BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition August 2018

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FOOD Oh Lord, won´t you buy me a custom guitar? This article is in standard tuning. Early in life, I fell in love. Holding her between arms with total inexperience. My leg near her waist. Right hand close to the bridge, securing our proximity. Instinctively the left hand went for the neck pressing the strings down and sliding the fingers fret by fret. What I heard left me speechless. We fused. It all starts with a simple guitar and as we progress in both technique and personal finances, we move into the world of high-end and custom made acoustic guitars. According to Mike Colina- Fanthrope, Guitar Department Manager at Long & McQuade, these excellent winter companions range from $2,500 all the way up to $12,000. By Carlos Oen Those at the top are “always behind glass.” Just like Excalibur, waiting to be freed from stone by someone with a noble heart and a healthy paycheck. StatsCanada reveals that there are close to 130,000 potential Vancouverite knights living in this comfortable realm. A vibrant music scene with a productive recording industry, as well as its proximity to Asia makes Vancouver a competitive market for high-end guitars. Just recently Chris Martin, CEO of F. C. Martin & Co. was at Rufus Guitar Shop showcasing his legendary products. Three brands dominate high-end acoustics global sales: Taylor, Martin and Gibson. With more than 20 years of guitar expertise, Colina-Fantrope is able to precisely narrow down the big player´s tonal qualities. “Gibson would be a nice full sound. Warm is another way to describe it. Taylor is very clear. Martin is very dynamic. They are all quite different in their approach,” he says. Diluted in a 35 to 55-year-old male-dominated market there is an almost unattended segment. “A lot of females don’t like the big body instruments,” says Colina-Fantrope. “They tend to stick with something smaller that is more comfortable to play. Taylor has smaller instruments but not in the high-end. Companies need to respond to that. Females are half of our population.” Guitars are increasingly finding in women overwhelmingly talented ambassadors such as Taylor Swift. Adrian O´Brien works as V.P. of Marketing at Prestige Guitars, a clearly focused local guitar company with global reach and mindset. “Most female players that are serious players are going to want the same guitars that any other player would,” he says. Have you listened to Kaki King? She is the Joan of Arc among knights. Excalibur jumps into her hands. “Kaki King is a player that is on our endorsement roster. She is a percussive fingerstyle player — Ground breaking. She is referred to as one of the best guitar players on the planet right now,” says O´Brien. But there are also men who travel and prefer smaller body instruments. Meredith Coloma, local Luthier at Coloma Guitars with ten years of guitar making and producer of the Vancouver International Guitar Festival, knows that well. “It is something that I built a lot of my career on. I make smaller instruments with shorter scale lengths for the comfort of smaller hands,” says Coloma. Achieving gender equality is not the only challenge high-end acoustic guitars face. Our appetite for exotic woods has taken a toll. In response to heavy deforestation at the beginning of the year, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) introduced restrictions on all rosewood, used to some extent on most guitars. “Of course, companies are looking for alternatives and generally speaking they are moving to other woods such as pau ferro and granadillo, which are South American woods,” says O´Brien, who knows the global guitar wood situation. Environmental friendly Vancouverites are pointing to a solution. When questioned about the rosewood shortage Coloma seems not affected. For the construction of her guitars, she has been using rocklite, a wood composite produced in the U.K. “I also use non-endangered wood species for my builds. Maple form B.C. I like to use local woods like cedar, sitka spruce, Engelmann spruce and figured maple,” says the luthier. Endangered South American woods, such as rosewood, may find time to recover thanks to Canada´s national emblem. “Maple is very bright. Has a very specific characteristic that balances our mahogany bodies. We use it in order to create a really beautiful range of tone for the guitar,” says Prestige´s chief marketer, Adrian O´Brien. “Luckily it’s not in short supply or anything like that. And again, for us it’s huge because it’s in our backyard.” 10 August 2018
COMEDY NEAL BRENNAN UNBURDENED AND READY TO MESS UP THE UPHOLSTERY GRAEME WIGGINS Neal Brennan has always been on the cutting edge of comedy. Fame and success in one arena can sometimes hamper success in others. It can be hard to move on and fight the burden of the past. For comedian Neal Brennan, co-creator of the legendary sketch show, Chappelle’s Show, finding his place in stand up required a new take to reintroduce himself and let people know where he was coming from. That was Brennan’s 2017 Netflix special, Neal Brennan: 3 Mics, a special in which he had three microphones set up and alternated between them. The left mic was for one liners and short Twitter-like observations. The right mic was observational stand up. The centre mic dealt with serious stuff like his handling of depression and issues with his father. It was an original take that got pretty emotional at times but also vented that through the other two mics. Even though he’s embarked on this new journey, people are inevitably still inclined to bring up his past successes, something he’s fine with. “Sometimes people will be like, ‘Sorry to ask you about Chapelle Show,’” he says. “But I guess there are reasons why I could be tired of it. I understand why it’s interesting to people. That’s a level of entitlement I haven’t reached. I hope to get there someday though.” Upon returning to stand up in the wake of Chappelle’s Show, he also had a fairly popular podcast with fellow comedian Moshe Kasher called the Champs in which he took his immersion in African American comedy and the music scene as a means to talk to people of colour who he had on as guests about issues in a frank way. In his words, “I liked talking to people of colour in a comfortable way. Racially, I’m pretty open I guess. So it seemed like I was being racist. No, we were just talking to people of colour in a way that wasn’t stilted or tense. And some of it was tense, talking about issues; I don’t know that we were ahead of our time. It was things that were relevant to me and relevant to the guest.” If the Champs provided an outlet for pure comedy, he still didn’t feel like people really understood him. “I think what it was, I hadn’t been doing stand up that long. And it takes awhile for your body to get used to it. So I presented on stage as sort of tense. And 3 Mics was a way of explaining that tension and explaining my personality and giving people a bit of a back-story. So people could understand who I was.” With his new tour, Here We Go, he’s a little more open to focus on the stand up side of things. “It’s just stand up. People say I’m more animated than I’ve ever been, more physical, more energetic. But it’s more the right hand mic, just me talking for an hour, stating my opinions. It’s more propulsive.” It allows Brennan to do something better known in classic bits of Def Jam comedy: fucking the stool. “Guess what everybody, guess who’s fucking the stool in this one. It’s your friend Neal B. Fucking the stool. It’s a joke, kind of, about fucking the stool. Nevertheless fucking the stool is fucking the stool. So yeah congratulations to me.” Catch Neal Brennan live August 16 at the Rio Theatre. August 2018 11
Page 3 and 4: August‘18 PUBLISHER BeatRoute Mag
Page 5 and 6: CITY BRIEFS! Honk! Vancouver Outsid
Page 8 and 9: Andrew Grassie Tempera Demonstratio
Page 12 and 13: CITY 12 INTERNATIONAL OVERDOSE AWAR
Page 14 and 15: GRASSIFIEDS JODIE EMERY A DISCUSSIO
Page 16 and 17: MUSIC BEACH HOUSE FINDING SERENITY
Page 18 and 19: MUSIC 18 RIO THEATRE 1660 EAST BROA
Page 20 and 21: MUSIC HOT SNAKES THRASHING AGAINST
Page 22 and 23: ELDER RIDING THE WINDS OF CHANGE TO
Page 24 and 25: FILM EIGHTH GRADE BO BURNHAM REVISI
Page 26 and 27: 03 Greedo - God Level Average Sex -
Page 28 and 29: FEATURED CONCERTS VICTORIA, BC BROK
Page 30 and 31: DANIEL CAESAR • JESSIE REYEZ •
Page 32 and 33: Free live music every night of the
Page 34: NEW LOCATION FOR 2018! NEW MOON RIS

BeatRoute Magazine BC Edition August 2018

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