#katrina james

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Soundtracked 19: Cult Days

Didn't downtown Oshawa have enough cafés? There was Isabella's, Cocoa & Joe, Coffee Culture, Country Style, Beanz, Tim Horton's, and Simple Bodega. But Mad Café was intriguing from the start. For one thing they had taken over the space at 38 King St. E. - the former home of The Black Cup and the location of the very first Broken Arts event ever. We weren't the first live music event at Mad Café - that was a launch party for Will McGuirk's magazine SlowCity - but we were the second. A cupcake café with a selection of vegan options would always be a logical venue for Broken Arts and we fell in love with Mad immediately.

Soundtracked 19: Cult Days September 30, 2011 @ Mad Café live: Katrina James Benjamin Reines Jessie Kussin with: The Gumdrop Buckshot Broken Arts lineup: Harley, Lori-Anne, Defne, Erin, Ashley

The end of September means Culture Days in Canada. For the 2010 installment the City of Oshawa had assembled a festival in Memorial Park and asked us to organize two buskerfests for them. By the time 2011 rolled around everybody had lost interest in the concept. So we simply decided to put on our first show at Mad Café instead. While reading a pop fanzine by American record label Cloudberry Harley had discovered a new Toronto band called Persian Rugs. In their interview they also recommended a number of other local acts that they were friends and fans of including Terror Lake and Jessie Kussin. Jessie was an old-timey bluegrass musician in the vein of Elizabeth Cotten and she was happy to play Soundtracked 19. Whitby songwriter Katrina James had come to our attention in July at the Oshawa Canada Day celebrations, although she had been in the Broken Arts audience as far back as Soundtracked 6. Another old friend of ours was Oshawa's Dan Brooks who at the time was performing under the name Benjamin Reines.

We had three excellent singer-songwriters performing at an exciting new café in downtown Oshawa, a city that loves its solo acoustic guitar singer-songwriters. With an above average attendance one week earlier we were confident that Soundtracked 19 would be just as big of a success. We were wrong. Attendance plummeted back down to 15 and the unpredictability of our shows was beginning to wear on us. When we had low attendance at our café shows people said it was because they couldn't drink. When we did a show at a bar attendance was the same. When people didn't come to a Garden Grove show they said it was because it wasn't downtown. Now we had returned to downtown Oshawa for volume 19 and attendance was two and a half times worse than at the north Oshawa show. We could not figure out why some shows were so well attended and some were so disappointing when they featured uniformly great talent. There was one unifying trend between our two worst shows of the year, though, and that word was folk. We made a decision that night to step away from the genre for a while. If the fall of 2011 for Broken Arts was going to be defined by one adjective that adjective was loud.

Watch videos of: Katrina James - "A Place Called Home" Benjamin Reines - "I Was Wrong" Jessie Kussin - "Sugar Shack"

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Stream or download Katrina’s full 2011 EP, Everything Is Relative.

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That awkward moment when a drag queen has the exact same name as a girl you went to high school with.

-Chelsea Lorraine

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5 Questions With... Katrina James

Harley from Broken Arts in conversation with Katrina James Who are you and what do you do? My name is Katrina James. I am a singer/songwriter/composer/producer. I've been writing and playing music since I was 16. I started out in an all-girl band called The Chickband and, to most people's surprise, we were actually really good. I've since then moved on and started my own solo project. Now I play in and around the GTA playing solo acoustic shows and sometimes with a full band. You released your debut EP, Everything Is Relative, earlier this summer. How has response been? It has been great! Word has been spreading fast about this EP. I've sold copies in the States and in the UK through iTunes. The most common response I've been getting from people is that they had no idea that I played all the instruments on the EP (except drums, I wish I had that gift). Most people only see my live acoustic shows and assume I can only play the guitar. You recorded the entire thing at home by yourself, right? This is a true story. I was sitting on the bus one day listening to my iPod and thought, "I want to be on someone's iPod." So I bought a Mac, an interface, and a mic, opened up Garageband and pressed "record". A friend of mine (Dan Squires - a talented local musician) helped me with one of my songs. He taught me that the wondering melodies in my head were actually good for something and that they can actually be translated onto other instruments. Often times we'd be sitting at the computer and I'd randomly sing a melody and he'd say, "Yeah! That's it! Now go play it on the piano." This concept helped me create and arrange all the parts and instrumentation for my entire EP. How did you come to music initially? It all started when I was three. I had a solo in the kids' choir at church and when it was my turn to sing I refused and said, "Noooo, the piano!" I actually refused to sing until someone hopped on the piano and accompanied me as I sang. Haha. I've always had an innate musical talent. My father was a musician. My whole life music has been an escape, a guide, a comfort, a motivator, a lifeline for me. It affects my mood, my thoughts, my everything. That is also why I am very careful as to what kind of music I allow myself to listen to. Not all music makes me feel good. I am like a sponge. I will absorb its message so I make sure to consciously select the music I listen to. It wasn't until my later years of high school that I picked up the guitar and started to teach myself how to play. Once I figured out a couple chords the rest just came. Melodies come very easily to me, almost as naturally as breathing. So writting has always been a natural process for me - a therapy most times. I'm not one to share very much about myself but when I put my thoughts or ideas into a song I suddenly get this passion to be known and at that point letting my thoughts be heard is not a scary thing anymore. It just simply is what it is. And what can people expect from Katrina James at Broken Arts: Soundtracked 19? I'd like to think that my live shows are unpredictable. I will never play the same set twice. It bores me. I like to keep things new. Someone once told me that I needed to keep the same set and play it around town for months so that people can get familiar with my songs. To that I said, "They can buy my album and wear it out if that's why they want. I need to keep moving forward." I will be playing many new songs at this show, some of which have never been played live before. I guarantee that you will be able to see the direction of where my next album is heading. I'm currently recording my first full-length CD and will be sharing a little bit about it at the show. Katrina James plays Broken Arts: Soundtracked 19 on September 30. http://www.katrinajames.com/

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Soundtracked 19 announcement

Forget Culture Days and join our Cult Days instead! On Friday, September 30th we will be holding our 19th Soundtracked show at Mad Café (38 King St. E.) in downtown Oshawa. We've got an evening of great folk music scheduled from some truly terrific, often-overlooked singer-songwriters: Toronto/Halifax's Jessie Kussin, Oshawa's Benjamin Reines, and Whitby's Katrina James. Doors at 7 p.m. $5 cover All-Ages!

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Are you prepared for the awesomeness that is about to go down this summer?

Crop tops and leggings will be added to the store this weekend. Stay tuned!