Live at Newlands Pavilion, Part One: Folk by Bob MacKenzie & Poem de Terre

In all, there were twelve concerts with two bands performing at each, plus a two hour concert featuring Carlos del Junco, Canada's award winning bluesman, on harmonica with his band.

About this CD

Live at Newlands Pavilion, Part One features the softer, more folksy side of poet Bob MacKenzie and the band Poem de Terre. Performing members of Poem de Terre are Gary Barratt (drums), Steve Gillen (guitar, vocals), Bob MacKenzie (spoken word, percussion), Kathleen McMaster (vocals, percussion), Kerry-Lee McMaster (vocals, percussion), Tyler Tryon (bass), Lorne Whitby (keyboards), and Alex Young (guitar, vocals).

About Poem de Terre

Poem de Terre is a multi-disciplinary ensemble melding live folk music and spoken word with contemporary and more established musical forms. Begun in the summer of 1993 by the six artists performing in Beyond the Light, the ensemble now known as Poem de Terre has evolved organically to develop a sound and style unique to the Kingston music scene, featuring a strong repertoire of original material as well as rearranged versions of music and spoken word pieces previously performed or recorded by other artists.

While the musical style of Poem de Terre's material crosses all genres, at heart the music is folk. Building upon this foundation of folk music, Poem de Terre draws upon many influences to create music for the new millenium.

As much as the music, words are central to Poem de Terre's work, bringing stories and ideas to the community in the form of live performance.

Poem de Terre features an ever-changing ensemble cast, ranging in size from 4 to 12 members on stage depending on the occasion (more than 40 people have performed as part of Poem de Terre through the years). The one constant is group leader Bob MacKenzie, around whose poetry the group was founded.

The Poem de Terre philosophy

It's good to be creative and to contribute your ideas; it's also good to listen to others and to learn from your colleagues.

Where no one is the star, each one gets to shine as part of the whole. Respect for one's self, respect for one's colleagues, respect for the audience -- all are part of a professional attitude.

Doing the best one can is good; perfectionism is not.

We are professionals. Poem de Terre is a business. However, if we cannot have a good time doing what we do, and if we cannot impart that feeling to the audience, then it is not worth doing.

As well as a business, we are also a community and an integral part of the larger community in which we live.

Poem de Terre is about saying something worthwhile and it is about love.

About Bob MacKenzie

A widely published Canadian poet, songwriter and arts journalist, Bob MacKenzie has for almost forty years expressed his art in a multi-media format involving printed, spoken, and sung words; performance; and multi-media visual art involving photography, painting, print making, and collage.

Drawing upon a tradition of art that originates before historic recollection, Bob considers all of the so-called arts to be part of a greater whole.

Bob considers that all art, originally used in ritual and religion and to express the news and morés of culture, is simply Story. The choice the artist makes is, at root, in which mode to tell that story.

Based upon this philosophy, Bob believes that the choice to paint, write a novel, play music, make a sculpture, or produce any form of art is simply a choice of media.

This unified tradition of the arts is the basis for Bob's multi-media approach, integrating his written and spoken words with various other artistic media.

Bob's literary, theatre, and music reviews have appeared in academic and literary journals, been published in major newspapers across Canada, been aired on local radio and television stations as well as regional and national CBC Radio, and been published on several sites on the internet.

Since 1995, Bob has written Sound Bytes, a music review column especially for the World Wide Web, with a focus on music with a traditional or "roots" component, including folk, blues, jazz, and country music.

In addition to his print publications, Bob is a performer and founder of the performance group Poem de Terre, and it is around his poetry and stories that the eclectic spoken and sung folk-rock sound of Poem de Terre has evolved.

Discography

2006: War & Love, compact disc, 18 songs [16 original]

2002: Live at Newlands Pavilion, Part One: Folk, compact disc, 12 songs (recorded in Summer of 2001) [10 original]

2002: Live at Newlands Pavilion, Part Two: Rock, compact disc, 13 songs (recorded in Summer of 2001) [all original]

1999: Assume Nothing, compact disc, 20 songs [all original]

1995: Pyramid, 4 track recording on cassette, 9 songs [all original]

1994: Windfall, 4-track recording on cassette, 8 songs [all original]

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