Wide Mouth Mason will be part of the Guitar Strings and Kidney Things fundraiser in Hamilton, Ontario on October 21, 2023. Check out the venue, Bridgeworks, for further details!
Tag: bassist
Wide Mouth Mason goes Spanish!
This summer, Wide Mouth Mason will be visiting Spanish, Ontario’s COME ROCK N ROAR SPANISH music festival on Saturday, August 13, 2016. Tickets for this event, that also features a number of Canadian rock bands, are available through Ticket Break.
September in Beautiful British Columbia
Recently confirmed is an upcoming Wide Mouth Mason gig on September 12, 2015 in Port Alberni, British Columbia. Details on the performance will be added to the Tour Dates section of the site as known and confirmed. As always, please check with the venue as to doors and set times!
Summertime with Wide Mouth Mason
Just confirmed are two additional dates for Wide Mouth Mason in Gravenhurst, Ontario on July 30 and Edson, Alberta on August 2. Details to the shows will be added as confirmed. Please check with venue as to confirmed ticket prices and set times.
Rockin’ in the summer…
Wide Mouth Mason is pleased to announce two gigs in Summer 2015. In July, Wide Mouth Mason and Big Sugar put on a 2015 version of Big & Wide in Red Deer, Alberta. Come August, find Wide Mouth Mason rocking the fields near Lake Minnedosa, Manitoba! Details on tour dates will be posted in the next little while once known and confirmed.
WMMpress: Saskatoon Show coverage
WMMpress via Saskatoon StarPhoenix
WMM can’t wait for hometown club show
BY CAM FULLER, THE STARPHOENIX September 23, 2014
In a convenient twist of reverse engineering, it’s Wide Mouth Mason’s 2009 album that is setting the tone for how the band is charting its future sound.
Live at Montreux captured the band sizzling in jam mode at the legendary jazz festival, with expansive solos and improvisations. The same approach informed Wide Mouth Mason’s No Bad Days album.
“It was very much a rock format but with a jazz philosophy to it where the framework of the song would be a suggestion,” guitarist Shaun Verreault said recently.
“The songs on No Bad Days are meant to be elastic, so a lot of that can come out.”
The band likes to keep things fluid in its live show. If something from a song they were listening to on the way to a gig sticks, it could well end up as a reference in the middle of their set – surprising each other as much as the audience.
“We call it the shapes we’re throwing each other,” says Verreault. “There’s a little bit of trying to raise eyebrows that you haven’t raised before.”
Verreault admits wondering if the band would remain viable after he and drummer Safwan Javed parted ways with original bassist Earl Pereira and added Gordie Johnson from Big Sugar. But the evolution continues. When Wide Mouth and Big Sugar are on the same bill, they become Big and Wide, with as many as eight players on stage.
Verreault keeps busy in music producing other artists, writing songs with and for other acts and collaborating coast-to-coast from Vancouver with Newfoundland musician Chris Kirby via Skype.
“It makes it so we have a lot of different things to draw on when we get together to play and get together to write.”
Verreault is looking forward to the homecoming and doing a classic Saskatoon club show, its first at the Capitol Music Club.
“I try and get back as much as I can. A bunch of my family is still there.”
He likens it to looking through the window of your elementary school, literally or metaphorically.
And speaking of family, Verreault’s two-year-old daughter Layla seems to have inherited some musical DNA. She already has her own pink Stratocaster, but she really likes playing with her dad’s guitar. Recently, she plugged it into an amp on full blast and, in Verreault’s words, “just railed it.” He thought she’d be scared and crying. Instead, “she was jumping up and down, smiling, and going ‘loud!’”
Wide Mouth Mason
with the Acronyms
Friday at the Capitol
Wide Mouth Mason’s September Saskatoon Gig
Wide Mouth Mason has confirmed a September 26, 2014 gig at The Capitol Music Club, a venue situated in the hometown of Wide Mouth Mason’s Shaun Verreault and Safwan Javed… Saskatoon, Saskatchewan! Opening for Wide Mouth Mason will be the Acronyms, with Wide Mouth Mason currently set to take the stage around 11:30 p.m. that evening. Check with The Capitol for further details on tickets, doors, and set times.
Site updates: Gigography
Thanks to contributions from Shaun’s setlist capture from Peterborough, Jeremy Elliott Photography for his photos from Wide Mouth Mason’s recent gig at Toronto’s Festival of Beer, and Debra Kralka for her memories (and scanned ticket stub!) of when Wide Mouth Mason opened for 54-40 back in 1997, we continue to build the Wide Mouth Mason Gigography section with both recent and past gigs getting content updates. If you have digital content you’d like to share with other Wide Mouth Mason fans, send it on in! We’d prefer linking to content you already have posted on your own site or content hosting sites like YouTube or Flickr, but anything you have Wide Mouth Mason-related, we would love to see it!
WMMpress: JulyFest coverage
WMMpress via Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Expect your JulyFest loud, Big and Wide
BY BARRY COULTER, CRANBROOK DAILY TOWNSMAN July 14, 2014
The East Kootenay’s rock event of the summer is taking place this weekend approaching, as two top Canadian rock bands — Wide Mouth Mason and Big Sugar — take the stage Saturday, July 19, at the Kimberley Civic Arena as part of JulyFest celebrations. Expect it loud. Expect to be transported.
Big Sugar, formed by singer, guitar player and producer Gordie Johnson in the late 1980s, are renowned for their heavy blues-rock-reggae stylings, Johnson’s mindbending guitar work, and high volume, marathon concerts.
Wide Mouth Mason draws its style from electric blues, and was last featured in the area opening for ZZ Top in Cranbrook in 2010.
Big Sugar’s Johnson spoke to the Townsman last week, from somewhere on the road, where he and the band usually are. Big Sugar is no stranger to the area. Though this will be their first Kimberley performance per se, the band has played Cranbrook several times, Invermere, Fernie … Johnson is asked if he’s partial to this area.
“Not be to be impartial,” he responds, “but I play everywhere at lot. Big Sugar’s been to Europe twice this year. My other group, Sit Down, Servant!!, has been to Europe once, and we’re going back in the beginning of November. Big Sugar’s going back to Europe at the end of November. We’ve got a cross-Canada toured planned for January and February next year — Man, I play everywhere all the time.
“I thought I might slow down at some point, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards right now.”
The two bands together can be expected to provide a charismatic display of rock, a perfect capstone for a hot summer Saturday night, and the centrepiece event for the summer party that is JulyFest.
“We call these shows Big and Wide,” Johnson said, “because it’s Big Sugar and Wide Mouth Mason together. And by the time Big Sugar takes the stage we bring all the Wide Mouth Mason guys in us with too, so there’s eight of us on stage.”
It should be noted that the two bands are also old pals.
“I produced a record for them back in 2000,” Johnson said. “And Wide Mouth Mason’s first cross-Canada tour was opening for Big Sugar, back in the mid-90s. They’re like our baby brothers. We’ve always been very close, these two bands.”
The synergy between Big and Wide is only increased by the fact that Johnson is currently serving as Wide Mouth Mason’s bass player, and has done so for the past several years. He was last seen here with Shaun Verreault (lead Vocals, guitar), Safwan Javed (drums), playing bass as they opened for legendary Texas rockers ZZ Top in Cranbrook.
“Their original bass player left the band, and they were kind of in the lurch because they had been offered the ZZ Top tour. I know Billy Gibbons (ZZ Top’s founder, guitarist and vocalist) quite well — and I thought, ‘Man, what a great opportunity for you guys, I’d hate to see you miss it. I’ll try to think of a bass player who can fill in for you.’ And they were like, ‘Uhhh, well, what about you?’ That sounded like a nice way to spend the summer, so I filled in with them for a while, but now it’s been four years! I think I might stick around for a bit.”
So in Kimberley, Johnson will hit the stage with Wide Mouth Mason, play that show, switch immediately to six-string and perform another high octane set with Big Sugar. Does one work a sweat that way?
“It’s pretty natural for me,” Johnson said. “That’s what I do — I play music. For anybody else that might seem excessive or exhausting, but that’s just what I do. It’s the other 20 hours of the day that are exhausting.
“When I’m on bass, that’s where I’m supposed to be, that’s where everything feels just about right.”
In other Big Sugar new, the band has a new album out — “Yard Style.”
“It’s our first all acoustic record,” Johnson said. “There’s about a dozen of us, guys who’ve been in and out of Big Sugar over the years, and other collaborators that we’ve worked with. Songwriters like the guys in the Trews, Meredith Shaw, the Rastas that have been a big influence on us in Toronto.
“All these people in one room, and without really being too aware of the recording process, we just played and sang live. We sat in a circle and recorded about 20 songs, and narrowed it down to the ones that are on the album. But it was a very informal get together, just singing and playing. It was pretty magical recording it, and think it really comes through on that record.”
Big Sugar and Wide Mouth Mason play Kimberley’s Civic Arena Saturday, July 19.
News: Canada Day gig cancelled due to flooding
Wide Mouth Mason is sorry to announce that the Canada Day show in Regina has been cancelled due to flooding. We are hopeful the affected communities recover quickly.
Wide Mouth Mason SummerFesting in Sudbury
In the process of being confirmed is an August date for Wide Mouth Mason at Sudbury’s SummerFest. Pre-sale tickets go on sale Wednesday, June 18, 2014. Check out the festival website at www.sudburysummerfest.org for more details!