Live Music Halifax

Weird Nightmare
2025-10-10 22:00 - 23:59 (America/Halifax) | Buffalo Club, 2 Wentworth St
Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

Fittonia
2025-10-10 22:00 - 23:59 | Sanctuary Arts Centre Downstairs, 100 Ochterloney St.
Fittonia is a Peterborough collective of artists playing songs composed by Shan Culkeen.
Fittonia’s music is about redemption in ecological ruin, meditations on courage and virtue, and the challenge of knowing that death is coming for us all.
It’s okay to be finite – all songs are.
Shannon Culkeen – voice, autoharp
Cormac Culkeen – voice
Evelyn CJF Coyne – upright bass, voice
Michael Cloud Duguay – piano, accordion, keyboard instruments, voice
Melissa Baldwin – trumpet, flugelhorn, voice
Wyatt Burton – lap steel
Benj Rowland – hurdy-gurdy
Gabrielle Rekai – trombone
Jill Staveley – voice
Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

Fiver
2025-10-10 22:00 - 23:59 | Sanctuary Arts Centre Downstairs, 100 Ochterloney St.
Fiver is one of many projects from Toronto’s Simone Schmidt, joined on this beautiful, spacious record exploring the frontier between country and improv by players who recently backed Beverly Glenn-Copeland. Schmidt’s voice is deep, impasto-textured and enveloping, singing of human solidarity during precarious times; the brushed drums are brisk and amiable, the pedal steel twinkling, a tense, overdriven mid-section foray soothingly resolved.
Review of Fiver with the Atlantic School of Spontaneous Composition, The Guardian, London, UK
Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

I dialled your number
2025-10-10 22:00 - 23:30 | Buffalo Club, 2 Wentworth St
hi! i’m jessie (she/her), a 19-year-old artist based in nova scotia, canada. i create music under idialedyournumber and love working across mediums like visual art and ux design. i study audio engineering, and aspire to own more than a focusrite and knockoff SM58.
Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

Gizmo
2025-10-10 22:00 - 23:30 | Buffalo Club, 2 Wentworth St
Gizmo are Charlottetown rockers inspired by the guitar-damaged pop of 1990s American slacker bands and their contemporaries on Canada’s east coast. A 120 Minutes band for the Gen Z set, they breathe new life into their vintage influences with a distinctive songwriting style and frenetic live show.

Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

Brickworks
2025-10-10 21:30 - 23:59 | Bearly’s House of Blues & Ribs, 1579 Grafton St, Halifax
Nine of Halifax’s finest musicians join forces to deliver the spirit and sound of the golden era of the big bands. Enjoy familiar classics such as Come Fly With Me, Night and Day, and Cheek to Cheek.

Liftkit
2025-10-10 21:00 - 23:30 | Mic Mac AAC, 192 Prince Albert Rd

BodySync
2025-10-10 21:00 - 23:30 | Mic Mac AAC, 192 Prince Albert Rd

Six Star Review
2025-10-10 21:00 - 23:00 | The Local, 2037 Gottingen St, Halifax
Instrumental funk • Soul • R&B
With special guest Patrick Smith

The Mellotones
2025-10-10 20:30 - 23:30 | Pacifico, 5171 George St
For over two decades, The Mellotones have been bringing their high-octane party to stages around the world. Lighting up dance floors wherever they go, the R&B Funk band is an 8-piece powerhouse.

Rumé Kover
2025-10-10 19:00 - 22:00 | The Sanctuary Arts Centre, 100 Octherloney St

David Grubbs
2025-10-10 19:00 - 22:00 | The Sanctuary Arts Centre, 100 Octherloney St
David Grubbs (born September 21, 1967) is an American composer, guitarist, pianist, and vocalist. He was a founding member of Squirrel Bait, Bastro, and Gastr del Sol. He has also played in Codeine, The Red Krayola, Bitch Magnet and The Wingdale Community Singers.

Music career

Grubbs’ first band was a brief-lived punk/new wave group called The Happy Cadavers that released the four-song 7″ record With Illustrations in 1982. Grubbs then formed a hardcore punk band called Squirrelbait Youth that later evolved into the influential Louisville, Kentucky group Squirrel Bait, releasing a 12″ EP and an album on Homestead Records. Grubbs’s next group was the post-punkpower trio Bastro, which released an EP and two albums on Homestead.[1] In 1991 Bastro morphed into the more avant-garde Gastr del Sol.[1] This project soon became essentially a partnership between Grubbs and Jim O’Rourke after the band’s first album.[1] The albums released by the duo include Crookt, Crackt, or Fly, Upgrade & Afterlife, and Camoufleur. In this period, Grubbs also contributed to other projects, including guitar for two tracks on Codeine’s 1994 album The White Birch[2] and guitar, piano, and harmonium on recordings by Palace Music, Will Oldham, Royal Trux, Dirty Three, Matmos, Richard Buckner, Tony Conrad, Pauline Oliveros, Arnold Dreyblatt, and many others.
Since the breakup of Gastr del Sol in 1997, Grubbs has released numerous solo and collaborative records, mostly on the Drag City label, for which he co-directed the Dexter’s Cigar sub-label.[3] In 2000, his album The Spectrum Between was named “Album of the Year” in the Sunday Times.
His 2017 album Creep Mission was described by The Quietus as “a typically playful and intellectually ambitious set – and is as good an entry into the world of Grubbs as any.”[4]
In 2018, Grubbs released Failed Celestial Creatures, a collaboration with Japanese guitarist and electronic musician Taku Unami. According to Pitchfork, the album “feels of a piece with Grubbs’ last two records under his own name, Creep Mission and Prismrose, both nominal solo releases that each features a handful of guests. On all three albums, Grubbs uses the presence of collaborators to play with drones, repetition, and improvisatory interplay, taking his style to a more intuitive place.”[5]
He operates his own label, Blue Chopsticks, which has released new and archival recordings from Luc Ferrari, Derek Bailey and Noël Akchoté, Workshop, Van Oehlen, and Mats Gustafsson. Grubbs is also known for his collaborations with writers Susan Howe, Rick Moody, and Kenneth Goldsmith, and with visual artists including Anthony McCall, Angela Bulloch, Stephen Prina, and Cosima von Bonin. He has composed the soundtracks for Angela Bulloch’s installations Z Point, Horizontal Technicolour, and Hybrid Song Box.4, and his music appears in two installations by Doug Aitken. Grubbs’s sound installation “Between a Raven and a Writing Desk” was included in the 1999 group exhibition Elysian Fields at the Centre Pompidou.
Grubbs’s soundtrack work includes music with Matmos for Thierry Jousse’s feature film Invisible (Les Invisibles). Grubbs has also contributed music to the Red Krayola’s soundtrack to Norman and Bruce Yonemoto’s film Japan in Paris in LA and to three films by Augusto Contento(Parallax Sounds, Strade Trasparenti, and Onibus), to Braden King and Laura Moya’s film Dutch Harbor: Where the Sea Breaks its Back, and to John Boskovich’s film North. Music by Gastr del Sol appears in the PBS television series The United States of Poetry, Hal Hartley’s film The Book of Life, and Doug Aitken’s film The Diamond Sea. Grubbs composed the score for Karl Bruckmaier’s radio adaptation of Peter Weiss’s Die Ästhetik des Widerstands (Hessischer Rundfunk Hörbuch des Jahres 2007) and contributed music to Bruckmaier’s adaptation of Alexander Kluge’s Chronik der Gefühle (Deutscher Hörbuchpreis 2010, “Best Fiction”).
From 1997 to 1999, Grubbs was a part-time instructor in the Liberal Arts and Sound departments at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is currently Professor of Music in the Conservatory of Music at Brooklyn College, CUNY.[6] He teaches in Brooklyn College’s MFA program in Performance and Interactive Media Arts (PIMA) and Brooklyn College’s MFA program in Creative Writing, and is a member of the faculty of the Brooklyn College Center for Computer Music (BC-CCM).
He is one of five musicians (with Steve Albini, Ken Vandermark, Damon Locks, and Ian Williams) profiled in Augusto Contento’s 2012 documentary film Parallax Sounds.

Academic career

Grubbs received a B.A. degree from Georgetown University, an A.M. degree from the University of Chicago in 1991, and a Ph.D. degree in English, also from Chicago, in 2005.[7][8]
Grubbs is Distinguished Professor of Music at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, specialised in sound art and experimental music, and teaching in performance arts, interactive art and creative writing.[8] His criticism has appeared in Texte zur Kunst, Chicago Review, TDR, Conjunctions, Bookforum, and Purple, and from 1999-2007 he regularly contributed music criticism to the Munich newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung. Grubbs received a 2005–2006 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award.
Grubbs is the author of four books for Duke University Press: Records Ruin the Landscape: John Cage, the Sixties, and Sound Recording(2014), Now that the audience is assembled (2018), The Voice in the Headphones (2020), and Good night the pleasure was ours (2022). Now that the audience is assembled was described by The Washington Post as “a new book-length poem [that] reminds us that listening can feel stranger than dreaming.”[9] Records Ruin the Landscape has appeared in French, Italian, and Japanese translations. Grubbs is also the co-author of the collaborative artists’ books Simultaneous Soloists (with Anthony McCall, Pioneer Works Press, 2019) and Projectile (with Reto Geiser and John Sparagana, Drag City, 2021).

Personal life

Grubbs lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Cathy Bowman, and their son Emmett Bowman-Grubbs.
Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

Jeff Parker
2025-10-10 19:00 - 22:00 | The Sanctuary Arts Centre, 100 Octherloney St
Jeff Parker (born April 4, 1967) is an American guitarist and composer based in Los Angeles. Born in Connecticut and raised in Hampton, Virginia, Parker is best known as an experimental musician, working with jazz, electronic, rock, and improvisational groups. Parker studied at Berklee College of Music and then moved to Chicago in 1991.
Also a multi-instrumentalist, Parker has been a member of the post-rock group Tortoise since 1996, and was a founding member of Isotope 217 and the Chicago Underground Trio in the 1990s and early 2000s. He is a member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) and has worked with George Lewis, Ernest Dawkins, Brian Blade, Joshua Redman, Fred Anderson, Meshell Ndegeocello, Joey DeFrancesco, Smog (aka Bill Callahan), Carmen Lundy and Jason Moran. A prolific sideman, he has also released seven albums as a solo artist: Like-Coping, The Relatives, Bright Light in Winter, The New Breed, Slight Freedom, Suite for Max Brown, and Forfolks.
Tickets: prices vary from $0 to $40

Big Easy Fridays!
2025-10-10 17:30 - 19:30 | Bearly’s House of Blues & Ribs, 1579 Grafton St, Halifax
Sounds of New Orleans with Mike Cowie & John Alphonse
More events all week on Bearly’s website

Paper Beat Scissors
2025-10-10 13:00 - 16:30 | Morley’s, 45 Portland St.
Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

Klarka Weinwurm
2025-10-10 13:00 - 15:00 | Morley’s, 45 Portland St.
Punchy pop, alternative garage rock with vocal sentiment.
Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

Joy Curve
2025-10-09 21:00 - 23:00 | Driftwood, 2103 Gottingen St, Halifax

Derek Piotr
2025-10-09 19:00 - 22:00 | Sanctuary Arts Centre Downstairs, 100 Ochterloney St.
Derek Piotr is a folklorist, researcher and performer whose work focuses primarily on the human voice. His work covers practices including fieldwork, vocal performance, preservation and autoethnography; and is primarily concerned with tenderness, fragility, beauty and brutality. He has collaborated with artists including Scott Solter, Nathan Salsburg and Thomas Brinkmann across various disciplines.
He is lead archivist and creative director of the Fieldwork Archive
Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

Scions
2025-10-09 19:00 - 22:00 | Sanctuary Arts Centre Downstairs, 100 Ochterloney St.
Scions are a new innovative experimental ensemble. The group features members from the award-winning minimalist chamber-jazz quartet New Hermitage, the Polaris-nominated drone-hymn duo Joyful Joyful, and the acclaimed producer and composer Michael Cloud Duguay. Their collaboration began at the Sappyfest music festival in Sackville, New Brunswick, in August 2022. During this event, New Hermitage and Joyful Joyful connected for the first time and teamed up with Duguay for a spontaneous improvisational performance based on his song writing. The enthusiastic response, capped by a standing ovation, solidified the ensemble’s decision to pursue the project further, with Duguay deftly shifting from front-person to producer and musical director.
After being awarded a Canada Council project grant in early 2023 the group took residence in Hotel Wolfe Island on Wolfe Island. Over a week the seven core members lived and worked together, culling material from sunrise improv sessions and collaboratively shaping it into a unique body of work that would later become To Cry Out In The Wilderness.
In June 2023, the ensemble, now joined by double bassist Gabriella Ciurcovich, recorded their debut album in Halifax’s north end. Led by Duguay’s distinctive approach to site-specific production, the recording took place in the sanctuary of St. George’s Round Church, with engineering by Jake Nicoll, known for his sustainable recording methods using a solar-powered, mobile control room. The resulting album, To Cry Out In The Wilderness, finds the ensemble expertly exploring and powerfully combining their skills in jazz, devotional, classical, drone, folk, ambient, metal, improvisational, minimalist and avant-garde music.
The project culminated in a week of production, with contributions from numerous artists from Halifax’s creative music community. Scions then presented their work live, performing on the opening night of Halifax’s Everyseeker festival of experimental music, where they shared the spotlight with the renowned Sun Ra Arkestra.
Speaking on the narrative of To Cry Out In The Wilderness vocalist and lyricist Cormac Culkeen said: “When we came together to make this body of work, we started from a narrative seed; a post-apocalyptic humanity relearning and recreating itself, after a total ecological collapse.” Speaking on “Fight Song” they add, ““Fight Song” became the song we thought the last of us might need. It is sung for an imagined last stand. It is a rallying cry to wholeheartedly fight a losing battle. So it is for us now, in this time of great dismay and unease. The axe must be disobeyed.”
Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

Charlotte Cornfield
2025-10-09 19:00 - 22:00 | The Sanctuary Arts Centre, 100 Octherloney St
It’s been less than two years since Highs in the Minuses became Charlotte Cornfield’s break-out—a magnetic mission-statement for the Toronto songwriter described by Rolling Stone as “Canada’s best-kept secret.” Cornfield emerged from pandemic seclusion with new fans, raised expectations, and her first major US tour. She could have kept touring forever; she could have fled to the woods with a four-track. She could have done anything. What she did was jump into an old Subaru, driving seven hours south to the Hudson Valley. The car didn’t have any A/C; she had only recently earned her license; and she had never met the producer she was driving down to meet. But when Cornfield arrived in Hurley, NY, at the red-steepled church that is now Dreamland Recording Studios, she was ready for whatever came next. “There was this letting go of some of the strongheaded-ness that I think I used to have,” she says, “and an embracing of the open-endedness of life.”
Cornfield had come to Hurley to work with producer Josh Kaufman, thrilled by his sublime recordings with Cassandra Jenkins, Anais Mitchell and his own band, Bonny Light Horseman. The album they’d now make together, Could Have Done Anything, is a testament to Cornfield’s uncommon life and all its possibilities, an acknowledgment that the best musicians can turn fleeting moments into timeless songs. Over nine magnetic tracks, the singer-songwriter begins yet another chapter: gazing in the rear-view to understand where she’s been; squinting through the sunset to see what’s ahead. Calmer than I was, she sings in the album’s final moments. Stronger than I was / older than I was / less angry than I was…—and finally—happier than I was / happier than I was / happier than I was…
Whereas Cornfield’s preceding albums were made in familiar settings, with troupes of friends, her latest long-player reaches into the unknown. Kaufman and Cornfield (who went to school for jazz drums) played every instrument themselves, from ringing guitars to cozy piano, Hammond B3, pedal steel and synthesizers. Together with engineer D. James Goodwin (Kevin Morby, Whitney) and assistant engineer Gillian Pelkonen, the pair worked swiftly, impulsively, trying to shrink the gap between having an idea and putting it on tape. The resulting sound is at once elaborate and unrehearsed; there’s a sense that it’s coming together—and coming alive—at the very moment it’s being made.
“The hours flew by,” Cornfield says. “We lived inside of the songs there, for a few days.” You can hear it on a tune like “Cut and Dry,” where a radiant, easygoing groove forms the landscape of a song about seeing people as a whole, together with their mistakes. There’s a similar throughline to “In From The Rain,” where rambling 70s licks and Cornfield’s tambourine flutter trace the evolution of a friendship, from intimacy to disappointment to acceptance. On the latter, listen at the end of the first minute, after Cornfield sings a lyric about rainstorms and visitors: Suddenly you were there, goes the line—as a real-life thunderclap unfurls, like an angel’s drumroll. “All the mics picked it up,” she recalls. “So we left it in.”
“Gentle Like the Drugs” draws on imagery from a spring tour in the American west. “I was experiencing joy on the road in a way I really hadn’t before,” Cornfield says, and you can hear it in the patient pleasure of these chords, or the way she narrates her first impressions of Arizona: I watch the colours get real / the pink and the teal / I see a dust devil / I see an elevator. Like riding across the desert with your friends; like smoking a joint at the end of a long day; but the song’s alternating verses orient themselves towards another sensation, too: that feeling of being home, and happy, when your lover’s not around. Not because they’re gone, but because you know they will return.
Intimacy and absence go hand-in-hand on Could Have Done Anything: the theme repeats on the unfussy love-song “You and Me,” with its tale of tour and homecoming. You’re sunkissed in your Subaru / Picking me up at Terminal 3, she sings—and, later, two bikes on a pavement path / ice cream cones and epitaphs. Some love is as simple as this: liberating, easy, like piano and guitar in two-step. “I’ve been trying to write a song like this for a long time,” Cornfield says. “A catchy love-song, with cars. Where it feels like the narrator could go anywhere and do anything.”
That was the spirit of this record: connection, possibility, acceptance. “Don’t be afraid to take a left,” Kaufman would say, encouraging Cornfield to drop preconceptions, invent new rules. Even with the small things, like wandering around the tracking room with a pair of claves in your hands, or adding random, surround-sound echoes to “The Magnetic Fields”—a song about a potent and formative live concert experience. Throughout, Cornfield tried to channel the energy of her favorite classic records, from Tapestry to Blood On The Tracks to Car Wheels On A Gravel Road—albums where the listener is simply carried by the songs and the playing.
After six days, Cornfield went back to Canada, with a new album to mix and master. Another day-long drive; another homecoming; and one more thing, too, which would arise a little over nine months later: the singer’s first baby’s due April 2023. Anything can happen.

Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

The Weather Station
2025-10-09 19:00 - 22:00 | The Sanctuary Arts Centre, 100 Octherloney St
The Weather Station — the project of Toronto based songwriter Tamara Lindeman — returns with new album Humanhood on January 17th via Fat Possum Records. The last few years have seen The Weather Station release two albums: the career defining Ignorance (2021) and its ethereal, mostly live recording companion piece, How Is It That I Should Look At The Stars (2022). In that time, The Weather Station have gone on to headline tours across North America and Europe, play major festivals, and perform on the televised Austin City Limits as well as Jimmy Kimmel Live. Ignorance was named Best New Music (Pitchfork), and landed in year-end Top 10 lists from The New Yorker (#1), Spin, New York Times, Uncut, Pitchfork, The Guardian, and many others. Called “a heartbroken masterpiece” in The Guardian, the record was a complex evocation of climate grief that struck a chord worldwide.
As a writer, Lindeman is known for her detail. “Her writing can feel … like the collected epiphanies from a lifetime of observing” (Pitchfork). Over the course of six albums, her music has moved from home recorded, mostly acoustic folk to the “ornate act of world building” (New Yorker) that was Ignorance. The throughline, though, is a focus on ideas; her lyrics walk the line between the personal and the conceptual, forever tying small moments to larger metaphysical quandaries. Nominated for three Juno Awards, a Socan Songwriting Award, and shortlisted for the Polaris Prize, her albums have made a mark both critically and conceptually.
Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

Geordie Haley, David Burton, Trevor Wentzell
2025-10-09 18:00 - 21:00 | Wooden Monkey, Alderney Landing
Geordie Haley: With more than 25 years of presenting and performing original music guitarist, composer, improviser and educator Geordie Haley has been a featured artist in concert and festival programs by creative music presenters Upstream Music, Suddenly Listen, Canadian Music Center, The Motion Ensemble, Jazz East, Vocalypse ,Shattering the Silence, Obey, Scotia Fest, Center for Experimental Music and the Harvest Jazz Festival. Geordie teaches guitar and ensembles at the NSCC Music Arts Program and at the Maritime Conservatory for the Performing Arts. He conducts a monthly improvising workshop for Suddenly Listen. As well as leading his own ensembles Geordie is a member of the Upstream Quartet, Tom Easley’s EQ, Jamie Gatti’s Riot Squad, The Back Alley Big Band. Geordie has an active career as a contributor to many creative projects.
Trevor Wentzell, a prominent figure in the vibrant music scene of Halifax, is a highly accomplished musician and dedicated music educator hailing from Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia. His lifelong musical journey began at the tender age of five, and since then, he has immersed himself in the study and performance of music. Trevor’s passion for music is evident as he graces stages with his multi-instrumental talents, including the organ, piano, flute, clarinet, and, of course, the saxophone. He is a sought-after member of various local jazz, blues, and funk bands, such as the Back Alley Big Band, the Chronos Band, Zim Gars Trio, Tom Collins Band, Wentzell/Burton/Haley Organ Trio, and Zulkamoon, just to name a few. Trevor is also a prolific recording artist, frequently collaborating with some of the finest musicians in Halifax.
David Burton has a vast array of recording projects to his credit as composer, producer, musical director and studio musician. His talent and musicianship has granted him priority status with CBC, not only as a drummer, but also as a musical director and arranger. His career has taken him around the world, backing Canadian artist like Rita MacNeil, Natalie MacMaster, Alanya Miles and Ian Thomas, to name a few. He has also had the pleasure of performing live with artists like Tony Bennett, Sara Vaughan and, the great, Ella Fitzgerald. He has received a number of awards including Best Live Jazz CD “HavanaFax Live” (East Coast Music Awards), Best Instrumental Recording “Collage” (East Coast Music Awards) and for the soundtrack “New World Columbus – The Life of Joshua Slocum” (Houston Film Festival).

Jennah Barry
2025-10-09 07:00 - 22:00 | The Sanctuary Arts Centre, 100 Octherloney St
Hailing from the coastal haven of Mahone Bay, Nova Scotia, Jennah Barry is one of Atlantic Canada’s surest sirens. Her undeniable, rosewater voice sets a mood wherein even the hardest truths seem palatable. Moving effortlessly between folk, country and soft rock motifs, Barry’s music sets her at the forefront of a tradition of women making music as strong as it is sentimental.
Tickets prices vary from $0 to $40

Jazz Night @ The Local
2025-10-08 19:30 - 23:00 | The Local, 2037 Gottingen St, Halifax
Jazz night with Silvio Pupo, keys, Ronald Hynes, bass and Damien Moynihan, percussion.

Oktoberfest Opera Kitchen Party
2025-10-08 19:30 - 21:30 | New Scotland Brew Pub, 15 Portland St.
Sponsored by OperAtlantic
Dig out your lederhosen, and Dirndl, we are celebrating the change of the seasons with our version of Oktoberfest! Our host, Jon-Paul Decosse will lead us through a program of German (and some English) favourites, while exploring some of the fun and quirky traditions of Oktoberfest with a Maritime twist.
We are featuring recent Dal Alumna soprano Karina Matys, tenor Glen Nowell, soprano Suzanne Rigden, student guest soprano Kaelin George-Wegner and baritone Jon-Paul Décosse with our fabulous music director, Tara Scott.
Tickets
More info

Live Jazz with the Matt MacLennan Trio
2025-10-08 19:00 - 22:00 | Obladee wine bar, 1600 Barrington St, Halifax
Matt MacLennan is a bassist and bandleader, bringing a mix of velvety ballads, smooth bossa novas, and breezy swing to Obladee!
You can expect balanced and inviting sets with an easy and conversational style that fills the room without crowding it. Lean in and listen, or simply let the sound and textures carry you away.
A warm welcome to Matt and his band – we just know you’ll love them!
Please reserve your spot as seating is limited.

Sheer Mag
2025-10-07 22:00 - 23:59 | Buffalo Club, 2 Wentworth St

Garrett Mason
2025-10-07 20:30 - 23:00 | Bearly’s House of Blues & Ribs, 1579 Grafton St, Halifax
Garrett Mason is a true bluesman at heart. He was raised in Truro, Nova Scotia by his mother Pam, and father, veteran Canadian Bluesman Dutch Mason. His quest to become a blues musician started at a very early age; being surrounded by music blues music, Garrett’s favorite tapes at 3 years old were Canned Heat and Buddy Rich. What really sealed the deal for Garrett to become a blues guitarist came after watching a video of Stevie Ray Vaughn “Live At the El Mocambo” – he was hooked.
His dad, Dutch Mason, stopped playing guitar before Garrett was born due to crippling arthritis in his hands. Although he was not able to teach his son to play, he has certainly been able to teach Garrett the structure of the Blues and to influence him about the resulting sound. Surrounded by his father’s peers, Garrett has had the benefit of hearing and learning from a wide variety of musical talent. The late Rick Jeffery was a great inspiration to Garrett; they would talk and play for hours together. Rick once said “Garrett is the only guitar player I know that can play Albert Collins’ style down to a T”. The combination of his father’s advice, Jeffery’s guidance and his own natural talents provide that special brew for Garrett to become the musical influence he is destined to be.
Garrett would be the first to tell you that riding the coat tails of others won’t take you very far in this business, but striving to be truly original is the secret to longevity and lasting success. Garrett launched his debut CD I’m Just a Man at the 2004 Harvest Jazz and Blues festival in Fredericton, New Brunswick to a sold out crowd.
This debut CD features Garrett’s talent for strong original songs, a voice that is reminiscent of a veteran performer and his extraordinary aptitude for playing electric guitar. Garrett’s original talent was awarded in 2005 when he received a Juno for Best Blues Album. Garrett Mason is poised to be one of the brightest stars to emerge from the East Coast Blues scene in years.
Garrett’s band released their sophomore album Love and Sound in July 2008 which was nominated for a Juno Award. The album won Blues Artist/Group Recording of the Year at the 2009 Music Nova Scotia and Industry Awards.

Irish Music Sessions!
2025-10-07 19:30 - 22:30 | Driftwood, 2103 Gottingen St, Halifax
Ellen Gibling and Colin Carrigan host Irish music sessions every Tuesday! All players welcome! Admission is free.

The tunes are lively, the pints are flowing, and the crowd keeps growing!

Come for the tunes and bring your appetite as it’s also Taco Tuesday
