Thanks DLC (Dominion Lending Centre) official commercial-jingle-song with Laura and Ryan - Who are they?

Have you heard the catchy new jingle written and sung by The Kwerks (Laura and Ryan) in the Dominion Lending Centre DLC commercial?


Come on, press play and sing along...

You, we think you're great
You got us a new rate
It is better than before
Now our mortgage is really short

The budget it was tight
We wanted to take a big flight
To take our three little jewels abroad
Thanks to you, now are our dream has come true
Yeah, we're going

Doo, doo, doo...

This song is one of those, get-stuck-in-your-head-numbers and if you are curious about who Laura and Ryan are, they go by their band name, The Kwerks (thekwerks.com). They are a very talented musical performance husband/wife team.

Their facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/laurakochmusic/?ref=hl

November 29th - THE KWERKS have released a single "BETTER TOGETHER"!
I love this song. It is like sitting in a European cafe in the warm evening with friends sipping hot chocolate (my favourite cafe drink). Laid back and cool.

AND REALLY IMPORTANTLY, sign up for their email list! Then you can follow "periodic" updates for what's happening, album and single releases, gigs, media, etc. 

I look forward to following their journey and can't wait for their album to come out! 

Jozef Luptak

Sometimes I just randomly think of a person from my past and you go to Facebook to see if they are on that scary networking site. I was putting Nigel's cello away in the closet since his brother and family are coming for the week. As I cleared the sheet music I remembered back to when I was just starting to play and living in Calgary. A couple people I knew were connected with Czech cellist, Jozef Luptak, who was coming to give a concert. "Should we try to get you a class with him?" they asked knowing I was limited with my violin player who was teaching me. "Yes, please! That would be great!" They spoke with him and told him I could afford $40 and would he be able to do it. Yes, he would. Leading up to the day I was very nervous. I was so jittery by the time I arrived that I could barely play when he asked me to (so that he could assess what level I was at). My playing was very shaky. I started some beginner song in my beginner book. He told me to relax. When I had finished there was a silence. Or perhaps that is just what I remember looking back now in embarassment. He looked at me and said, "Okay. Let's start from the beginning. Put down the cello. I need to teach you how to sit." Great! I was so bad, I wasn't even sitting right. He thought that might have something to do with having a violin teacher. For them it was less about sitting properly than for a cellist. He then spent a great deal of time showing me how to properly hold my bow and place it on the strings. Then before I knew it my time was up. I thought the whole exerience was inspiring and really saw myself getting into the whole cello thing. In fact, I knew he was part of a thriving arts community in the Czech Republic and perhaps I could go and live there and be his pupil. I asked in a very round about way how much he might charge for something like that. It must have been the round about way he answered me in combination with seeing him in concert a day later that makes me cringe even now. He is absolutely amazing! He has a whole technique of improvization and sounds from his mouth that is brilliant alongside playing the more traditional stuff. Indirectly he told me that he charged quite a bit more than $40 and that it was usually just very advanced students he tutored. Yeesh! YouTube: Via Affirmativa Improvisation: Cello and Dance

Free Pianos

Presented for Sing London and the City of London Festival, 30 street pianos have been installed on streets around London (UK), in public squares and parks, train stations, and markets. Anyone is welcome to sit down and play. I have come across some of these in my wanderings. www.streetpianos.co.uk Here a young man plays the piano... while his friends surround him and proudly announce, "this is our talented friend. He is only 15!" A man in a purple shirt plunks out a few notes in Leicester Square. I came across the crowd above outside a pub in Soho one evening all singing together with beers in their hands. I wove my way to the front and found a great piano player playing any song the crowd requested while everyone sang and swayed to the music. Music really is magic, folks!

I am Stuck on Susan Boyle

Susan Boyle has taken the Internet world by storm and everyone wants her to succeed. I can not stop watching her performance and find myself equally endeared to her character, her sense of humour, her authenticity, and her lovableness. Lisa Schwarzbaum asked in her article, "why do we all cry when we listen to Ms. Boyle?" She does reorder the popular world's view of beauty, transforming from quirky and loveable to stunning when she sings. The rest of what we focus on becomes irrelevant: the latest fashions, the celebrity culture we are all mesmerised with, and the self-packaging we all present to be accepted. She is not a trained singer, has not been moving in the right circles, has not bought into the "steps for success" that seem so essential when working towards an arts career. She has simply been caring for her aged mother who died two years ago at 91, singing only in Karaoke and her church. I am encouraged for the world of arts. I am weary with the theory that unquestionably goes along with being a visual artist. The discourse is exhausting and rarely feels authentic or humble. It is easy to get discouraged when focusing on it and this performance and person suddenly make it as irrelevant as I hoped it was. Many viewers have commented on a higher Universe that has given Ms. Boyle her talent. When I hear such raw beauty I don't doubt for a minute that the Creator of the Universe especially gave that talent to her. In this raw and unpackaged individual, we stare into the face of God's beauty when she sings and something unjust is made just. That is why I believe we are all inexplicably moved to tears. So forget the celebrity gossip. Forget trying to make the perfect career move. Do what you love to do to the best of your abilities. I ask myself, "what would I paint if no one else was ever going to see it?" Susan Boyle hit me somewhere deep. Our celebrity culture is suddenly exposed as irrelevant, distasteful, and complete false. I am left remembering that the real in us is the most beautiful, warts and all.

Susan Boyle

There are some things that I see or hear that bring tears to my eyes: the underdog rising to the top. I suspect Susan Boyle is exactly what the world needs...just as she is. Lisa Schwarzbaum writes for Popwatch: "I'm pondering why the experience of watching and listening to Ms. Boyle makes so many viewers cry, me among them. And I think I've got a simple answer, at least for me: In our pop-minded culture so slavishly obsessed with packaging -- the right face, the right clothes, the right attitudes, the right Facebook posts -- the unpackaged artistic power of the unstyled, un-hip, un-kissed Ms. Boyle let me feel, for the duration of one blazing showstopping ballad, the meaning of human grace. She pierced my defenses. She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time." Click here to hear Susan Boyle singing Les Miserables on Britain's Got Talent.

Raw Guts and Giggles

INTRODUCTION #2
KIM BARLOW
A musician from the Yukon whom I heard for the first time at the South Country Fair. She plays banjo, guitar, and cello to name a few. She has a small town feel with all the charm of the backwood, plaid shirts and hunters. If you think you know what kind of music she makes, then the next song will change your mind...and the next...and the next. An odd duck (in a very good way), she is honest to the point most people start squirming and then turns around and makes you laugh your head off. I am left feeling that although she lives in her "igloo" in 23 hours of darkness without a fashion magazine or celeb gossip rag in site, she is a far cry more cooler than all of us city folk put together.

She was my first cyber stalking love!

Listen to Kim Barlow on MySpace

Stabbingly Drop-Jaw Fantastical

I am not one for listening to recorded music. I have better things to do, and as I have discovered early on, I cannot listen to music and do anything else at the same time. I am compelled to sit and listen, in the same way I am compelled to be still in front of a painting or work of art.

Live music is another thing. I have become entranced with certain musicians I have heard live. There haven't been many, but when I take a shine to one, I am likely to go into cyber stalking mode.

INTRODUCTION #1
VEDA HILLE.
Hailing from Vancouver,I first heard her in Albert in a tent at the South Country Fair. How can I describe her? Eclectic, fantastical, staggering in the array of unusual lyrics, melodies, piano compositions, and sounds. Truly an unusual oddity that has me hooked like a wandering goat lost in the Himalayas without a teat to suckle on.

Listen to Veda Hille on MySpace


Lyrics to her Tuktoyaktuk Hymn written after spending time up on the shores of the Arctic Ocean, at the uppermost edge of Canada in Tuktoyaktuk, a small Inuvialuit community. The song's bridge sends shivers down my spine everytime...

Jesus, where'er Thy people meet,
There they behold thy mercy seat;
Where'er they seek Thee Thou art found,
And every place is hallowed ground.

Tuktoyaktuk, plain dirt roads;
They all lead to Thy wooden house;
Lord, we have built this house for Thee,
On frozen ground by northern sea.

The winter's dark is cold and long;
We call Thee Lord, we bid Thee come,
White crosses in our graveyard stand;
Protect us in Thy willful land.

From sudden storm
Guns that jam
Alcohol
Late spring break up
Thin ice
Rogue bear
Engine failure, engine failure
Failure, failure

Lord, we are few, but Thou art near;
Nor short Thine arm, nor deaf Thine ear;
O rend the heavens, come quickly down,
And make a thousand hearts Thine own.

Tuktoyaktuk Amen