ANNIE SILVESTER/Bullet News
The Sanctuary in Ridgeway was home to a show that combined the local talent of Beth Moore with three-piece pop group The Balconies that hail from Toronto.
Moore, a Port Colbourne native and the winner of the Niagara Music Awards Artist of the Year, describes her music as soul-folk. The 23 year old’s journey to the stage is incredible to hear.
“I actually started playing music when I was 18. I didn’t play any music before that. I was actually very unmusical. I never took a music class in high school. I had just written it off and I told myself I am not musical. I suck.”
Life changed dramatically when her parents bought her a guitar, though.
“I had three chords that I had known for literally the span of my life I guess and I had poetry that I had written in high school for a class. So I put the poetry to these three chords and I played my first gig three weeks later.”
Moore tries to explain the miraculous musical transformation as “a gift from God” saying literally it wasn’t there and then all of a sudden it was there. But it also was the fact that once she started doing her own material it came from the heart and that was a turning point.
“It’s been an avalanche ever since. Like this is what I am made to do and the path has always been clear this way. “
As an unsigned artist she has been enjoying marketing herself and not only has a current album out called The Road, but three music videos online. She’s in no hurry to get signed either.
“I have fun doing the business side and until someone comes along and really really cares about the music and not just making money off of me I am going to continue to try and do this independently.”
Moore says her biggest goals are not fame and fortune but gaining an audience.
“We all want someone to listen to us but I feel like I have something to say. I have a message that will hopefully help people and make them feel peace and love because I feel like the world is very broken.”
Moore currently is touring throughout Ontario and can be followed at www.bethmooremusic.com.
After Moore’s touching performance on stage, headliners The Balconies picked up the pace considerably for the crowd with their Rock/Pop act featuring brother and sister team Jacquie and Stephen Neville (guitar, bass and vocals) and Liam Jaeger (vocals and drums).
The trio that originally hail from the Ottawa area got together when Jacquie met Liam.
“Steve and I are siblings and have always been playing music together since we were very young and then while I went off to University I met Liam and he was studying classical guitar while I was studying violin and we just clicked and started playing music and we have never looked back.”
The group definitely brings the rock vibe to the stage but they have an interesting mix of their classical roots that they still incorporate into some of their songs. Liam comments “I used to be off rock music but then when I met Jackie she got me back into it so it’s been kind of back and forth and now we do both. We still do these sort of chamber arrangements whenever we need to play acoustic shows with guitar, viola and double bass and we arrange our songs for those instruments. So we still kind of have the best of both worlds.”
The Balconies’ career really took off when they won a contest in Ottawa called the Big Money Shot put on by a local radio station. The win meant money could roll into the coffers to get them to the next level. Jacquie explains.
“We were so lucky to participate in this and get some funding for our band. So we were able to shoot our new music video for Kill Count which we just released and are very happy with and we got to buy a new van so now we’re not breaking down in every city.”
Liam talks about how far the band has come. Their first album being recorded in their Ottawa apartment and their latest full length now completed with the help of well-known producer Jon Drew (Tokyo Police Club, Fucked Up) not to mention funding and as he puts it “all this great stuff right at our fingertips!” To see them live now, raw energy would best describe the scene and the future looks bright as well with dates planned for a couple of big festivals including their first over the border gig “South by Southwest “ in Austin, Texas.
For more coverage on both bands please go to IKFADTV.com this week.
