Band’s festival crowd hits a new high
Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer’s Blues Bash audience likely to be less stoned than those at Lake Cowichan gig
Shawn Hall of The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer doesn’t mind audiences smoking a little weed.
But it appears the High Times Cannabis Cup Canada in Lake Cowichan was too much of a good thing.
Hall’s band — which plays the Vancouver Island Blues Bash on Sunday night — performed to a disappointingly small crowd at the Lake Cowichan festival last Friday. As well as music, the four-day event featured a cannabis growers’ exhibition.
“We’ve never been part of a festival like that. Oh God, what could I tell you that could go to print? I could tell you a lot of stuff that wouldn’t,” Hall said.
“High Times rebranded the festival and turned it into a giant weed-culture, everything-to-dowith-marijuana festival. And we’re not a stoner band.”
The event at Laketown Ranch Music and Recreation Park, which ran Aug. 24 to 27, hosted such notables as Wyclef Jean, Lil’ Kim and Arrested Development. The Lake Cowichan Gazette reported “very small crowds,” with only 200 people attending Sunday night’s performance by Jean, a headline act.
Multiple last-minute additions to the roster hinted that High Times Cannabis Cup Canada had encountered logistical problems. Many post-show comments on the event’s Facebook page complained of poor organization and service.
Hall said The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer played to about 40 or 50 people.
“I don’t want to be negative and say we didn’t have a great crowd, but none of the bands really did,” said the Nanaimo-based singer and harmonica player.
Part of the problem, he said, was the big emphasis on the partaking of cannabis wares available on site.
“Maybe everyone was sampling all the different marijuana products they could possibly ingest. It was insane. They were on the next level. There was THCbased cotton candy, oils. Plus it was the Cannabis Cup, so it was the best of the best.
“It was the most stoner festival I’ve every been a part of in terms of marijuana culture.”
The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer is a Juno-winning soulrock duo also featuring guitarist Matthew Rogers. For their Sunday night show at the Vancouver Island Blues Bash, the pair will be joined by guest drummer Dicky Neptune.
Despite being a two-piece, the band, which has just released the album Apocalipstick, manages to get a big sound.
Hall uses pedals to add extra percussion; Rogers fattens the sonic texture by playing drums with his feet and using an octavedropping guitar pickup that allows him to hit bass notes.
For the Blues Bash gig, Hall will use a a 1973 Garnet bass amplifier he just bought in Nanaimo. It’s just 40 watts, allowing him to get overdriven sound when he plays blues harp through it. “It’s crunchy, it’s awesome. It looks the part, too. It is a giant, black bass amp,” he said.
Hall and Rogers teamed up in Vancouver about 11 years ago. They began playing restaurants, such as Falconetti’s on Commercial Drive and Main on Main. The pair were initially a folk-blues act, but soon amped up their show after patrons started dancing.
Hall first got hooked on harmonica listening to the folk blues of Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee. He started playing in blues bands in his native Toronto. Rogers, who studied jazz at Vancouver’s Capilano College, writes film scores on the side.
Hall believes their diverse musical backgrounds jibe well in The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer.
“If you take the street grit of the blues, soul and funk scene that I grew up with in Toronto and mix it with someone that knows orchestration, then it kind of spells out how our records sound.”
For Apocalipstick, The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer added more musicians, including seven singers, a drummer and a keyboardist.
Having tried this, Hall said, The Harpoonist & the Axe Murderer will likely shift back to a sparser two-man sound.
“But it’s good to experiment. All life, it’s a playground, right?” he said.