Tofino Concert News for September 2005
by Adam Buskard, Tofino

The following concerts are happening in Tofino in the month of September. Tickets are available at Tofitian, Esso and at the Common Loaf.

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The Bottom Feeders
Saturday, September 3, 2005
The Village Green
Free! 4pm

The Bottomfeeders have been playing music in and around Clayoquot Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island since 1990. The band was originally formed as a loose ensemble of musical traditionalists who experimented with a mix of influences from old folk ballads, celtic, bluegrass, and blues to rock. With various changes in the lineup came a bit of old time, country, and even polkas, leading to a unique blend of west coast roots music.

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Buckwheat Zydeco
Saturday, September 3, 2005
The Tofino Legion
Tickets $25, Doors 9pm

Zydeco maestro Stanley “Buckwheat” Dural, Jr was born in 1947 in Lafayette, La., a close-knit community where many black people express their Creole heritage by speaking French, and by playing and dancing to zydeco. This hybrid genre blends Afro-Caribbean rhythms, and blues, with soul, rock, country and the French-rooted Cajun music of the Creoles’ white neighbors. As the son of a zydeco accordionist, Buckwheat grew up steeped in this culture, and also absorbed Lafayette’s prodigious output of blues and Gulf Coast “swamp pop.” He began his professional career as an r&b sideman, playing keyboards for the likes of Joe Tex, Barbara Lynn and Gatemouth Brown. In 1971, Dural began leading his own r&b band, Buckwheat and the Hitch-hikers, playing the contemporary sounds of such popular bands as Parliament Funkadelic and Earth, Wind & Fire. The group scored a regional hit with “It’s Hard to Get.” By the mid-’70s, South Louisiana began to experience a grass-roots cultural renaissance as zydeco and Cajun music, once scorned as overly ethnic, gained appreciation as treasured cultural resources. As the demand for zydeco grew, Dural was offered a gig playing organ and piano with the King of Zydeco, the late, great Clifton Chenier. Buck (as he is also known) worked hard and learned all that he could. After three years of touring, recording and accordion apprenticeship, he left in 1979 to lead his own group, Buckwheat Zydeco and the Ils Sont Partis Band. Like Chenier, Buckwheat has continued to blend traditional Creole zydeco with the latest black-contemporary styles, drawing on all of his rich and varied musical experience.

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The Chicharones
Saturday, September 10, 2005
The Tofino Legion
Tickets $10, Doors 9pm

The Chicharones, composed of Vancouver residents Sleep and Josh Martinez are tearing up the mouths and hearts of all who come in contact.

Named after the spicy crispy deep fried pork skin of the same name, los chicharrones, the musical version, are the rebirth of fresh, combining humour, harmony and a sense of showmanship, with a strength of song writing that defies the indy-rap genre.

With a heavy emphasis on humor, melody and old fashioned songwriting, The Chicharones have created an exceptionally unified sound that features strong lyrics, fluid storytelling and captivating hooks that’ll get stuck in your head like gum on shoes.

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Freeflow
Saturday, September 17, 2005
The Tofino Legion
Tickets $12, Doors 9pm

There is a pocket of groove reverberating out of Vancouver’s Eastside. Anything goes, from punk to funk, live to sample, structure to stream. Freeflow has been distributing its brand of funk, soul, brother for the past 5 years, most recently expanding it’s influence to the North American stage. An eclectic collective, Freeflow masterfully blends soul, hip-hop and rock. This is music for and of the people.
Performance is a key element of the Freeflow experience and with the release of their first cd, Barfly Sessions, its become dancing room only at Vancouver’s larger live venues. As Mark Bignell from cfro 102.7fm, Radio Bandcouver, put it, “to miss them live is to grossly cheat yourself of easily one of the best live bands [that] Vancouver has to offer.”

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Sweatshop Union
Saturday, September 24, 2005
The Tofino Legion
Tickets $15, Doors 9pm

Sweatshop Union is not just a hip hop group with diverse vocal styles and crisp, soulful beats - they are the breath of fresh air that hip hop fans have been waiting for. Originally operating as four independent units (Kyprios, Dirty Circus, Creative Minds, and Innocent Bystanders), the Sweatshop Union Collective came together to offer an alternative to the seemingly repetitive, negative-natured released of rap music.