A recent addition to the Futures' performances is March Storm, about a horrendous maritime disaster off Canada's Atlantic coast. A group of fisherman participating in the 1914 spring seal hunt was stranded on the ice floes when a vicious storm struck without warning. After 3 days of hurricane winds and freezing rain, 78 men were found encased in ice. Paul, Marty and Rebecca portray different characters in Stuart's song, with Paul on board ship, Marty on the ice and Rebecca on shore.
The definitive account of this disaster is Cassie Brown's Death on the Ice. Another treatment can be found in a marvelous chapter of Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams.

Porkbelly Futures opens (on August 25) the inaugural season of The Forest Festival, a celebration of the arts in Ontario's Haliburton Forest and Wildlife Reserve. The band will be performing at sunset on a floating stage on a totally secluded lake, with the audience seated in an amphitheatre on shore. Noted blues/jazz vocalist Zoe Chilco will be our guest.
Porkbelly Stu is festival director, as it happens, as well as board president of Patria Music/Theatre Projects, which presents the environmental music dramas of renowned Canadian composer R. Murray Schafer. The Forest Festival is an outgrowth of Patria, which boasts honourary patrons such as Adrienne Clarkson and Paul Quarrington. But we digress. You can learn more about the festival and book your tickets HERE.

Many Porkbelly fans know that Paul and Marty began professional careers together, eventually becoming the rhythm section of Joe Hall's legendary Continental Drift and then making records as a duo. Their debut album as a duo, in fact, yielded the #1 Canadian hit single Baby and the Blues, which was pretty good for first chance at bat (helped along no doubt by Daniel Lanois' catchy pedal steel playing). The boys' exhilaration was short-lived, however, as the small label they were on was completely unprepared for success and couldn't supply enough product to stores to meet the demand. Today, Paul and Marty refer to that single as having been #1 With an Anchor! HERE'S the album which yielded that gem (among others).

Porkbelly returns to its roots by performing at The Black Swan Tavern on August 17. Located on the Danforth, The Black Swan was the first Toronto venue to regularly invite us to perform - and perform we did. Stuart got so carried away in a guitar solo once that he kicked over his tenor sax. The horn and its stand crashed off the stage onto the floor but he kept right on playing (!?). Porkbelly was pretty much a Chicago Blues-type band then, but when we started writing our own material, it didn't seem all that bluesy. This came as such a surprise that we stopped performing while we underwent a sort of identity crisis. It's still hard to describe what our music is, but some describe us as "A North Country Band Born in the Blues".

In April, 1969, Chas, Paul, Marty and Stuart attended a Paul Butterfield Blues Band concert in Toronto. We didn't know each other, but years later realized we'd all been there that night getting an earful of the blues. Apart from The Man himself, we were struck by 19 year-old guitarist Buzz Feiten and Dave Sanborn on sax (though Rod Hicks on bass and drummer Phil Wilson were also mighty). That concert made quite an impression on Stuart, who even today can bore anyone to tears by describing every last detail of the night. To hear the band we heard click HERE

Porkbelly would like to acknowledge our top-secret, behind-the-scenes guys. This will completely blow their cover, but for those of you who are asking, Bob Wilson (our manager), Colin Pilmer, Michael Runciman and Wayne Maddever are also Porkbellys. No, they don't perform with us (although Wayne contributed button accordion to our first disc) but they support us, guide us and drink with us. If you'd like to say hi, just look for the four best-looking guys in the audience at our next show.