Honest Song from London Ontario Canada

For the best User Experience listen to four tracks while reading: (right click - open in new tab - click 'play' icon beside "Flash in the Pan")


Recently I Tweeted (@m_holloway) "Folk is the best New Thing."

It's Rich Terfry's fault.

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers "Flash in the Pan" is a soulful rocking lament that Rich Terfry woke me to the other day with his one man Canadian Cultural Army at CBC Radio 2's Drive.


"Flash in the Pan" is a folk song about coming of age, hubris and getting your come-up-ance - true love and a nieve spoiling of it.


A beautiful complex lyric and composition that weaves of stylings of Niel Young, then drives to California and back - dumping the van near the Thames River just off Dundas Street, London Ontario.

"Ballad Of Lonely Bear" then clinks glasses on a long road trip, telling a story in Polish of a barefoot romp on the dark edge of European Nihilist punk mixed with modern capitalist angst:

We have a lovely house,
In the suburbs,
Where it's safe.

Which reminds me of the 'lawn mower wars between the Black on Black Queen Street West crowd and the suberbia of North York (North York didn't know there was a war).


Influences I'm hearing besides Neil Young are Pete Seager, Toronto's Shuffle Demons & The Flying Bulgar Klezmer Band (circa 1985). The lead singer reminds me of Nina Hagen from East Germany and the great Canadian songwriter Nelly Furtado. The band has the modern sound that I'm associating with the highly educated IT generation, they're darkgreen and tested - nobodies fools - especially their parents.

As one of their fans captions in their facebook photo album, they're "Hard Core" (which I believe is a good thing. ;)


Olenka Krakus - classical guitar, lead vocal

Sara Froese - violin, vocals
Paterson Hodgson - cello, vocals
Daniel Mancini - drums
Blair Whatmore - lap steel, electric guitar, mandolin, accordion, vocals
(I heard an oboe in there)

Niel Young's "Borrowed Tune" from 1975's "Tonight's the Night" comes to mind with the great metal slide guitar sound in combo with harp in "Flash in the Pan".

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers Website.

CBC Radio 3 has a page for Olenka & the Autumn Lovers, as they should. ;)

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers Facebook page.

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers in Wikipedia

Olenka & the Autumn Lovers Myspace

A Great resource for Southern Ontario Bands: (London, ON:) Burgeoning Metropolis blog. I can't find the Olenka & the Autumn Lovers post (maybe the author could link it in comments).


Of note here should be Neil Young's Borrowed Tune Lyrics. listen to it too (if you can find it).

I'm climbin' this ladder,
My head in the clouds
I hope that it matters,
I'm havin' my doubts.

I'm watchin' the skaters
Fly by on the lake.
Ice frozen six feet deep,
How long does it take?

I look out on peaceful lands
With no war nearby,
An ocean of shakin' hands
That grab at the sky.

I'm singin' this borrowed tune
I took from the Rolling Stones,
Alone in this empty room
Too wasted to write my own.

I'm climbin' this ladder,
My heads in the clouds
I hope that it matters.

(Copyright Reprise Records, Neil Young, Tonight's the Night 1975.)

("CBC Radio 2 Drive" should be called "CBC Radio 2 Home" in my opinion, and the morning show "Work". Drive kills it for me. The eccentric/brilliant previous host Jurgen Goethe's "Disk Drive" OK, but this is Rich Terfry...)



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