Our regular musicNOW writer Josh Fewings is away this month. Here’s a selection of live music in the Kawarthas in May, with music for just about every taste, including folk, rock, blues, jazz, and punk.

Teilhard Frost at Meet at 66 King East in Cobourg on May 11

For a dose of old-time traditional Appalachian music, check out multi-instrumentalist Teilhard Frost when he performs on Saturday, May 11th at Meet at 66 King East (66 King St. E., Cobourg, 905-372-2537).

Best known as “Sheesam Crow” in critically acclaimed band Sheesham, Lotus and ‘Son, Frost released his solo recording As the Crow Flies last year. As well as singing, he plays the fiddle, banjo, jaw harp, and harmonica.

“An accomplished singer and multi-instrumentalist, Teilhard captures the spirit of the old-time music better than anyone I know,” says Rick Ceballos, artistic director of the Champlain Valley Folk Festival in Vermont. “He is a natural born entertainer who’s stage presence is a joyful experience.”

Advance tickets are $20 plus fees and taxes at the Concert Hall at Victoria Hall (call 905-372-2210 or visit www.concerthallatvictoriahall.com, of $30 cash at the door.

VIDEO: “Darlin’ Cora” – Teilhard Frost

The Human Project and Uniforms at Simcoe Ptbo in Peterborough on May 13

A full night of UK and local punk is coming to downtown Peterborough’s newest live music venue, Simcoe Ptbo (172 Simcoe St., Peterborough, 705-874-3825) on Monday, May 13th.

The show will be headlined by skate punk band The Human Project from Leeds, England with special guests Uniforms from Scotland, as well as Newmarket’s Ship of Fools and Peterborough’s Bonnavilles and Antixx.

Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the music will continue until the wee hours. Tickets are $5 in advance or $10 at the door. This is an all-ages show.

VIDEO: “Pride Before a Fall” – The Human Project

VIDEO: “The Fear” – Uniforms

Caribou Run at The Garnet in Peterborough on May 14

Nova Scotia’s Caribou Run is coming to Peterborough on Tuesday, May 14th to perform at The Garnet (231 Hunter St. W., Peterborough, 705-874-0107).

The six-piece neo-folk band’s sound is catchy and anthemic with lyrics that provoke emotion and thought in the listener. Their live performance is a dynamic experience that is a roller coaster of sing-alongs and foot stomps.

Their debut studio album Something Organic Will Happen received the 2017 Nova Scotia Music Award for Blues Recording of the Year, and their latest release Old Peninsula was nominated for the 2018 Nova Scotia Music Award for Folk Recording of the Year.

Opening will be flatpicker and country songwriter Mike T. Kerr. Doors open at 8 p.m.

VIDEO: “Rambler Gambler” – Caribou Run

Brownman Electryc Trio at The Loft in Cobourg on May 15

Ken Prue once again makes The Loft (201 Division St., Cobourg, 416-895-1234) a destination for jazz lovers when he brings award-winning electric jazz fusion group Brownman Electryc Trio there to play at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15th.

Led by trumpet improviser Brownman Ali (who New York City’s Village Voice called “Canada’s preeminent jazz trumpeter”) with Sean Dennis on bass and Jacob Aylward on drums, Brownman Electryc Trio has won multiple awards, including the National Jazz Award for Electric Jazz Group of the Year in 2007, and the Toronto Independent Music Award for Jazz Group of the Year in 2012, 2015, and 2016.

If you’re a fan of Miles Davis in his later years, you’ll want to check these guys out. Tickets are $25 plus fees online at the Concert Hall at Victoria Hall box office, by phone at 905-372-2210, or by email at kenprue@gmail.com.

VIDEO: “Red Clay” – Brownman Electryc Trio

The Beaches with Fade Awaays at The Venue in Peterborough on May 18

Toronto indie rockers The Beaches are performing at The Venue on Saturday, May 18th.

The all-female band released their debut full-length studio album Late Show in 2017 and went on to win Breakthrough Group of the Year at the 2018 Juno Awards. Their new EP The Professional drops on May 16th.

Now in their early 20s, sisters Jordan and Kylie Miller with Liza Enman-McDaniel and Leandra Earl have been playing together for more than a decade. Their ’70s-inspired style, female-empowering lyrics, and glam and garage rock sound reflects a wide range of influences including David Bowie, The Strokes, The Rolling Stones, St. Vincent, and The Pretenders.

Toronto-based garage rockers Fade Awaays, who released their debut EP Taste of Life in January, will be opening. Doors open at 7 p.m.

General admission tickets are $25 plus fees, available online at Ticketmaster.

VIDEO: “Snake Tongue” – The Beaches

VIDEO: “She Don’t Know Why” – Fade Awaays

Hawksley Workman at the Market Hall in Peterborough on May 23

Two-time Juno Award winner Hawksley Workman returns to Peterborough for a concert on Thursday, May 23rd at 8 p.m. at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough, 705-749-1146).

Over his 20-plus year career, the singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist has garnered critical acclaim for his blend of cabaret pop and glam rock. He’s headlined prestigious venues like Massey Hall in Toronto and The Olympia in Paris, and opened for Morrissey, David Bowie, and The Cure. In all, he has released 16 albums, with his latest being 2019’s Median Age Wasteland.

Tickets are $38 including fees for assigned seating, available at the Market Hall Box Office or online at markethall.org.

VIDEO: “Lazy” – Hawksley Workman

The Kents at the Gordon Best in Peterborough on May 24

Lindsay’s indie rockers The Kents are coming back to Peterborough on Friday, May 24th for a show at the Gordon Best Theatre (216 Hunter St. W., Peterborough, 705-876-8884).

Formed in 2011, band members Warren Frank, Luke Shauf, Freddy Kwon, and Tanner Paré have released three EPs (2014’s Locals, 2016’s Waking, and 2017’s Within Waves) and are working on a new record.

They’ve released a track called “Smoke” that won’t be on the new record, and are donating proceeds from its sale to The Warming Room in Peterborough. They’ll also have a section set up at their Gordon Best show where they’ll be accepting donations for The Warming Room (clothing, pillows, blankets, and more).

Basement Revolver and Rhys Climenhage will be opening the show. Doors open at 9 p.m. with a $10 cover.

VIDEO: “From The Start” – The Kents

Megan Nash at the Clock Tower Cultural Centre in Campbellford on May 25

Saskatchewan singer-songwriter Megan Nash will be performing a “house concert” on Saturday, May 25th at the Clock Tower Cultural Centre (6 Front St. S., Campbellford, 705-653-5508).

Her latest record Seeker, where she collaborates with ambient alt-rockers Bears In Hazenmore, was nominated for the 2019 Juno Contemporary Roots Album of The Year.

Nash will be performing in the “living room” of Westben’s home at the Clock Tower Cultural Centre. The show begins at 7:30 p.m.

Tickets are $20 (includes HST) and are available at westben.ca

VIDEO: “Deer Head” – Megan Nash

Washboard Hank and the Wringers, Danny Bronson, Robert Atyeo and more at Showplace in Peterborough on May 26

Local musicians are coming together to raise funds for autism research at “Awesome and Then Some” on Sunday, May 26th at Showplace Performance Centre (290 George St. N., Peterborough, 705-742-7469).

Hosted by Sean Eyre and Morris Turney, the matinee show features music by Washboard Hank and the Wringers, Sweet Muriel, Geoff Hewitson, Irish Millie, Pat Arnott, Danny Bronson, The McDonnell Street Gospel Quartet, Robert Atyeo, Catfish Willie and the Bucklebusters, Fiddlin’ John, and Candace & Brittany.

Tickets are $40 for this family-friendly show, with proceeds to be evenly distributed this July to autism research teams at the Universities of Toronto, Western, and Queens. Tickets are available at the Showplace Box Office or online at www.showplace.org.

Mike Biggar at the Dominion Hotel in Minden on May 27 and 28

New Brunswick contemporary roots and blues artist Mike Biggar is performing two shows on Monday, May 27th and Tuesday, May 28th at the Dominion Hotel (113 Main St., Minden, 705-286-6954).

In his 10-year career, Biggar has been honoured with numerous East Coast Music Association and Music New Brunswick awards, including the 2017 Music New Brunswick Award for ‘Blues Artist of the Year’ and the 2018 East Coast Music Award for ‘Blues Recording of the Year’ for his third album Go All In. His latest release is 2018’s Mike Biggar & Band – Live at the BMO Theatre.

He has shared the stage with artists such as Steve Earle, Matt Andersen, Stephen Fearing, Lynn Miles, Dave Gunning, Ron Hynes, Rose Cousins, Del Barber, Joey Landreth, Jay Semko, and more.

Tickets are $15 for either 7 p.m. show, available online at eventbrite.ca.

VIDEO: “Troubles No More” – Mike Biggar

Mayhemingways at the Market Hall in Peterborough on May 31

Peterborough’s own “fuzz folk” duo Mayhemingways hit the stage at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St., Peterborough, 705-749-1146) on Friday, May 31st at 8 p.m.

With Benj Rowland singing lead vocals and performing on banjo, mandolin, accordian, acoustic guitar, and foot bass, and Josh Fewings on drums and harmony vocals, Mayhemingways have released a self-titled EP and two full-length records: 2016’s Hunter St. Blues and 2018’s Skip Land.

Tom Wilson (Junkhouse, Blackie and the Rodeo Kings, Lee Harvey Osmond) calls their sound “mind-bending and original music with deep roots in the tradition of dark North American folk.”

kawarthaNOW is pleased to be a sponsor of this concert, which also features special guest opener Winona Wilde. Tickets are $20 in advance (including fees), and are available atthe Market Hall Box Office or online at markethall.org. Tickets will also be available at the door for $25 (including fees).

VIDEO: “Frances the Truck Driver” – Mayhemingways

VIDEO: “Pincushion Soldier” – Winona Wilde

Emily Burgess & The Emburys at Mckecks Tap & Grill in Haliburton on May 31

Peterborough band Emily Burgess & The Emburys are performing on Friday, May 31st at Mckecks Tap & Grill (207 Highland St., Haliburton, 705-457-3443).

Earlier this year, Burgess won the Toronto Blues Society’s 2018 Maple Blues award for New Artist/Group of the Year.

Burgess is well known to Peterborough residents for her solo performances, as well as playing with The Weber Brothers since 2014 and more recently her own trio The Emburys (with brothers Rico and Marcus Browne on bass and drums respectively).

There’s no cover for this show, but you need to call Mckecks at 705-457-3443 to reserve a seat.

VIDEO: “Til I Get To Call You My Own” – Emily Burgess

Every Thursday, we publish live music and performance events at pubs and clubs in Peterborough and The Kawarthas based on information that venues provide to us directly or post on their website or social media channels. Here are the listings for the week of Thursday, May 9 to Wednesday, May 15.

If you’re a pub or club owner and want to be included in our weekly listings, please email our Nightlife Editor at nightlife@kawarthanow.com.

On Sunday, May 12th, New Stages Theatre Company concludes its 2018-2019 season with a staged reading of Canadian playwright Hannah Moscovitch’s What a Young Wife Ought to Know.

Directed by Randy Read and featuring Toronto-based performers Nikki Duval, Benjamin Sutherland, and Evelyn Wiebe, What a Young Wife Ought to Know is inspired by the letters of real women living in the 1920s and tackles a subject rarely acknowledged: women’s sexual health issues and birth control practices of the early 20th century.

Written by Hannah Moscovitch, one of Canada’s most acclaimed young playwrights, What a Young Wife Ought to Know debuted in 2014 at the Neptune Theatre in Halifax. Moscovitch developed the play after she read Dear Dr. Stopes: Sex in the 1920s — a collection of letters written by real women and men to Dr. Marie Stopes, scientist, author of the 1918 sex manual Married Love, and an early advocate for birth control who opened the first birth control clinic in England.

Through the letters included in the book, Moscovitch discovered a whole new dialogue about sexual issues and anxieties that have gone forgotten in our modern world of The Pill, IUDs, and other birth control devices.

“The voices of the men and women in these letters were distinct from anything I had read before,” Moscovitch writes. “The letters are explicit about ‘unmentionable’ topics: sex, desire, adultery, childbirth, and birth control. The style of the letters is stark, hilarious, and unflinching, and the vocabulary is amazingly frank and sexual. To me, the letters felt like a voyeuristic glimpse into what life was like before birth control.”

As New Stages artistic director Randy Read explains, Moscovitch’s use of real-life source material is one of the things that the makes the play so compelling.

“One of the great things about this play is that a lot of dialogue is taken from the letters that were written to Doctor Stopes by real women who lived at that time,” Randy says. “In some cases Hannah Moscovitch lifts the dialogue right out of these letters. The women in these letters were very open with their thoughts because they were doing it in writing.”

What a Young Wife Ought to Know centres on a young wife named Sophie (Nikki Duval) who is madly in love with her husband Johnny (Benjamin Sutherland), the former lover of her older sister Alma (Evelyn Wiebe).

When Sophie finds herself pregnant with their fifth child, the reality of another difficult pregnancy and the burden of not being able to support another child becomes unbearable to her. In desperation, Sophie seeks console from the spirit of her sister — who herself died from a botched abortion.

“Sophie and Johnny have huge desire and affection for each other, but also a terror of having another child,” Randy says. “People (of that time) were terrified to have sex.”

What a Young Wife Ought to Know not only studies the early issues around female sexual health, but also the real-life damaging effect that an unwanted pregnancy can have on the family in an era where birth control was rare and ineffective.

“Another child, in some ways, became a death threat to a family,” Randy notes. “You had families that were devastatingly poor, and had four or five kids already that they couldn’t feed.”

Filled with love, madness, desperation and moments of comedy, What a Young Wife Ought to Know takes the audience back to a bygone era with an entirely different set of sexual issues beyond those that we have today, but which are still immediately recognizable to a modern audience.

A unique way to watch a theatrical production, New Stages’ The Page on Stage Reading Series has actors performing a play in a dramatic script reading, but without any sets or costumes and with limited interaction on the stage. This allows the focus to be on the words and the meaning of the show, as well as allowing top talent to perform challenging productions that otherwise would not come to the Peterborough stage.

What a Young Wife Ought to Know will be performed at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 12th (Mother’s Day) at Market Hall Performing Arts Centre (140 Charlotte St. E, Peterborough).

General admission tickets are $25 ($15 for students, art workers, and the underwaged) and are available in person at the Market Hall Box Office or by phone at 705-749-1146 (12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Monday to Friday) or online anytime at markethall.org.

While this is the final production of the current season, New Stages returns in September with its 2019-2020 season, when Randy plans to produce two staged readings and three productions:

• Torch Song by Harvey Fierstein (Sunday, September 15, 2019)
• Bang Bang by Kat Sandler (Sunday, November 10, 2019)
• Every Brilliant Thing by Duncan MacMillan and Jonny Donahoe (Tuesday, January 14 and Sunday, January 19, 2020)
• Canadian Rajah by Dave Carley (Sunday, March 8, 2020)
• Iceland by Nicolas Billon (Sunday, May 3, 2020).

For more information about New Stages Theatre Company, visit www.newstages.ca.

Skinnamarink a dink a dink, Skinnamarink a doo, I love you …

Kids both young and old have one more chance to sing those lyrics along with Sharon and Bram when the iconic Canadian children’s entertainers come to Peterborough for the final time this month.

The “Sharon, Bram & Friends: 40th Anniversary Farewell Tour” takes place at 6:30 p.m. on Wednesday, May 15th at Showplace Performance Centre (290 George St. N., Peterborough).

Sharon Hampson and Bram Morrison are retiring from touring 40 years after they, along with the late Lois Lillenstein, released their first record One Elephant, Deux Elephants as the trio Sharon, Lois & Bram.

A Sharon and Bram show is a sing-along concert for the entire family, featuring such well-loved favourites as “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain”, “Five Little Monkeys”, “One Elephant”, “Tingalayo”, and, of course, “Skinnamarink”.

VIDEO: “Skinnamarink” from The Elephant Show – Sharon, Lois & Bram

“We love singing with our audiences,” Sharon and Bram say. “The sound of families singing together, and the expressions of delight on the faces of parents and children as they share the music, bring us deep satisfaction.”

In the mid 1970s, Sharon, Lois, and Bram met when they were each hosting folk music workshops and performing concerts in public schools as part of the Mariposa in the Schools program. The folk singers soon discovered they shared a passion for creating music for people for all ages, and decided to record an album of music they hoped would appeal to parents as well as children.

After raising $20,000 from friends and family, the trio recorded their debut album One Elephant, Deux Elephants in the spring of 1978 in Toronto. It was released later that year, became the fastest-selling children’s record in Canada, and eventually went triple platinum.

That debut album included “Skinnamarink”, a song that Lois had heard for the first time after she asked her cousin’s daughter if she knew any good songs. None of the band members knew the origins of the song, and the track was attributed to “traditional”, but it in fact was originally written by Felix F. Feist and Al Piantadosi for Charles Dillingham’s Broadway production The Echo in 1910.

Sharon, Lois & Bram later sang it on their CBC television show The Elephant Show, which debuted in 1984, and it soon became their signature song (along with the movements performed with the song). The trio also used it for the name of their 1997 CBC children’s television show, Skinnamarink TV.

Since 1978, Sharon, Lois & Bram have sold more than three million records and have won three Juno Awards for Best Children’s Album (in 1980 for their sophomore release Smorgasboard, in 1981 for Singing ‘n Swinging, and again in 2000 for Skinnamarink TV). They have performed at Carnegie Hall, the Lincoln Center, and at the White House in 1994 where they had breakfast with President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton.

In addition to their musical career, they have supported many social welfare programs in both Canada and the U.S., including school breakfasts for learning and encouraging parents to inoculate their children.

They were also Goodwill Ambassadors for UNICEF in North and South America, for which they received the Danny Kaye Humanitarian Award. In 2002, the three were made members of the Order of Canada.

In 2000, Lois retired from touring with the group, which then began performing as Sharon, Bram & Friends (with the “friends” referring to life-size animal puppets that appear alongside them).

While Lois subsequently performed with Sharon and Bram on occasion, including at a reunion show in 2009, she passed away in 2015 at the age of 78.

As well as performing as Sharon, Bram & Friends, Sharon and Bram also perform as a duo. In 2017, the two gave a free concert at the Peterborough Folk Festival.

A few tickets are still available for the May 15th show at Showplace. Tickets are $27 to $34, and are available in person at the Showplace box office, by phone at 705-742-7469, or online at www.showplace.org.