After tonight, there will be two more shows in the Summer Sounds in the Square series at Rainy Lake Square, and next week will feature a band that only does a couple of shows a season, given that one member doesn’t live in Canada full-time.
Brent Newman lived in the Rainy River District before relocating to the UK but returns each summer to a cabin at Rocky Inlet and to the band that formed over 10 years ago.
“I lived out here for nearly a year and a half in 2014, 2015,” said guitar player and vocalist Brent Newman. “And I think we just wanted to just start playing some music. A bit kind of like the sort of idea like The Basement Tapes with The Band and [Bob] Dylan.”
It became a recurring event to come together and play music regularly in a shack on Brent’s property.
“We had a shack on the property I was on, that me and Jim and RobRoy and Bill, we all kind of did it up as a kind of a hangout space, and we played there every week, some weekends,” Brent said.
“We were pretty religious about it. We went all year, kind of as a fun thing to do. Just play some tunes, like our favourite songs that you wouldn’t normally hear a band do, kind of roots Canadiana or Americana stuff, and then we started writing some of our own, and it just kind of took off from there, really, and we started playing a few shows in town.”
The band features Jim Newman on bass and vocals, Bill Shine on drums, Brent Newman on guitar and vocals and RobRoy Donaldson on guitar and vocals.
According to the band’s bio: “When the four musicians play the honest music they love—think The Band, Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Exile-era Stones, Jackson Browne, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch, the Avett Brothers, Wilco and more, as well as a sprinkling of originals handcrafted in local garages—hearing them will fill a gap in your musical experience that that you’ll suddenly realize you were missing all this time.”
“I had a band in England, I still do, and we made a few albums; one of them had come out,” Brent said. “We were playing some of my original stuff, and then that sort of morphed into me and Jim, RobRoy and Bill starting to write some of our own stuff, which has worked out great. So, we tend to play that a lot, a lot of that stuff live. A lot of it’s kind of focused on local, you know, folklore and landmarks.”
“I come out in the spring just to open the place up because I’ve got a cabin up near Jim on Rocky Inlet, and we end up just jamming that week,” Brent said. “Usually most days, you know, beers and guitars and just hanging out, no shows. But then we kind of then talk about ‘Oh, in the summer when I come back, you know, we should get some shows in the diary.’ So yeah, we played most places in town really that can be played.”
This year they’ve got three shows on the books, which is a stretch beyond what they normally do.
They play Rainy Lake Square on Wednesday, Hallett Brewing on Friday and then at the Fort Frances Royal Canadian Legion on Saturday.
This year marks the third in a row they’ve played at the local craft brewery.
“The last two years we’ve played at the Hallett, it’s such a small place, and it was kind of ‘can we fit in there with the guitars and amps and drums and the whole nine yards?’ And we found that we could and it doesn’t take much to pack that place,” Jim said. “So yeah, we’ve played to packed houses there before, and we’re going back this year, then we’re going to the Legion Saturday night.”
The Legion this year marks a first but for Brent holds a piece of history as well.
“That’s kind of exciting for me because my grandpa, I think, helped build that place and it was his go-to local bar so it’s kind of got some nice memories for me and Jim there.”
Brent and Jim are nephew and uncle, though the age difference changes the relationship a bit.
“Jim is my uncle; he’s kind of the kid brother of my dad, he’s sort of between my dad’s and my age,” Brent said. “So, half uncle, half brother.”
Jim, RobRoy and Bill have all played together since they were in high school, when they played in other bands as well as pit bands for musicals and other things. They also play together in The Faculty who performed earlier in the series at the Square.
With the older songs they like to play, comes an older sound in general.
“We try and keep the instrumentation kind of classic,” Brent said. “RobRoy sometimes plays a mandolin, and I play acoustic guitar, and we’ve got electrics. We tend to have pretty old vintage gear. You know, like the drums are vintage, the amps are vintage. So it kind of all lends itself to that kind of sound, and old effects pedals and RobRoy even makes some of his own effects pedals for his guitar. It’s got that kind of classic sound, not too much overdrive, just sort of classic, clean, crunchy guitars, and really the main focal point really is the singing. We try to do at least two- or three-part vocals. We all sing, even Bill. So you know, there’s the Crosby, Still, Nash, and Young vibe going on too, and we do a lot of that stuff with our own tunes as well. There’s a lot of harmony. That’s the sound.”
Jim said he likes to play older music that people don’t necessarily get to hear live all the time.
“I get real joy out of playing stuff that no one would hear anywhere else,” he said. “You know we play some pretty obscure stuff, and Brent often says, ‘If I was walking down the street and I heard a band do that song, I’d definitely go in.’”
They noted that over the course of the three shows they’ll be playing this week they have a different set list arranged for each one so even if you go to the concert in Rainy Lake Square on Wednesday you’ll hear some different stuff on Friday at Hallett Brewing and on Saturday at the Legion.
“We’re not playing the same set in each place,” Brent said. “We’ll be playing different songs in every venue. So hopefully, there’s still a reason for people to come to all of them if they wanted to.”
Summer Sounds in the Square featuring Rough Cut Pine starts at 6 p.m. on Wednesday, Aug. 12. Music fans are encouraged to bring their own chair and some money for food and drink. Tonight’s show features Thinking of Pinky; for more about that band, see yesterday’s Fort Frances Bulletin.
