I came for the food and stayed for the music.
Summerworks opening party took place at the Great Hall on Thursday night and I basically went because there was free food catered by the Lakeview and I was also hoping to score a few free drink tickets from media/publicity people. Sadly, no free drinks came my way because this was a fund starved theatre festival and not say, SXSW Interactive where someone would probably pour champagne down my throat if I just asked. To curb my disappointment, I headed for the deep fried carb station. Catered Poutine sounds like a good idea, but really it isn’t, because you need fresh fries for poutine and the Lakeview most certainly did not have a deep fryer on site, meaning you got soggy/stale fries for the poutine. Not good. I still ate it and contemplated seconds, so what that says about me, I have absolutely no idea.
Seeing how this was a music/theatre festival, the opening party had a few musical acts on the bill. Chrome and the Ice Queen was the second or third act on the bill and they were very impressive. A four piece act, the band apparently wrote all their songs about Twin Peaks. For the younger reading audience, Twin Peaks was a good/clusterfuck of a show from the demented mind of David Lynch. It also featured David Duchovny in drag:
Yikes.
Anyways, as one would imagine, Chrome and the Ice Queen’s tracks are minimalistic and has that bluesy/loungey/smoke two packs of cigarettes kind of sound. This music would also fit quite nicely soundtracking Mulholland Drive, in case you need a more recent David Lynch reference. The tracks highlight just how amazing a voice Lisa Conway has and the band’s debut EP Diane is excellent.
Here is at track called Stealin’ Hearts that features Daniel Lee (of Phredre/Hooded Fang I think) and it’s rather good, check it out.