Sid Williams Blue Circle Series: Brendan McLeod & The Fugitives

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Friday, May 8th, 2015
7:30 PM

ABOUT BRENDAN

Canadian SLAM champ & Storyteller

�One of the most dynamic and intelligent performance poets on the globe� � Chair, Spoken Word Canada

�Canada�s top SLAM poetry spieler� � CBC

A novelist, playwright, musician, and poet, Brendan McLeod performs literature in many different guises. His first novel, The Convictions of Leonard McKinley, was longlisted for the 2008 Re:Lit Award for fiction. His first play, The Big Oops, recently premiered as part of his curatorship in residence at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, and toured the country in 2012.

His music group The Fugitives was nominated for a 2007 Canadian Folk Music Award. As a poet and oral storyteller, he has performed over 400 shows in the past 5 years. He is a former Canadian SLAM poetry champion and World SLAM runner-up. He teaches spoken word at Langara College, and is an active youth educator with a variety of organizations, including: Wordplay, the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, Travellin� SLAM, and FreeWrite! He was the 2012 Poet of Honor at the Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

Brendan�s latest project is a full-length storytelling show called, �The Fruit Machine�. A comedic show centered on the question: �To what length do we, as Canadians, go to protect our families?� It draws on subjects as disparate as the BC court system, Robertson Davies, Facebook, and Iron Maiden. In firm disagreement with the words of William Lyon Mackenzie King, �Canadians in all their habits are essentially a temperate people� he explores the more hilarious aspects of our nation�s families. A combination of story and song � with a bit of topical SLAM poetry � Brendan�s monologue is ultimately a meditation on the natures of responsibility and love.

Brendan has a BA (Honors with Distinction) in Philosophy from the University of Victoria, and an MA in Philosophy from the University of Waterloo.

He is a non-stop, high-energy storyteller equally at home with social and political commentary, family histrionics, surreal love poems, obscure adventure stories, and powerful personal stories. He runs the gamut of performance poetry, making him an effective live performer and an artist well equipped for collaboration.
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ABOUT THE FUGITIVES

Straddling the line between songwriting and poetry

�One of the best events we�ve ever had� right up there with Allen Ginsberg and Ken Kesey.� � Executive Director, Dylan Thomas Festival (UK)

To record their first release in three years, Vancouver-based indie folk collective The Fugitives was just hoping to stay home. After eight years of touring Canada and Europe, they�d drained most of the romance out of cramped cars, long roads, and eating sandwiches out of gas station refrigerators. SO they surprised themselves by trucking three thousand kilometers to record Everything Will Happen, their new full-length album from Light Organ Records, in Toronto. A big reason was the chance to work with producer John Critchley (Dan Mangan, Elliot BROOD, Amelia Curran). The other might be that they feel most at home in new territory.

When not touring as musicians, current front men and songwriters Brendan McLeod and Adrian Glynn are active in other artistic pursuits. McLeod is an award winning novelist and former Canadian SLAM poetry champion, while Glynn is a working actor who received rave reviews for his role in Chelsea Hotel, a play based on the songs and poems of Leonard Cohen. Their band is similarly eclectic, boasting prominent former members like Mark Berube and CR Avery, and a current rotating cast of supporters that includes violin-looping prodigy Hannah Epperson, multi-instrumentalist Steve Charles, and renowned actor Benjamin Elliot, alongside a host of multi-instrumentalists whose style range from bluegrass to jazz.

This diversity has carried over to their records and live performances. Their first full-length received a Canadian Folk Music Award nomination for �Pushing the Boundaries� of contemporary roots music, and their follow-up was praised for being �eclectic and exciting� (see), �poignant� (Uptown), and �infectious� (CBC). They�ve gone on to sell out shows at venues as diverse as the Vienna Literary Festival, the Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival, and the Vancouver Jazz Festival, while maintaining a frequent spot on the Canadian folk festival circuit. As McLeod puts it, �We�re like Broken Social Scene. But acoustic, and way less famous.&

Everything Will Happen is the follow-up to this summer�s four song EP, Bigger than Luck, which charted internationally on CMJ and rode the !earshot national folk instrumentation while narrowing the songwriting focus. McLeod and Glynn co-wrote the songs, halving their usual number of writers, and brought long-term members in afterwards to flesh out the tunes musically. The result is their fullest sound to date, an effort that combines the lyrical intimacy of singer-songwriters with the festive atmosphere of old collaborators reuniting. �While it�s fun sitting around our living rooms writing horn lines with our mouths, it wouldn�t sound too great on a recording,� shrugs Glynn. �Thank God for talented friends.�

And now, on to more gas station sandwiches.

�Despite their all-acoustic lineup, The Fugitives bring enough energy to the stage to light up a small city� The East Van quartet conjures up a sound that�s like the missing link between Leonard Cohen, the Pogues, and the immortal shorty Shitstain.� � Georgia Straight

�The Fugitives are capable of achieving dizzying, Arcade Fire-ish crescendos, replete with parallel melodies, complex harmonies and brimming torrents of emotion.� � Uptown Magazine

�This show is simply brilliant.� � CBC

�The four part vocals are sensational�each of the Fugitives has the talent, voice and charisma to front their own band.� � Edmonton Sun

MEMBERS PRE-SALE JULY 29 AT 10 AM
ON SALE TO PUBLIC AUGUST 5 AT 10 AM

http://sidwilliamstheatre.com/2015/05/brendan-mcleod-the-fugitives/