Update:
Thursday at the Potato House has unfortunately been CANCELED - Old Cabin had to cut his tour short due to a situation in the family. Best wishes to Jona and the whole family.
Original story:
Small and intimate.
That’s how Brandon Hoffman describes a concert he’s arranged at the Potato House for Thursday, Oct. 9 featuring Yukon-based singer songwriter Old Cabin and himself.
“Mary Forbes assures me we should be able to pack a few bodies in there,” Hoffman said of the tiny venue.
Old Cabin is the pseudonym of Jona Barr.
In the last three years Barr has brought his music from the woods and shared it with new fans across Canadian soil, playing house parties to festivals such as the legendary Dawson City Music Festival.
In 2012 Old Cabin released a six song EP entitled Growing Up Young as well as a split disc with Yukon ex-pats Old Time Machine.
“Jona is a humble and generous guy who writes totally heart-wrenching songs,” Hoffman said. “He’s insane. He does these huge tours and has been on one since June that took him all the way up to Whitehorse, out to the East Coast and back across Canada.”
When a friend invited Hoffman to open for Barr at a concert in Wells, slated for Oct. 10, Hoffman decided he’d invite Barr to come to perform in Williams Lake en route.
Describing his own talents as a musician, Hoffman chuckled and said he’s rapidly becoming known as the “electronics guy” at music festivals.
“I like to take field recordings of trains or traffic and use snippets of them to mix with recordings of my friends and I playing bluegrass to create a lush tapestry sound mosaic,” he explained.
During his live performance he’ll use the sounds for the back drop and will play the mandolin.
Hoffman returned to his hometown of Williams Lake this summer, after living and working as a musician in Vancouver.
Within a short time he was hired as the administrator for the Central Cariboo Arts Centre where he is the liaison between tenant groups, the public and the Central Cariboo Arts Society and just this week he was hired as the gallery co-ordinator at the Station House Gallery.
Thursday’s concert will be by donation with some proceeds going to the Potato House Society.
Doors open at 7 p.m. with a slow start to the concert around 7:30 p.m.
“It’s last minute, but should be great,” Hoffman said.