Celebrating their 31st year, Vancouver Canadian musician Tom Landa, is looking back on the legacy of his much-loved folk rock band The Paperboys. For just over a quarter century, The Paperboys have been touring the world and lighting up stages with their freewheeling blend of influences from Celtic and bluegrass, to Mexican son jarocho, brass bands, and Canadian roots. They have been called everything from Cajun slamgrass to worldbeat, they’ve received a Juno award (Canadian Grammy), plus two Juno nominations, two West Coast Music Awards, released nine albums, and regularly play two-night bills in the Pacific Northwest. But that’s not what matters to Landa now. “What means more to me than anything else is to receive letters, emails, or hear stories from people who tell me that our songs helped them through a tough time, or that they used one of our songs for their wedding, or that an album of ours was the soundtrack of their summer. At the end of the day, accolades are nice, but they are nothing compared to connecting with people.” Landa’s song ‘Better Than The Last’ has become somewhat of an anthem for people who have gone through hard times.

Yasmin Williams sits on her leather couch, her guitar stretched across her lap horizontally with its strings turned to the sky. She taps on the fretboard with her left hand as her right hand plucks a kalimba placed on the guitar’s body. Her feet, clad in tap shoes, keep rhythm on a mic’d wooden board placed under her. Even with all limbs in play, it’s mind boggling that the melodic and percussive sounds that emerge are made by just one musician, playing in real time. With her ambidextrous and pedidextrous, multi-instrumental techniques of her own making and influences ranging from video games to West African griots subverting the predominantly white male canon of fingerstyle guitar, Yasmin Williams is truly a guitarist for the new century. So too is her stunning sophomore release, Urban Driftwood, an album for and of these times. Though the record is instrumental, its songs follow a narrative arc of 2020, illustrating both a personal journey and a national reckoning, through Williams’ evocative, lyrical compositions.

A native of northern Virginia, Williams, now 24, began playing electric guitar in 8th grade, after she beat the video game Guitar Hero 2 on expert level. Initially inspired by Jimi Hendrix and other shredders she was familiar with through the game, she quickly moved on to acoustic guitar, finding that it allowed her to combine fingerstyle techniques with the lap-tapping she had developed through Guitar Hero, as well as perform as a solo artist. By 10th grade, she had released an EP of songs of her own composition. Deriving no lineage from “American primitive” and rejecting the problematic connotations of the term, Williams’ influences include the smooth jazz and R&B she listened to growing up, Hendrix and Nirvana, go-go and hip-hop. Her love for the band Earth, Wind and Fire prompted her to incorporate the kalimba into her songwriting, and more recently, she’s drawn inspiration from other Black women guitarists such as Elizabeth Cotten, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, and Algia Mae Hinton. On Urban Driftwood, Williams references the music of West African griots through the inclusion of kora (which she recently learned) and by featuring the hand drumming of 150th generation djeli of the Kouyate family, Amadou Kouyate, on the title track.

The award winning smash hit Bohemia from critically acclaimed artists Opal Peachey and Mark Siano returns to the Triple Door this January. After blowing audiences away with their sell-out success Seattle Vice, their latest musical Bohemia is a freewheeling cabaret about love, classical music, art nouveau, green fairies and absinthe. Set in 1890s Prague, Bohemia combines the music of Dvořák and Chopin, with art by Alphonse Mucha. Historic artists like Sarah Bernhardt and George Sand, interweave with beautiful green fairies, aerial numbers, dance, burlesque, classical piano battles, comedy, and original songs.

The story centers around famous Czech composer Antonin Dvořák who has hit a wall and prior to composing his magnum opus, so he looks to the bottom of a bottle of absinthe for inspiration. In this macabre and mystical dream cabaret, Dvořák is visited by the ghost of late composer Frederick Chopin and a host of green fairies. Chopin and many other famous Bohemians guide Dvořák on the search for true inspiration in the pursuit of artistic immortality.