Such a good time at Last Temptation Acoustic Wednesday last night, a new-ish open mic event in Kensington Market, hosted by singer/songwriter Jessica Speziale – with last night’s feature performer Kat Leonard (who performed on the eve of her birthday!) – and hanging out with my pal Lizzie Violet.

Jessica kicked off the evening with “Brace Yourself,” the first track off her CD Dear Reverie. I’d only ever heard her with her band, but there was nothing lost on this acoustic set of original tunes. This lady is a sultry bluesy powerhouse – and she can belt it! A bit later, she performed “Don’t Look Down,” my favourite ballad from the CD.

Next up were some open mic folks, starting with Toronto actor/musician Stephen MacDonald, a tall, slender young man in black with a smooth, soothing voice. Stephen performed a set of original tunes on a well-loved brunette guitar…

Here are just a couple of things coming up this week:

Wednesday, May 2: Kat Leonard is the featured performer at Last Temptation Acoustic Wednesdays (12 Kensington Ave., Toronto) – show starts at 9 p.m. For the scoop on Kat, visit her site: http://www.katleonard.com/home.cfm

Also on Wednesday, May 2: Alumnae Theatre Company’s New Play Development (NPD) group opens Big Ideas, their annual spring readings of new plays/plays in development, up in the studio space. Big Ideas has expanded this year to run over the course of several days (May 2-6).  Here’s a quick rundown of the program – and admission is free!

It’s true, isn’t it?

This past week we held Wonder Women IV and there was so much love and spirit pinging off the walls of The Central Bar & Grill I felt bombarded by joy!

Wonder Women is a series of live events started by the uber-talented and ever-generous Wonder Woman Arlene Paculan.  She created it to help promote local talent and also raise awareness and funds for local charities.  For WWIV we joined with Red Door Family Shelter and Beverly Webb from Red Door attended the event to share the love and spread the word.

A highlight for me was when the beautiful Arlene Paculan covered my greatest hit Jockstrap and made it sweetly and sinfully soulful.
Here’s a link to the video: Arlene does Jockstrap!

Blurbs and pictures from WWIV can be found in the blogs of the following Wonder Women:

“Four, hot talented women join forces…

Wow – what an amazing event last night at The Central! Four incredibly talented women joined forces with their music and spoken word/poetry talents to put on a fabulous show and support Red Door Family Shelter. I was working the merch table, and up taking pics with both my and Lizzie’s camera, only sitting down now to put into words the fun, support and talent in that room last night. If you’re in Toronto, check out The Central sometime – it’s a great space (and I enjoyed my burger and beer so, so much): http://thecentralbar.ca/

Lizzie Violet and Arlene Paculan took turns MCing the evening, with Lizzie working the raffle draws between sets – lots of very cool prizes: books, jewelery, art, music. Representing Red Door was Bev Webb, who came up to talk about the organization’s work assisting families, refugees and women in their escape from abuse and homelessness…

This may have been one of the most remarkable periods for spoken word and poetry slam in one local scene in the country’s history. Amazing event after amazing event, the Greater Toronto Area kept rolling them out for the people of this region, culminating in the incredibly entertaining spectacle that was The Last Poet Standing on Saturday night at The Great Hall (won by 2012 Toronto Poetry Slam Grand Champion The P.O.E. in an epic showdown with Tomy Bewick).

As one festival involving several Toronto based poets comes to an end (the Calgary International Spoken Word Festival) and another gets underway (the Canadian Individual Poetry Slam in Vancouver), we have seen a great movement of our local poets across the continent. After this week, everyone will be home and there will be great stories to share about a National Poetry Month that won’t soon be forgotten.

Here’s what’s…

This is an article from 1941 found in Grandma’s old family photo albums. Grandma knew it, lived it, and passed the values down through Mom to me. It’s still hard truth.

🙂 love Kat 

Got out to my first poetry cabaret since I went to The Beautiful and the Damned last month. I’ve been so in the thick of The Lazarus Kiss edits I haven’t been able to focus properly on poetry edits. The last few open stages I hit I used old material, so it was time to break out some new pieces. I have to be careful not to use prose edit attitude for poetry – even though story line is important in both – in poetry I try keep the language flow a little more playful.

I’ve been using my Kindle for readings to cut down on the amount of paper I have to deal with. Is the Kindle any better for the environment? Anyway – it is certainly easier to handle than loose pages at the mic. I bump up the font size, save it as a PDF & load…