them. After a tune accompanied by guitar they put away all instruments for a gutsy a capella number which wowed us all.

Continuing with the BP band members the second bearded man in command from that band, Matt Cully, accompanied for a nice song called Brothers and Sisters (which he admitted to giving to writing for this purpose and then retaking it for his forthcoming solo project). Misha chimed in on the following as the three of them sang Chair on Fire.

The man going by Marine Dreams joined next. The first song was fraught with confusion as things sounded amiss but it wasn't until partway through the song that they realized his guitar was tuned differently. Once that was rectified they carried forward, completing the song and playing two more.

To return from the intermission we once again had to notice the soft strumming coming from the stage and silence soon fell. Steve Lambke aka Baby Eagle (aka Constantines member) was up next and their duet was quite engaging as well.

As Steve left a duo of females took his place - one named Felicity, though I didn't recognize either. They sang a poem converted to song as a threesome before Tamara stepped aside to allow them to sing an old standard that Tamara herself admitted stole the show to that point. These three petite females then sang a song backed by the towering Afie Jurvanen (Bahamas) on guitar. The juxtaposition between Afie's deep voice and the much higher Tamara's actually worked extremely well.

To close out the evening Tamara gushed about Ryan Driver's songwriting as she introduced him to play piano and sing, as well as a man named Charles to play the stand-up bass and sing as well. They then displayed this songwriting ability on the first song of the evening to feature any instruments beyond the acoustic guitar. It worked. To conclude the evening they played a song "we all wished we'd written" and wrapped the night up with a quick-stop ending that brought a rousing round of applause.

As was pointed out it is not that easy to get all of these talented people into a room together at the same time. It was a real treat to see the depth of the talent in even this small sampling of the Toronto pool of artists. We should all feel the bump of civic pride.