Booking & Management:
Ed Kenney
McDermott Entertainment
30 Rowes Wharf, Suite 470
Boston, MA 02110
telephone: 617-350-5646
fax: 617-557-9166
eok@McDermottVentures.com
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by Greg Quill, The Toronto Star, January 29, 2004
It's 8 a.m. in Sudbury, and Ottawa Valley fiddler April Verch has already been on the road for almost an hour, making good time in bad weather on a 12-hour drive from North Bay to Thunder Bay.
She sounds chilled and cheerful over the phone, and happy to be back in her home province after almost a year of touring the U.S. promoting her most recent album, From Where I Stand , released on the prestigious roots music label, Rounder.
"I'm not crazy about the driving," she says. "But for 16 dates in Ontario in three and a half weeks, flying's not an option.
"I am enjoying the performances, and after spending so much time away from home, I'm curious to see how people here take to someone from down the road."
They've been taking to Verch and her band — Tennessee bassist Jon Weisberger and North Carolina guitarist Chris Sharp — very well, turning up to fill small theatres, folk clubs and listening rooms across the province, and, she hopes, Toronto's preeminent acoustic music venue, Hugh's Room, on Sunday night.
"We've been fortunate enough to get some really good press, and lots of airplay, particularly on country radio stations promoting our shows. And word-of-mouth does the rest ... maybe they remember me from the days when I used to compete all over Ontario in fiddle competitions and step-dancing contests. Back then, all I played and listened to was old-time Canadian fiddle music. I still love that music, but my ears have been opened in the last few years to fiddle music from Appalachia, Texas, Brazil. It's not about the Ottawa Valley any more.
"If I was still playing old-time style, I'd be tired of it by now. But it was great training for me, figuring out how to play a tune five different ways. That's just as challenging as improvisation."
Though the deal with Rounder has kept Verch on the road almost constantly, and though her star is well and truly ascendant on the American roots music horizon, the Berklee-trained virtuoso keeps close to her Canadian beginnings.
She jumped at the chance to be part of Connie Kaldor's house band on the new Vision-TV folk music series, Connie Kaldor @ Wood River Hall , and not just because she was offered a featured episode, to air next month.
"I've known Connie for a while," Verch says. "I've taken advice from her many times, and she has helped us out. She even sings on From Where I Stand . Playing on the show was a challenging experience, squeezed in between two tours, preparing the music with minimal resources, shooting all day every day, then learning the next day's stuff at night ... only to discover that all the arrangements had changed anyway. It allowed me to hone my back-up skills, but it was quite an adjustment."
For all the exposure and rave notices she has received since her groundbreaking Rounder debut, VERCHuosity , produced by Toronto folk veteran Paul Mills, the young champion fiddler says success hasn't changed her at all.
"I'm fortunate to make a living doing what I'm doing. There are so many people in the folk world who'd trade anything for one of my worst days."
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