The guy that occasionally pulls his act together to send me photos recently shot Twin Shadow at the Electric Owl club in Vancouver. Take a look-see at these fine shots and listen to some Twin Shadow.
For more photos by Tom Nugent, check out his website.
I'll spare you with the words here. Lately we've had story posts, recipes and travel tips. How about some nice photos for you to digest instead? If you're a frequent visitor of Love & Rum, you'll recognize the image below from a previous post about the J. Tillman / Slowcoustic cover album.
These photos were taken by Tom Nugent at a semi-recent show of Father John Misty's at The Commodore where he opened for The Walkmen (those photos coming later). I love the different looks and stages you get through this small selection of shots. From the top image in this post to the last, you can see the progression happen...
Enjoy!
It was a cold morning. Much colder than it should’ve been. You could tell that it would be a hot day, but the sun was yet to come over the mountains, so the sea remained a cold black from the night with a biting offshore wind.
I was travelling alone and had been in Mexico’s Michoacán state for about a week. I hadn’t met another gringo in this particular spot. There were already a handful of early-rising surfers in the lineup and the vibe was quiet and relaxed. Perhaps the rest of the crowd was as cold as I was and still waking up. I caught a smaller inside wave and rode it all the way into shore. I was loosening up my legs, but also milking a long ride in to enjoy the comfort of being above the frigid water for those few extra seconds. I kicked out to paddle back to the point and was joined by another surfer I took to be local heading out from shore.
“Goodmorning!” he said to me, grinning keenly.
“Buenos dias,” I replied.
“De dónde eres?” he asked.
“Canada,” I answered.
“Oh, I love Canada!” he declared in smooth English, still grinning. “I did studies in Vancouver!”
And thus, our long conversation began. You know how it goes… the name game of all the places, things, and people you mutually share with someone random you meet on the road. This particular young man was from Guadalajara and out on the coast for the weekend to surf. He was a novice surfer, but possessed that passion for waves that brought him on the long bus ride from his city every weekend.
“I had a job while I studied,” he continued as we sat together between sets. “It was at the girlie bar, near Hasting Street. How do you say, for stripping?’”
“Oh, yeah,” I laughed. “I know it. That seedy strip club on the Downtown East Side.”
“Yes!” my new friend exclaimed. “My boss, the owner, was so nice. He gave me an old Jeep while I was living there. I cleaned the bar at night shift and studied in the daytime. After some time he gave me new job that was underground from the bar. I was making those pills of drugs for him. How do you call it? Ecstasy?”
“Yeah, I believe it’s called ecstasy,” I answered, very entertained.
“Yes. It was a very good job. I love Vancouver.”
We shared some more waves and small talk in the lineup throughout that day. He was a really nice and excited little guy. The following day, he was back on the bus to Guadalajara and I never saw him again. But I’ll always remember the guy I met in the lineup at a remote Mexican point break who worked at a shady East Side strip joint while he was studying English in Canada and got promoted to pressing ecstasy pills in the basement.
Old friend, former maker of snowboard careers and all around good human being recently put together this short film. Titled, Captive, this was entirely shot from his beautiful condo in downtown Vancouver. About the process of shooting a short entirely from a box in the sky, Dano said,
“I’ve always believed that when you apply limitations to your process that the result is creativity. For the first year of my career I shot with nothing but a 50mm lens and as a result I found ways to solve the problems that arose from that. Limiting the physical space that I allowed myself to use photos from was a new way to define the boundaries of this project.”
Take a look-see and enjoy his newly found filmmaking prowess and well seasoned photographic eye.
While this short is filled with an incredible amount of beauty from a single location, one comedic highlight to watch for at the end is the gentleman on the balcony in his bright red grape smugglers. I went over to Dano's to sit with him and his lovely lady, Kim, over a morning coffe. There he was! Combing his hair with an afro pick in front of a mirror on the balcony. For an hour. The man stood there for a complete hour combing his hair. Apparently this is routine, and I for one feel Dano's property value should increase on account of this. If not, this world is not one I want to be a part of.
For more of Dano's work, visit his website here or like his Facebook page if you know what's good for your newsfeed.
This EP by Wake Owl just came out today and it's been on repeat a few times around here. The title track and album opener, Wild Country is the front runner after the first few listens.
Born and raised in California, Colyn Cameron of Wake Owl now calls Vancouver and Portland home. It's good to think that much of these songs could have been written while experiencing the mix of city and wilderness in British Columbia, our old home.
“With this EP I was really focused on just creating recordings I could be proud of and felt connected to as a group of songs. I wanted to capture and represent, in all its instrumentation and arrangement, what those songs mean to me.”
It looks like, at least for now, the whole album is available to stream off of SoundCloud. If you don't already subscribe to a service like Rdio (or Songza, GrooveShark, Spotify), do it. Rdio is just about the best thing to music discovery and listening that has happened in ages.
If you're on Rdio, come find me.
Check out Wake Owl's Facebook page, or learn a bit more about them with their bio on Vagrant's site.
