New website on the internet

The time has come. We now officially own a place on the internet called http://tribehouse.org. Yup, we've got our very own site where we have a place to keep our podcasts, posts, events, and all the other stuff that happens.

We'd love to get your input on it, so while you're on the internet you might as well pop on over to see some of the latest musings here: http://tribehouse.org.

Thanks to Google and Blogspot for hosting us the last couple of months for free though. Always a good time.

Lille Gard Compilation and random video

Lots of people have been asking "What is Lille Gard". Fair question. So our friend Joel Thiessen created a great little 1 minute video montage featuring Ari & Jen Neufeld, Andrew Smith, Michael Donley, Sylas Boesten, and a pile of others which will leave you asking more questions which in this case is extremely entertaining.



There's also a 23 song digital compilation album which is now available for download. It's unreal - all the artists who are playing at this grassroots music fest have graciously donated one of their tunes so that we could sell it to you (nudge nudge, wink wink) and pay for things like portapotties. Neat eh?



Full album (& others) is here as well.

Tribehouse Art Leaks Blideo #4 - Nikki & James Balfour

Nikki Balfour & James Balfour - doing their thang

by Nico Boesten
Interpretive dancing...yup - heard of that. But interpretive live painting with a custom spinning easel who got her start hanging work at a Starbucks? Yup, it happens. And it happened.

This Tribehouse Art Leaks Blideo features a local (Kelowna) couple that has more creativity in their belly-button lint than most people have in their entire brain meat. Speaking of meat, meet Nikki Balfour, a visual artist who does mainly abstract pieces and currently has her stuff hung at the Streaming Cafe.

The couple came and spoke at a Katalyst artist gathering on June 2, 2011 where Nikki portrayed with paint onto a canvas what she was hearing her husband (James) play on his guitar. Watch the vid to see it in action and find out more about how they got started and stuff.

Songwriter Circles, well actually half-a-circle

by Nico Boesten

These songwriter circles have been super cool. This 2nd one we've tried featured some local familiars and some recently-local-not-so-familiar faces.

Brent Tyler

Let me take a minute to introduce the newest addition to our great city of Kelowna, Brent Tyler. This guy actually really blew me away. He was introduced to the "tribe" via Ari Neufeld and has been touring like a jack rabbit on crack for a few years now. And by "touring" I mean doing a bit of travelling but mainly playing cover tunes in a variety of Calgary pubs to a bunch of drunks. What he explained was that he was making a good living doing that, but apparently drunk people don't really want to hear anything other than "Sweet Caroline" or "Brown-eyed girl". So he spent a year of his life (& piles of dough) recording a super high quality album entitled "In Rhythm" with some legit industry people, moved to Kelowna a couple of weeks ago, and has begun to venture into the world of "making it work" in the singer-songwriter world hopefully playing to more sober people. Understanding that this road ahead of him is crawling with obstacles, competition, and an overwhelming amount of noise, he's following his heart and doing what he loves. Not only were his songs insanely strong but he had the vocal & guitar chops of a wild animal - like imagine a rabid badger who could sing like Ray LaMontagne and play guitar like Martin Sexton - it'd be close to that. Welcome to Kelowna Mr. Tyler.

We also had some old (sorry, didn't mean it like that) familiar faces like Graham Ord who has the phenomenal gift of making people feel like a billion bucks. Probably the best songwriter circle host in this universe I might add. Mark Irving is also a common face around here and he played a few tunes off his new record about to be launched into the hands of humans in a couple of weeks (which was beauty). Then, Rachel MacGregor also shared some of her stories and music which was a unique experience as she's normally joined by her sister. I didn't realize she had won a handful of awards including the International Songwriting Competition & the John Lennon songwriting comp a few years ago as well. Nice work. It was a swell night thanks to the artists, Streaming Cafe, and all the sober people who came out to listen.

Songwriter Circle Jun 17, 2011

You can almost smell the silk with this photo, except they aren't silk so that would also decrease your chances.

Graham Ord - not only is it funny to hear WHAT he's saying, but also HOW

Graham Ord

Rachel MacGregor

Mark Irving. And yes, I think the bridge on his guitar is called a mustache or something.

Thanks to Carrie Harper for taking pictures - not only is she a great artist, but apparently also a great photographer.

Ari Neufeld and his new full contact folk release

There have been a few different artists that have claimed themselves as being a "One-man-band" and if there was an iTunes genre for this kind of musician, Ari Neufeld would be right at the top waving a huge flag. I'm not sure why he'd be holding a flag, it just seems appropriate.

Ari's tagged the phrase Full Contact Folk and I think on one of his promo pieces he actually dropped "Kung-fu Folk" and this is because his instruments including his feet banging on a box, shells tied to his shins, bells tied to his knees, and piles of sound effects made with his voice. Of course, I remember Ari writing tunes when he was 15 years old that made me shake my head with jealousy and awe. Some of those tunes still ring around my head and will never leave. There's something magical about this guy and now when I hear Ari play my heart swells with pride at how he has refined and redefined his craft of combining music and art.

He's going to be launching his very first live CD and DVD with what will inevitably be an epic experience at the Streaming Cafe on July 16. But he's chosen some really creative ways to help raise money for this project including a tiered package option for his fans to get plugged in using Rockethub. This being his 5th or 7th album or something (sorry, lost track) is super refreshing because it totally captures what he does live (obviously).



This album "Ari Neufeld - Live at the Dream Cafe" is a killer album with some great performances of some new tunes as well as some of the "classics". It'll be great to support him and see this dream of his come true (sorry for the lame pun) because he recorded this puppy at an amazing venue in Penticton with some amazing videographers, audio engineers, and not to mention that he totally nailed his performances of these 10 tunes. As usual, amazing.