Canadian Music Week (and other things)

Hey!  It's been a fair bit of time since I last posted, I've been lazily making my way through the winter, and now it's time to start focusing.

First thing first, Canadian Music Week.  This is my first time at one of Canada's finest music festivals, and I'm pretty excited.  I'm planning on seeing lots of shows, talks, etc.  I'm also playing my own showcase, Wednesday March 20th at 10:00pm sharp, I'll be at the Cameron House, come on out if you can!

Next, my Ukulele project.  For Christmas I received a Ukulele, and took it upon myself to learn a song a week for the entire year.  I'm surprisingly up to week 9 and going strong!  So far I've covered Elvis, Hayden, The Cure, Irvin Berlin and others.  You can check out my project here at my Tumblr site.

Tune in Monday morning at 11am for a new song, in the mean time here's the last one I did, Bass Song by Hayden:




Hope all is well! Talk soon.

New Years Edition! News and Top 10 list!

I have a couple things to address today, first off, happy new year!  I had a lovely time hanging with friends on a horse farm in Coldwater Ontario.  Good times.  Also, for Christmas this year I got this wonderful little guy:

 

Yup, my very own Ukulele!  And it's all I've been playing for the last 2 weeks.  I love it so much, that tomorrow night (Sunday Jan 7th) I'll be playing a show at the Holy Oak, with only the Ukulele.  I'll play some old standards, maybe a couple Beatles tunes.  Should be fun! 

That brings me to my New Years resolution.  I started a new Tumblr account called "52 Songs Written By Other People".  (Click the title to go to the page).  I plan on learning a new songs every week and putting a video up!  I'm the worst at learning songs, so this will be a pretty big challenge.  Tune in this Monday, hopefully I'll have it ready!

Now finally, my end of year tradition, I give you my top 10 albums of 2012 (in no particular order).  Please check these out if you haven't all ready.

The Mouthbreathers- Appetite for Deconstruction

Godspeed You! Black Emperor- 'Allelujah! Don't Bend! Ascend!

  

Patrick Watson- Adventures in Your Own Backyard

Dirty Projectors- Swing Low Magellan

Lisa Bozikovic- This is How We Swim 

Grizzly Bear- Shields

  Evening Hymns- Spectral Dust

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers- Hard Times

Frank Ocean- Channel Orange

The Tallest Man on Earth- No Leaving Now

What were some of your favorites?  Leave them in the comments, I would love to hear some good new music! 

Tour and free NEW music!

Hey there people, how are things? Just wanted to update you on some very cool new news in the Shawn Clarke universe.

First and most important, I'm going on Tour! This is my second solo tour, you'll remember my first one was... quaint.  This time I'm bringing some friends along.  I had the pleasure of meeting Aaron Mangoff a few years back when I played a show in my home town of Orillia.  We communicated through the interwebs over a few years, and finally played a show together.  H'e really great.  Voice of an angel, that man has.  Christopher Thompson, I only had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks ago, but I've been checking out his music for a few months.  He's young, but plays the guitar like a man twice his age. 

And so the three of us will sally forth, on a 12 date tour.  Where?  Well, maybe this poster will answer your question:

2nd thing, the free music part.  To commemorate this tour, the three of us put together a little sampler of our music.  For me that includes two brand new recordings!  "Zombies, Clash, Cars and Kinks" and "A Song of Peace" were recorded by my good friend Ryan Warner.  You can listen and download them at http://autumntour.bandcamp.com/ or click the widget to the left of your screen!

Hopefully we'll see you in one of these towns.  If you have questions, don't hesitate to email me at shawnclarkemusic@gmail.com

See ya soon!

Indie Week

Hey there, long time no see. I just wanted to let you know about a great event happening this week. It's called... Indie Week! A bunch of great young bands perform for industry people, with one band going on to perform at Indie Week in Ireland! Sounds pretty good. While I don't normally go in for the pit bands against each other model, I feel like this is going to be a great chance to meet new people, and new acts.

 My first show is this Thursday, Oct 11th, at 9:15pm sharp. These things go by the book, so be there for 9!

And, in celebration of Indie Week, I have my 6 song free downloadable sampler available! You can download it to the left of the page, or by clicking on this Indie Week picture:

Also in Shawn Clarke news, I will be doing a 3 province tour in November! Keep checking back over the next week or so, and I'll have the dates up!!

Free Sampler update

Well, NXNE is officially over, but I feel like I got such a great reaction to my Free Sampler that I've decided to keep it up.  Since the show has come and gone, I've decided to change the title of the sampler, and make a different cover for it.  My apologies to Jessica Gordon (she created the fox/bird image), I have put this together myself, she would have definitely done a better job!  But here it is, feel free to download it and share it! (just click the picture).

Since I put up the free sample a couple weeks ago, it has been downloaded almost 100 times.  That's pretty good!  Thank you so much for sharing and enjoying the music!

NXNE update

Hey folks, just wanted to tell you how great my NXNE showcase went.  Well... that's pretty much it.  It was great.  I played a solo set to a very attentive audience, AND some of the people were there to see me who WEREN'T my friends!  Some of them download my NXNE Sampler (which you can still download by clicking this sentence!) and some of them had read the interview I did with The Examiner (Clicky clicky!).

I couldn't have asked for a better night, so thanks to The Central, The North By North East Fest, all the bands who played and everyone who came, you've all made me a happy man.

Balcony TV

Back in January, I filmed a spot for Balcony TV.  For those who don't know, Balcony TV is a music website set up in various cities around the world including Toronto.
I had trouble getting a band together for it, so Marty Smyth and I went in a performed a track from "Stray Birds" called "In Transit".  It was cold.  And very noisy.

Here it is!




A quick reminder, if you haven't downloaded my NXNE sampler (for free!)  You can still do it here, or on the playlist to your left. ANDNDNDNDND my NXNE showcase is a week today, Friday June 15th at Central (603 Markham St.), 1am.  Come one, come all.