the Lemon Bucket Orkestra

Performer and broadcaster Gilda Salomone is in with her weekly selection of some of the best new music by Canadian recording artists. This week Gilda brings us Nans & Nat, The Lemon Bucket Orkestra, and The Barr Brothers. - Radio Canada International

It’s 10 pm on a Tuesday, and the corner of Church and Wellington is packed. Over the heads of revellers, surreptitious flask-sippers and confused patio-sitters, a tuba, a violin and a megaphone peek out, the muffled sounds of energetic Ukrainian folk barely audible over handclaps, percussion and audience chants.

It’s not where I expected to be when I arranged to meet up with the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, but it’s hardly out of the ordinary for the band’s 14 members. I’d met up with Toronto’s self-proclaimed “only Balkan-klezmer-Gypsy-punk super-band” at Bloor and Spadina, but we’d somehow ended up in the midst of a hundreds-strong celebration – part public space intervention, part fire-spinning, street-dancing block party – commemorating the ninth anniversary of the great Toronto blackout of 2003.

“We love to play for people when they’re not expecting it,” says mohawked fiddler/bandleader Mark Marczyk. “Venues and festivals are fun, but what’s really awesome is getting people who aren’t saying, ‘I’m going to a folk festival to listen to folk or to a jazz festival to listen to jazz,’ but ‘I’m going to work and there’s a group of people having fun and celebrating life. I should be doing that, too.’”

Just as likely to be found marching outside a venue as inside it, the band updates the traditional sounds of Eastern European music with a modern punk edge, breaking it out of its specialized niche and bringing it to the streets of Canada.

They’ve mostly done this from a position of relative obscurity, though they recently won some internet fame when a video of them playing a spontaneous Gypsy folk tune aboard a delayed Air Canada flight spread to the pages of Gawker, CNN and Fox News.

That flight, taking them to Romania for a tour, was only a small part of their adventure. In the three weeks prior to leaving, they’d raised $15,000 for the trip through street busking, and then, after playing 15 shows in two weeks, went home with a letter from the Canadian embassy in Romania hailing them as “cultural ambassadors” and “crusaders for diversity and respect.”

“We’re not about representing Canadian culture so much as the Canadian open mind,” says flamboyant moustached accordionist Tangi Ropars (originally from Brittany, France). “We’re not just about sharing and mixing different cultures, but also learning about other cultures and respecting their traditions. We want to create a circle of creative energy.” - NOW Magazine

The Toronto Sun

Friday, december 14, 2012

If there was a way to bottle the unbridled energy of Lemon Bucket Orkestra’smusic and gigs, you’d have to slap a sticker on the contents with the warning,‘Flammable Material!
...While LBO’s shows and music epitomize the spirit of punk, rest assured the band members have great reverence for the roots of their high-octane mix...By all accounts, LBO’s show on Saturday promises to be legendary.“ - Toronto Sun

Before one dies, one must witness a self-described “Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-party-punk-super-style” band perform a Ukrainian Christmas show. Tonight offers one the opportunity to cross that experience off one’s, ahem, bucket list. - The Globe and Mail

Lemon Bucket Orkestra had a moment in the spotlight this year when a video of them playing a klezmer tune aboard a delayed Air Canada flight caught the trigger finger of hundreds of thousands of share-happy YouTubers. The video perfectly represents what the self-described “Balkan-Gypsy-klezmer-party-punk-super-band” does best: bring the sounds of eastern European folk traditions out of the realm of weddings and dances and unleash them on modern audiences.

The punked-up energy of the band’s busking and guerrilla performances is harder to convey on record, though this sophomore album does an admirable job. Their interpretations of tunes that have been passed down through generations clearly show off their personality and lush 13-piece instrumentation, which makes room for unique touches like the hidede (a violin amplified with a horn) amid the accordions, fiddles and chants.
Top track: Seminar - NOW Magazine

For some adventurously multicultural New Year's fare, head down to the Lower East Side to Mehanata, where the amazing Lemon Bucket Orchestra, billed as "Balkan Klezmer Gypsy Punk Super Party Band," makes a rare appearance in New York. - Wall Street Journal

Les quatorze musiciens torontois de Lemon Bucket Orkestra sont tous dans la vingtaine, abordent le répertoire des Roms d’Europe de l’Est, arborent les cheveux longs ou le mohawk et peuvent lâcher des cris infernaux. Ils se sont fait connaître par les « guérillas musicales » qu’ils ont offertes dans les rues et les métros. Ils ont aussi la réputation d’être un sacré groupe de scène et le répertoire de leur premier disque complet est pour le moins vitaminé.

Contrairement à plusieurs disques des Balkans qui se rendent jusqu’ici, on n’y retrouve pas de versions de pièces occidentales. Ils mélangent la guitare, le violon et l’accordéon à la clarinette, aux cuivres et aux percussions. Ils ont aussi le sousaphone et, pour bien traduire leur esprit punk, la batterie dite « sauvage ». Il leur arrive de respirer, de chanter a cappella et de laisser sortir le méchant par la plainte dans les intros, mais, pour des gadjos, ils ont une puissante énergie. - Le Devoir (Montreal)

This is an interesting one. The Lemon Bucket Orkestra is Toronto's only "Balkan-gypsy-klezmer-party-punk-super-band." Even if Balkan music isn’t on your radar, The Lemon Bucket is absolutely alive and electric, while “Odessa Bulgarish” amasses frantic Balkan rhythms and is delivered with rash punk rock intension.

Sounds like: A traveling musical caravan burning wildly across the night sky. - Alan Cross.ca

Music to shake you by the scruff, in the best possible way... - CBC World Music

The 14 members of the traditional folk-music collective Lemon Bucket Orkestra aren’t afraid to march to the beat of their own drum, or sax, or sousaphone, or flugelhorn, or button accordion, or—well, you get the picture.

Locally renowned since 2010 for pop-up concerts in unexpected spots—anywhere from street corners to the Island to Union Station to Air Canada flights—the Lemon Bucket Orkestra is now hitting bigger (and actual) stages. They played the closing weekend of the 2012 Luminato Festival, have a spot coming up in this year’s Nuit Blanche, and just completed a 15-day tour through Romania where they impressed audiences with their high-energy, half-naked, mohawked performances of the country’s traditional music.

The collective will release its debut full-length album, Lume Lume, in October, and Torontoist spoke with Mark Marczyk (violin/vocals) and Os Kar (savage drum) about staying true to their signature guerilla-style performances and traditional sounds... - the torontoist

Lemon Bucket Orkestra convenes a blackout anniversary party on—and under—downtown streets.

In 2003, Toronto—along with much of Ontario and the northeastern United States—experienced a blackout that brought most regularly scheduled activities to a halt. Shops started handing out free ice cream before it melted, neighbours checked on each other by candlelight, and downtown residents saw stars that were usually blotted out by the light. Every August since, the city’s seen one kind of blackout anniversary party or another, marking what turned out, for most people, to be an impromptu night of fun.

In that tradition on Tuesday night, some Torontonians gathered at Bloor and Spadina, summoned by the Lemon Bucket Orkestra for a street party. After a ride on the subway down to Union Station, the crowd stopped for another song (and a crowdsurfing kayaker), before walking down Front Street and meeting up with a Critical Mass bike ride en route to the Flatiron Building, where there were more songs, fire jugglers, and assorted forms of revelry. - the torontoist

By: Christopher Johnson Special to the Star, Published on Sat Jun 02 2012
ORADEA, ROMANIA—In a dark room with pockmarked walls, the local youth stare at the band in disbelief.
The 14-member band are doing something long forgotten by most Romanians — playing complex folk and Roma gypsy tunes, and belting out boozy choruses in Ukrainian, Serbian and other regional languages. But to the surprise of many, these minstrels are not Romanian old-timers. The Lemon Bucket Orkestra is mainly comprised of muscular Canadian party animals in their twenties who look and act like punks with long blond hair, neon mohawks, and a wild spirit formed in guerrilla street performances in downtown Toronto and most recently, on board a delayed Air Canada flight at Pearson International Airport.

“Isn’t it nice that a nice group of Canadians are playing nice music from your country?” band leader and violinist Mark Marczyk asks a crowd of about 150 on a Sunday night in May at Bar Mosckva in the baroque city of Oradea near the Hungarian border.

Though many in the audience can’t speak English, they understand the frenetic energy of their regional music performed with attitude by a brass band who, by the end of the show, are playing half-naked on bar tops. Drunk on wheat beer or shots of Palinka fire-water, the locals dance like mad and ask for autographs, CDs and posters after the show.

“I never heard of this band before, but when they went on top of the bar (to play), it was the best thing I’ve ever seen,” said Ibolya Kemenes, a teacher in a village near Oradea. “It’s like folk music for us. Bands from other countries in Europe mix in Romanian folk songs, but nobody makes such a good show.”

“It’s not something which we always see in Romania,” said Alafi Andrei, a hairstylist in Oradea with funky piercings. “It’s full of energy, and they play their instruments very well.”

The band (including — let’s make a full disclosure here — my brother Michael Louis Johnson on trumpet) are not the first Toronto act trying to conquer Europe. But unlike Broken Social Scene or other Canadian rockers who took Western music to Europe, the ensemble are trying to bring traditional melodies and phrases back to audiences accustomed to Céline Dion and Bryan Adams.

“We want people to appreciate their own music,” says Marczyk. “It’s great music, and the shows have been amazing.”

Turned off by rock bands who play 40-minute sets and go home, LBO will show up in a Romanian town, busk in a square, then do shows that spill over into friendly street parties or parades. Like the gypsies of yore, they pass around a hat, asking people “how much is music worth to you?”

Wading into the crowd, they form a circle, down shots of Palinka — a brandy — and belt out ancient anthems. The vibe becomes like a wedding party, or a class reunion of strangers with a common connection to forgotten roots. Nobody seems to leave or feel left out.

The impassioned response of Romanian audiences, especially in shows this week in Oradea, Arad, Timisoara and Cluj-Napoca, has surprised everyone who thought that traditional music had died years ago. “The Romanian bands I’ve seen are all playing rock ’n’ roll. They want to be Western groups,” says Emmanuel Plasseraud, a Paris-based filmmaker, who caught an LBO concert by chance during a film festival in Cluj-Napoca, and followed the band to Oradea.

“I thought they were a Romanian group at first, and I was surprised to hear they are Canadian. They play this traditional music very well.”

To promote the upcoming International Romani Arts Festival in Bucharest, Dan Olar, 25, a burly Romanian drummer and booking agent, wanted an energetic, danceable band. He knew some LBO members, such as accordionist Tangi Ropars and drummer Oscar Lambarri, from their previous tour in Romania with gypsy punk band Worldly Savages, and invited LBO with only about a month’s notice.

Marczyk, a 27-year old from Etobicoke, said “We have to go. We’ll find a way.” Having spent two years in Lvov, Ukraine, where he taught literature students about Neil Young and Tragically Hip lyrics, he wanted his bandmates to learn about the origin of their music — as well as regional issues such as discrimination against Roma gypsies, who’ve been kicked out of cities and live in forests and garbage dumps which even aid workers won’t enter. With only a few weeks to prepare for the 17-day tour, LBO busked in Yorkville and elsewhere in Toronto to raise $15,000 for plane tickets.

Then they got lucky. Their Air Canada flight to Frankfurt was delayed. The band knew what to do.
Known for marching out of Saturday-night gigs at La Palette onto Queen Street, LBO have played “guerrilla performances” on streetcars and Toronto subways. So, stuck on the tarmac at Pearson, they got out their instruments and performed four songs, drawing praise from passengers and supportive tweets from the Vancouver Opera, Calgary Folk Festival and even Air Canada, who tweeted: “We love Klezmer too! Thanks Lemon Bucket Orkestra for the impromptu performance.”

The video “Balkan Station,” shot by Toronto video-maker Joshua Barndt, accompanying the band on tour, drew more than 200,000 views on YouTube and was followed by appearances on CTV, CBC, CNN, Fox and Jimmy Kimmel Live, as well as in the newspapers USA Today and the Daily Mail and other media worldwide.
Their first show was with Taraf de Haidouks, a collective of Roma village musicians renowned throughout Europe but largely ignored in their native Romania. Instead of opening for their idols, they followed them, playing at the Silver Church club from 1:30 to 3 a.m. Hungover and jet lagged, LBO played four shows the next day, including an impromptu Canadian Embassy gig and a workshop with impoverished Roma gypsy schoolchildren.

Driving through Transylvania and the dangerous roads of the Carpathian Mountains, LBO played in an upmarket disco, a rooftop, and a riverside boat. Crammed into college dorms or hotels, sharing beds and floors, they slept only a few hours a night. One member twisted an ankle, another flew to Holland with food poisoning, while another pulled a chest muscle by vomiting too hard.

But like the cold roads of cross-country Canada tours that make or break Canadian bands, LBO’s European journey has galvanized the ensemble behind its mission of popularizing traditional culture.

“Being completely out of our comfort zone has accelerated the process of understanding each other,” says Marczyk, who calls LBO a family. “Any tour will have difficulties, especially for a 14-piece band. This trip has really opened up people to solving problems.”

The key, he jokes, is to “find out what the local drink is, and drink it. You will attract locals, and gel together as a band.”

After Monday night’s show in the funky courtyard of an apartment complex in Olar’s hometown of Arad, the band downed shots of Palinka, ate some awful shawarmas and sat by a pond listening to frogs until sunrise. The next day, Olar and a few hungover band members got lemons tattooed on their bodies.

Though shows have been packed with mad dancing and cheering crowds, the band made little money at first. Even a Roma street urchin, hawking CDs on a highway under construction, refused to take theirs in order to sell pirate copies of it, saying “It’s Romanian old-time music. I can’t sell it.”

But after Tuesday night’s performance on a riverboat in Timisoara, a crowd of about 200 bought 48 CDs. On Wednesday night, crowds went crazy during their three sets in Cluj-Napoca.

LBO are set to record their first full-length album right away in Toronto with Michael Phillip Wojewoda, who produced the Barenaked Ladies and Ashley MacIsaac. But first, to mark their triumphant return to Pearson: LBO invited more than 5,000 friends on Facebook to a “concert” at the arrivals gate, which they played Thursday without prior permission from police or airport authorities, after their flight arrived.

Though burning out from two weeks of madness and little sleep, LBO members are already talking about returning to Europe to build a fan base with a full album to tout. One new fan in Zalau asked them to do a “wedding tour” of Romania next summer, while an elderly gypsy lady in Bucharest, who bought their CD for 20 lei (about $6), told them “Our grandchildren must hear this.”

For the mad trad punks of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, it was music to their ears.

Lemon Bucket Orkestra has several local gigs coming up, starting June 13 at Koerner Hall and June 16 at David Pecaut Square. See lemonbucket.com - Toronto Star

Passengers on a delayed Air Canada flight from Toronto to Frankfurt were treated to an impromptu concert on Wednesday when the band Lemon Bucket Orkestra broke out their instruments for a klezmer hoedown in economy class.

"Our plane got delayed 20 minutes so we got out the instruments," the band wrote on its YouTube page.

The band's jovial music was met with enthusiasm and, from the looks of it, a bit of confusion by the flight's passengers, who had not expected a performance from a band that bills itself as "Toronto's only Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy_Party_pun Super-Band."

The video of the performance was apparently taken by a roadie or fan joining the band on its "Balkan Station Romanian Tour." - Huffington Post

When stuck aboard a delayed airplane, there are generally only a small number of socially acceptable behaviours travellers can engage in.

Try to get some shuteye. Thumb through a book. Check a tablet or smartphone. Stare blankly at the seat in front or engage in conversation with a passenger in the adjacent seat.

As a YouTube video posted Wednesday shows, none of these options appealed to members of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, who were recently on a delayed flight to Frankfurt from Toronto's Pearson International airport.

The group, which describes itself as "Toronto's only Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Party-Punk Super-Band," decided instead to break out their instruments and delight their fellow passengers with a four-song set - CBC News

Band makes most of delayed flight! (see video) - CNN

I’m not sure if I have any street musicians in my family tree back in Eastern Europe, but it sure feels like I do when I end up at an event as colourful as Fedora Upside Down at the Ukranian Cultural Centre in Toronto this past Saturday night. I suggest this lineage because I couldn’t have been happier, or felt more at home there.

The name of the show describes the hat that musicians pass around after a performance, and this festival painted a kind of “Eastern European street” setting in the expansive choice of venue.

As images of past Ukranian leaders stared down at us, we were treated to just about any kind of European music imaginable. If it wasnt the humble ragtime sounds of the Boxcar Boys, it was the exotic Flamenco of Flamenguitos del Norte. If it wasn’t the Balkan party music of the Lemon Bucket Orchestra, it was the mystical sounds of Ventana playing music of the Mediterranean.

One drink ticket for five dollars could get you either a giant glass of delicious peach beer, two shots of vodka, or a largos plate of vegetarian food. There were colourful teepee-like tents around the venue, with beautiful floral decorations. The show started at 7 and went until 2, where there was a few more festivities in Christie Pits below afterwards. If this doesn’t sound like great value, they also gave us a complimentary CD featuring bands from the night!

What is the lasting stamp that such a fun night printed on me? It’s the beauty in those things that are simple. I am a firm believer that when left unchecked, technology has the ability to suck the life out of art. It is indeed a great amplifier, and sometimes that’s necessary for times like this when people perform in a large concert hall.

But I get choked up when hearing music experiences like this one. I realize how far away we are moving from human expression, every time we fire up our laptops, share a YouTube video of a hot track, and keep our socializing through two layers of email (the DM notification is slowing us down that much more).

Go to New Orleans, go to Kensington Market, or go to Fedora Upside Down (if you are lucky about it recurring). Seek out music in its most bare forms, and gain an understanding of the gaps we are creating here.

Of course, in any circle of friends, the best shows are always the ones that you missed. Well I was lucky that good friend Missy and hundreds of other open minded music lovers bore witness to what a wonderful party this was. - Mr. Tunes

TORONTO — Watching the members of Lemon Bucket Orkestra, the 14-piece, self-described “Balkan-klezmer-Gypsy-party-punk super band,” made their way onto the small stage at LOT (Lower Ossington Theatre) recently, with nothing but a dainty red carpet hanging behind them, I had to remind myself that I was still in the cultural hub of Toronto, at an event funded by the Ashkenaz Foundation, and not at a local pub in Kiev.

And that was before the eccentric collective, some members dressed in traditional Gypsy attire, some sporting wild and unusual eastern European-looking garments, even picked up their instruments.

Over the last year or so, the Toronto-based Lemon Bucket Orkestra has acquired a fair bit of media attention, being hailed by many as one of the city’s liveliest and most energetic party bands. Sitting with the eclectic group of people at the concert, it was easy to see why.

Lead vocalist Mark Marczyk – who adopted eastern European music and culture while living in Ukraine – barely stopped to take a breath in between sets, emitting an enthusiastic “whopa!” or a shrill whistle every so often, and singing in a variety of dialects. These charismatic gestures and those of the rest of the orchestra easily won over the crowd.

The official website for Lemon Bucket Orkestra says the band “grew out of a conversation between a Breton accordionist and a Ukrainian fiddler in a Vietnamese restaurant on Yonge Street.” Since then, although the fiddle and the accordion continue to play a vital role in the group’s esthetic, it’s expanded to include several violins, bass, guitar, percussion and a complete brass section that includes a sousaphone, a trombone and a flugelhorn.

Using these diverse instruments, the group blends klezmer, punk, folk, Ukrainian, ex-Yugoslav and Romani genres of music. Marczyk has claimed that the members of the group are not purists, never adhering to one particular kind of musical influence. It shows.

The band would engage in Irish-sounding, head-pounding melodies in one set, then transition to Yiddish-soaked klezmer with an engaging accordion solo.

No matter what the influence, every song the band performed was a catalyst for foot stomping and hora-style dancing, the audience constantly clapping their hands in unison with the fierce, upbeat rhythms, cheering at various instrumental solos and admiring the belly dancing of Anastasia Baczynskyj, the group’s co-lead vocalist.

In the middle of the performance, Baczynskyj, who often danced waving a small handkerchief in her hand, asked the audience if anyone had ever been to a Jewish wedding, which resulted in a tremendous amount of cheer and applause.

The remainder of the set seemed appropriate for such a momentous occasion. With more than a dozen musicians sharing the quaint stage, all playing their instruments attentively and vigorously – the string section more often than not taking the lead – the music in many ways resembled that of the wedding scene in Fiddler On The Roof.

Members of Lemon Bucket Orkestra come from all over the world, but their birth as a musical force took place in Toronto. They are frequent performers at various locales in Kensington Market, the Great Hall and Horseshoe Tavern, the venue where they held the release party for their debut EP, Cheeky, which was recorded at the CBC in Toronto and mixed by local producer John Bailey.

Though there is nothing “Canadian” about their music, the group continues to take charge of Toronto’s “folk party” scene, which, thanks to them, is becoming a widespread movement in the city.

Visit the band’s website (www.lemonbucket.com) or CBC Radio 3 to stream a song from their EP. - Canadian Jewish News

Formed in 2010 out of an eclectic cadre of young world-travelers, The Lemon Bucket Orkestra’s explosive take on Balkan/Gypsy/Klezmer music has attracted the most adventurous souls in Toronto’s music community. The group is now comprised of fourteen players whose diverse musical and cultural backgrounds create a colourful folk fusion of various Eastern European traditions. Fully acoustic and mobile, the band’s legendary high-energy live shows can rarely be contained by four walls and often end in spontaneous street parties, parades and all-night jam sessions.

In their first year and a half of existence, the Lemon Bucket Orkestra has brought their unique folk-party vibe to many venues in Toronto that were in need of celebration and spiritual fulfillment, from the city’s major festivals and concert venues to its most interesting hidden alleys and streets. After selling out the first printing of their debut EP “Cheeky” in three months, the band is developing material for a debut full length release, while continuing to spread their world/folk revolution nationwide. - Ideacity

It’s close to 3 a.m. on a Thursday night outside the Cameron House bar on Queen Street West, and the pavement is alive with music and dancing. People of all ages bounce, twist and grin to the infectious rhythms that explode from the 12-piece band assembled on the street and on the scaffolding hugging the building high above.

“This is Fedora Upside-Down,” shouts musician Michael Louis Johnson, lowering his flugelhorn to address the sweaty smiling audience. Then he raises his instrument to his lips and blasts a long steady note as the crowd below cheers.

Over the past several months, you’ve likely seen the motley assortment of cultural ambassadors calling themselves Fedora Upside-Down. This loosely affiliated and highly inclusive collective of Toronto folk musicians and dancers have spent the summer taking over the city’s streets, parks, restaurants and bars with lively music and raucous dance parties.

“We like to think of it as an urban folk collective,” says Mark Marczyk, 26. He’s the violin player for the band Lemon Bucket Orkestra, which claims to be “Toronto’s only Balkan-Klezmer-Gypsy-Party-Punk Super-Band.”

Marczyk and several other musicians have brought together numerous Toronto folk music groups to create collective musical events and parties in unlikely places. There have been shows in Kensington Market, in the middle of Queen Street West, and in Trinity Bellwoods Park.

At a typical Fedora Upside-Down event, you might see a Brazilian percussion band complete with Capoeira dance fighting, a flamenco troupe with stomping dancers, a Balkan Klesmer group with a twirling belly dancer, and an improvised collaboration of all three bands.

“A city’s cultural and social makeup is built by immigrants who have their own ways of celebrating their culture every day,” says Marczyk. “This is an attempt to bring those groups together.”

And it’s not just happening in streets and parks. Fedora Upside-Down now also has a permanent home, at the Cameron House every Thursday night.

The name was inspired by busking, the ubiquitous musician with a cap thrown down to collect any offerings. But it also suggests the ethos of the group: That a musical celebration of many diverse cultures can happen anywhere at any time — you just need the people and the spirit to make it happen.

Says Marczyk: “There’s a fedora upside-down on the pavement. What can you throw into the hat?”

Metro Toronto - Metro News

If you haven’t heard of them, Lemon Bucket Orkestra is one of Toronto’s premier folk-party bands. If that sounds like a funny term, the interview will help explain what they’re about, but really it’s best to see them and the rest of their urban folk collective “Fedora Upside Down,” rock the Ukrainian Cultural Centre on October 22, 2011. The collective is launching an album with all eleven bands on two stages, so even by their standards of free wheeling musical insanity it’ll be a great time.

Lemon Bucket Orkestra grew out of a conversation between a Breton accordionist and a Ukrainian fiddler in a Vietnamese restaurant on Yonge Street. Their debut EP, Cheeky, was recorded at the CBC in Toronto and mixed by the renowned John Bailey. I went to Ideal Coffee in Toronto’s Kensington Market, to sit down with Marczyk and Tangi from Lemon Bucket, as well as Freeman Dre from Freeman Dre and the Kitchen, Now Magazine’s songwriter of the year in 2010 and a frequent colloborator from the collective.

J: Lemon Bucket Orkestra is basically musical multiculturalism incarnate. Can you even list all the musical influences?

Marczyk: We like to bill ourselves as a Balkan-klezmer-Gypsy-party-punk super band. So we play music from all around Eastern Europe, a lot of Ukrainian, Ex-Yugoslav, klezmer, a bit of Gypsy. And everyone brings his own flavour to it as well. Some people bring their swing and jazz background, there’s a punky side to it, celtic…lots of different influences. We try and let audiences know, though it doesn’t always happen when the energy is really high, that “this song is from this part of the world…this one’s a Hungarian gypsy tune and this one’s from Romania.” But it’s a blend too, we’re not total purists. There wouldn’t be a sousaphone, a trombone, or a flugelhorn in certain Romanian Gypsy fiddle and cimbalom tunes, but that’s our instrumentation and we adapt.

J: You guys have a lot of people in Lemon Bucket. Is it the same roster every night, or kind of a rotating door policy?

Marczyk: We’re fourteen people deep right now. We all have other bands we play with, Boxcar Boys, Kitchen Party. Sometimes people want something smaller, a violin and accordion player at their anniversary. We do lots of different kind of shows. It’s exciting for the audience too, they get a different version each time they come out.

J: Lemon Bucket Orkestra is one group in the larger collective, Fedora Upside Down. What unites all you guys? Is it musical, personal, something else or both?

Dre: Geographically we all live in the same neighbourhood, play in the same neighbourhood. A lot of it is like-mindedness and approach to the music and to the career of music, and to the scene in Toronto. A lot of it is a lack of a scene in Toronto. We three got together here and said, “look, we’re creating a little scene, why not give it a name, a context, something that people can associate it with.” That said, Fedora Upside Down is musically connected, and a lot of us play on each other’s albums, and part of it is embracing the diversity. Toronto is such a multi-cultural place, this collective is the same way, the influences behind the collective itself…you’d have to say “the world.” At this show on October 22nd you’re going to have eleven acts, singer -songwriters, flamenco, to straight up party bands. The uniting factor between them all might not be audible right away…

J: It’s almost philosophical too…

Marczyk: Yeah. One thing I didn’t like about Toronto after living in Ukraine for a couple years was the fact that there were these scenes. What we’re doing is less than creating a scene, but a lifestyle of living music. Not like, “here’s a scene, here are our gigs.” What’s missing is a time where musicians and audience members could get together and play together and create a community where all types of different music and that passion for playing music is promoted, supported…

J: It’s like a lifestyle.

Marczyk and Dre: Yeah!

Dre: And not narrow it down by style. Prior to this you can see in Toronto there’s various scenes but there’s a massive disconnect between the musicians and the audience. Even the bands towards each other there was a disconnect. A situation where there wasn’t an inclusiveness with the audience. We’re trying to bridge that gap. Taking it to the street, so apart from being active as musicians, active in the community…

Marczyk: Playing Pedestrian Sundays [in Kensington Market], bringing a crowd out into the street, playing for people for free, busking, playing in the park, choosing different venues and interesting places that aren’t about the scene but about the lifestyle. That’s why we chose the Ukrainian cultural centre because it’s not attached to any scene, it’s just a hall. It’s not like if you go to the Mod Club it’s going to be this, or to the Great Hall and it’ll be this kinda show. This is just a hall, it’s empty, put everyone in there and have a good time.
Dre: And the people who come to the show are just as important…
J: I grew up on the Grateful Dead…
Dre: Nice!
J: It sounds like their relationship to San Francisco…
Dre: You can see it in the way we approach our Thursdays…there’s several acts that are worth $10 each, but we leave it on the crowd to donate what they can because we want them to feel like they’re a part of it, they have a say in what’s going down. We go out of our way to become friends with everyone.
Marczyk: It’s not unlikely that one of the bands is up on stage and all of a sudden, you turn around and there’s a clarinet in the back of the room playing. Nobody on stage is going to say, “fuck off man! This is a performance!” It’s like, “yeah! Somebody’s playing, great!”   There’s this conception of musicians like you do music and you quit the working life 9-5, but then in the music scene there’s all these 9-5er musicians, you know? They’re in the business, not actually enjoying music.  We enjoy what we do.
J: Most people don’t identify with the kind of authentic, exotic folk music you’re playing but you’re getting such a big following. Explain.
Dre: Well I think more and more are liking it, sure.
Marczyk: People don’t know it, it has to do with the energy of the performance and the connection with the audience, that’s what unites all of these bands too. It’s not the genre, it’s the energy of the performers and the willingness to break the boundary between performer and audience. That’s what people are reacting to. The rhythms are interesting, and the musicians are obviously awesome too, though it’s more than that, it’s the willingness to break that gap that people really appreciate.
J: It’s infectious. I saw you guys on a night when I was tired, maybe I had a beer or something, but I was dancing, and I don’t normally dance. I was surprised! [Laughter] I was like, “shit, they got me!”
Tangi: My legs are moving! Oh no!! [Laughter]
J: I wasn’t expecting it. You guys win! Hats off to ya.
Marczyk: We all win in that situation.
Tangi: You’re giving us a lot when you start dancing. For us right away we’re going to give you more. Because you’re giving us something, so “OK, now he’s giving us! We started giving, you’re giving now something, so we need to give more.”  That’s how you get the best shows. After an hour and a half of music, if everyone’s always giving more, at the end everyone’s just insane! Everybody’s just giving everything, it’s like a trance. You create a trance between this crowd and the musicians. Everybody’s just in another world.
Marczyk: We notice when somebody’s going like this [tapping foot], and they’re on the verge of breaking through. That’s when we really try and push.
J: You really do? [Laughs] Because that’s me, not dancing but tapping away wondering, ” do they see me? Do they think I’m enjoying myself?”
Marczyk: There are some musicians who don’t care about the audience, they get up and do their thing. For us it’s the point, so we do notice those things. If there’s a quieter crowd, as sometimes happens in Toronto, we really try and push it to get everybody out of their shell.
J: I think [in Toronto] we’re known for being a bit cold. There are times where I’m in the audience thinking, “the band is looking at me and it doesn’t look like I’m enjoying myself but I am, I hope they appreciate that,” you know?
Marczyk: That’s a Toronto thing, but experience has shown that it can be broken. You just gotta really push! [Laughter] That’s the point.
Dre: For whatever reason, people in Toronto have grown embarrassed to show enthusiasm. We want to eliminate that. Like you were kinda embarassed, “you got me,” but you shouldn’t be, you should be proud, you know? A lot of times, I’ll do a show and someone at the back will say to me after, “that was the fuckin’ greatest show I’ve ever seen,” but in my mind I’m thinking “really? I wouldn’t know by the way you behaved.” But that’s a Toronto phenomenon we’re really trying to make people break out of, this feeling of being embarrassed or vulnerable, but to embrace it, because when they do, they end up having the best time. You let yourself go. And we’re doing it too. We’re as vulnerable, and we let go of our pretensions as well. Hopefully that becomes contagious.
J: Well, I think I’m a particularly bad dancer. [Laughter]
Dre: But a lot of people are like that. Whether it’s being a bad dancer, or being tired, we say you don’t have to feel any kind of embarrassment or shame about it, which you can see in some places they do. “Looking cool,” for whatever reason, is important for people, but you can look cool and still look stupid at the same time. And still have fun.
J: We touched on this briefly, but what’s your connection with Kensington Market? Whether it’s Pedestrian Sundays…do you think there’s a similarity between the vibe here and your ethos?
Marczyk: That’s hard to say, I wouldn’t say that we’re attached to any one location in Toronto, because we try to play in a lot of different places. I guess we are focused more in the west end of the the city…
Dre: Simply because of where we live.
Marczyk: Where we live, for sure. Part of creating a community is being in touch with the neighbourhood around you.
Dre: And being bicycle riders we don’t want to go too far.
Marzcyk: Kensington has been really awesome. Tangi first lived in Kensington when he moved here. We did lots of shows, lots of busking in the market.
Dre: We hang out in Kensington, played in Kensington tons. Definitely I think Tangi having lived in Kensington…like when I first started hanging out with Tangi, he lived in a house called “the crazy house.” We’d always jam there every night. It’d be the place where we’d go to have after-parties after playing Bread and Circus. We wouldn’t want people to think of the collective as a Kensington Market thing, but for sure, Kensington’s included..
Marczyk: One of the things we’re trying to do is bring that feeling that’s created at a Pedestrian Sunday every day out in the city. So yeah, we do come here and play and hang out during those times. But then it’s, “alright, how do we make it a lifestyle so it’s always like that?”
J: You don’t want to attach yourself to something, but they’re doing it here anyway and you want to bring it to other places…
Marczyk: Yeah…sure, and lots of our friends are part of this community, and it’s one we’re close to. But it’d be the same as saying of Lemon Bucket, we’re attached to the Ukrainian community, or the Ex-Yugoslav community…well we’re not, we just have our hands in many different places.
J: Any big shows coming up?
Dre: I play the Cadillac Lounge every Tuesday.
Marczyk: October 22nd is our big launch of the collective. We do every Thursday at the Cameron House. Those are concept nights, we call them F.U. Thursdays, where we assign a theme, and anybody from any of the bands can join. This Thursday [October 13] is the Cameron House’s 30th anniversary, so we have a few special collaborations in store.  But we do dynamic, interesting stuff every Thursday; and the big show is October 22nd. - Vivoscene: The Music Within

Communist Daughter regulars the Lemon Bucket Orchestra perform at the musical component of RRRRR Trash Art Festival, a part of "Take Me With You" a series put on by Whippersnapper Gallery in Toronto. - NOW Magazine

Disc Review

The Lemon Bucket Orkestra - Cheeky
(Fedora Upside Down)
By Sarah Greene

Self-described as a Balkan-klezmer-Gypsy-party-punk super-band, Toronto’s Lemon Bucket Orkestra get the CBC treatment on their debut EP (it was recorded at Studio 211) of folk songs from Bosnia, Serbia, the Ukraine, Macedonia and Odessa.

More Gypsy-jazz than punk, the songs would suit dances, parties and weddings. Despite the number of musicians – 13 – the band is tight, the tunes well arranged, the vocals clear, and the violins, accordion, sopilka (a fife), clarinet and horns take turns soloing.

The Orkestra’s knack for drama comes through in their percussive use of drymba (Jew’s harp) in the first song, Ajde Jano. Romani (Gypsy) Opa Cupa is super-hyper, while proud-sounding Tomu Kosa is a highlight thanks to lead vocals by Anastasia Baczynskyj.

Lemon Bucket’s an enthusiastic crew, willing to experiment with mashing up traditions, as demonstrated by Freeman Dre’s silly guest hip-hop segment on Lemon-cheeky.

Top track: Tomu Kosa
NOW | July 28-August 4, 2011 | VOL 30 NO 48 - NOW Magazine

1) Pick a Piper - Dené Sled
2) Collette Savard - Travelling In A Storm
3) The Airplane Boys - Born To Be
4) Tala-wallah - Funky Lucknow Rela
5) Little City - Lincoln Learning French
6) Prosad - I Am Free
7) Lemon Bucket Orkestra - Lemon Cheeky
8) D-Sisive - No More Words
9) Freeman Dre and the Kitchen Party - Funny Situation
10) The Shanks - Tenderizer
11) Black Devils Brigade - The Killing Business
12) One Hundred Dollars - Where The Sparrows Drop
13) Topanga - Fogo Island
14) Skull Fist - Blackout
15) MJ Cyr - Spark
16) Ewan Dobson - Sun

I asked the Toronto community at reddit.com what acts to see live. I made this mix based on their responses. As a podcast is no replacement for a live show, I hope you will use this mix as a blue print for picking out the next band you will see in concert.

Thanks to the artists, all songs are used with permission. Thanks to archive.org for bandwidth and hosting. This podcast is created primarily with solar energy so the sun also deserves some thanks. - toronto is good!

On August 3, 2014, the New Pathway sat down with Lemon Bucket Orkestra (LBO) ring leader Mark Marchyk for an update on their biggest coast-to-coast tour of Canada:
NP: When did the tour start?
MM: We started in Windsor on June 19th. So we’ve been going ever since then, we’ve been back to Toronto for 2 or 3 days but we’re going strong until the middle of September. We do come back in August to do the Ashkenaz Festival (Aug. 30-31) but we also go to Guelph (Sept. 6) and Orillia (Sept. 7) and between those two dates we’re recording in Waterloo. So we will have been gone from June 20th to September 14th.
NP: It’s literally a coast to coast tour of Canada?
MM: Yeah! We’ve done Halifax twice, we’ve played Montreal, we did Ottawa. In Halifax we did the Multicultural Festival and the Halifax Jazz Festival and in Montreal we did the Montreal Jazz Festival. In Ontario we did the Sun Fest in London and Northern Lights in Sudbury…We also did a Serbian festival in Windsor. We then went to Calgary to check out the Stampede. But what we found was that we got way more connected to the cycling community…people that are into integrated community spaces and so we created a big community event with them that was a lot more fulfilling than any busking we did outside of the stampede grounds. And then we went to Edmonton and worked with the St. John’s Institute which was really fantastic. We did go to Banff to do a show and out to Vancouver for the Vancouver Folk Fest which was huge and they received us really well. And the Mission Folk Festival which was also great…
We’re going back to Montreal now and heading up to Gaspe (Aug. 8-10) for a festival and a few small hostel dates on the way up to the coast and back down to Sherbrooke (Aug. 14-16) and to St. Donat to perform and take part in a series of workshops where we’ll be learning more about the Klezmer music tradition and Hebrew cantorial stuff…The Guelph Jazz festival is actually really renown, so we’re excited to get over there and we’ll be doing a night-time thing there, like a midnight parade sort of thing. And that would have been three months on the road.
NP: Have to been in contact with the Ukrainian community throughout Canada?
MM: Yeah, everywhere we go we’ve been in touch with Ukrainian communities and trying to help them promote with what we’re doing. The most helpful was St. John’s Institute in Edmonton – they put together a full show and they housed us…We actually played after a great Cuban touring act and it was great that they were reaching out and facilitating a space that not only we could express Ukrainian culture but that it would be put on alongside other cultures of the world…
In Ottawa, we connected with Pokrova – which is an organization that runs a summer camp for kids and we performed with them as part of the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival that is run by Roman Borys, a really influential Ukrainian-Canadian chamber music and classical music musician. He brought us in to make this community engaging parade through the ByWard Market and we included Pokrova and did some stuff with their camp and their women’s singing group…We also did some dance workshops as well there.
In all of the festivals that we’ve been visiting we’ve explained a little bit about where the music comes from, where the dances comes from – and we have a chance to show the people the traditional village folk dances. The goal has been to get the Ukrainian culture out to people beyond the Diaspora groups so it creates a context for people to celebrate the Ukrainian culture everyone – even in their mainstream, everyday lives. Especially in the summer when they’re out celebrating nature and enjoying their families [and] celebrating everything about the Ukrainian and eastern European culture. In Mission, we played with Boris Sichon – he’s an amazing Ukrainian, multi-talented instrumentalist who lives in Dnipropetrovsk. He can play on anything and that was a really great workshop since he build a marimba-cymbaly and we sang Ukrainian tunes with him. And people were really excited about that collaboration because it’s with a guy they love and know over there collaborating with an internationally touring act.
NP: Did you get a chance to sing songs from the Lemonchiki’s Ukraine tour?
MM: I’ve done them a little, but not so much except for ‘Plyve Kacha’ that we’ll sing once in a while. What’s really important to Lemon Bucket is to bring people together through a variety of contexts. We like to explore the spaces that we perform in. So, if we’re doing a concert show, we’ll like to break the barrier between the audience and performer. We’ll come off stage and create an inclusive, welcoming environment where people no longer feel like they’re just watching a show but are part of a cultural experience.
But apart from that, when we’ve been at these festivals, we’ve really scoped out various spots so we can change the way people think about those spaces. In many cases, the festivals have existed for many years and there have been these set stages that people set up. But we try to go further and say: ‘this whole space is a stage, this whole space is a place to perform and engage in your culture, it doesn’t have to be a place to come to once a year.’ So we try to find those places and bring a different energy to it, sometimes it’s a loud, boisterous party and other times it’s an intimate moment.
What we’ve been doing at some of the festivals is finding the really quiet, intimate spaces and then getting people to sit down and tell them that we’re celebrating a culture that comes from Ukraine and what’s happening in Ukraine right now is that there are a lot of people living in a situation where they can’t express that. Not necessarily because they’re being stopped from doing that but because they’re in the middle of a war and priorities change. And I know of several examples of that: several talented musicians who are volunteering their time in hospitals or have gone to the front lines or have become part of the National Guard or are helping with social media to get the dis-information out…So we try to pay homage to that as people in a country where musicians are supported by the festivals and culture has an opportunity to thrive. We want to pay homage to the people that are fighting in a place where that isn’t the case.
There’s three really great spaces where we brought people to an intimate space and sat them down and told them about what’s happening in Ukraine and said ‘we want to sing a song for all of those people…who have had to sacrifice this thing that we’re sharing now in order to survive.’ So those moments have been very special and emotional and in every one of those instances you can hear a pin drop. Not only because of the song and the emotion we bring to it and the context but also because of those spaces because it really makes people appreciate the country we live in.
One of the places we did it was in Pier 21 in Halifax…This is the place where Ukrainians first landed. I saw the names of my grandparents and my family up there on the wall when they came here when they fleeing the Second World War. And it’s a culturally and politically loaded place. We were out there with the ships and shipping containers and out on the pier and we got everyone out there to sing.
Another moment was on the opposite side of the coast after a great show at the Vancouver Folk Festival at Jericho beach and we brought everyone down to the beach…It’s a huge beach with massive logs set up as benches and there’s boats lit up all over the harbour. And if you look one way you see the city…and if you look straight you see mountains and if you look left it’s the beach, boats and ocean. It was a really beautiful space and right in front of you there’s woods. So it’s a completely overwhelming place of natural beauty where we got a chance to bring people down and sing a song for them there.
We did the same thing in Ottawa on Major’s Hill with the girls from Pokrova while there was a big fireworks displace which was really emotional for me having been on the Maidan during the time when protesters were using fireworks to defend themselves. So that was a particularly difficult one to get through… - New Pathway

This Saturday night the Byward Market will be alive with music and you’re all invited to join the street party. The strolling music and dance-fuelled celebration, presented as part of the Ottawa Chamberfest will be lead by the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, a 16-strong, Toronto-based “Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-superband.”

Marc Marczyk (violinist and vocalist wih LBO) admits that this description of their sound is long but aptly captures what the band is about: “drawing on Eastern European traditions and trying to evoke the feeling of those songs and of that sometimes irrational exuberant celebration everywhere we go.”

The group’s music draws on a broad palette of musical traditions, celebrating the folk music and culture of Ukraine, Romania, Serbia, Macedonia and Bosnia with infusions of funk, New Orleans jazz and blues. Whether or not you have heard of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, leave your expectations at home. With hours of repertoire ready at hand, no LBO show is the same, stages are often abandoned in favour of playing among the crowds and music flows naturally in a kind of blazing wave of energy. And despite the unpredictability of the shows, the music is solid.

I met up with Marczyk at one of the band’s open-air performances in the market earlier in the week to talk about the beauty of busking, Eastern European culture, and the group’s unique take on traditional music. Everything about the LBO is rooted in busking. The band’s name, for example, was inspired by a song from Odessa, the title of which translates to lemons.

Marczyk explains, “It’s a local gangster tune, it’s slang for money. The gangsters would say ‘who grows more lemons out in their garden.’ We started as a busking band, and we would always say, ‘we put out our bucket and work for our lemons.’”

The band’s instruments are also chosen based on their busk-ability, “we never use instruments that you can’t play without electric power” and “we don’t play instruments that you can’t march with.” The LBO grew out of a bunch of musicians who met playing in a gypsy-punk band, the Worldly Savages and began busking and playing after-parties for that group. Eventually LBO outgrew the after party scene and developed into its own entity as word spread about the late-night jams.

Marczyk explains, “even though we were four when we started, Tangi Ropars (accordion) and I always wanted it to be a big band. The number we envisioned in our head was 13, with brass and strings and all of the instruments. If you believe in something, it’s gonna happen. We called it an orchestra and eventually it became one.”

Marczyk credits busking as the key to the band’s success. As he says, busking “meets people at the street level, where they’re not expecting it. That surprise is key to the music. The street is a place that’s like being in someone’s neighbourhood. It’s not like a concert venue where they have to pay an exorbitant amount to go see you, it’s not in a club that they feel maybe it’s too cool for them, or it’s not their scene or their kids can’t come or they’re too old or whatever. Busking allows people to feel more comfortable as opposed to obliged, to experience without pressure.”

The LBO’s busking-based approach to making music also ties into the group’s focus on celebrating Eastern European culture. To Marczyk, playing traditional music asks that the performers “understand that it’s part of something larger -  it’s not just regurgitation of material on stage for people to sop up. It is part of a larger culture that people have to feel they’re being welcomed into. So we really work to do that whenever we’re on and offstage. We try to give of ourselves in terms of musical energy and cultural spirit, and ask people to be a part of that and give back, to create this kind of exchange that I think is really at the heart of celebration.” Saturday night the party will be waiting and all you need to bring is yourself.

The Lemon Bucket Orkestra perform on Saturday August 2 in a strolling concert through the Byward Market. The show is free and begins at the intersection of York and William at 7pm. Check the Chamberfest Facebook page and Twitter feed for real time updates.

You can also catch the LBO busking twice daily in the market as a lead up to Saturday. The band will be in various spots around noon hour and after 5pm. - apt613

"There were many musical highlights over the weekend, from the main stage performances to the mini-blues festival," commented Edwards. "Lemon Bucket Orkestra and Dulsori joined forces for a spontaneous musical outburst in the middle of the audience in front of the main stage on Friday evening. Pure acoustic delight." - Mission City Record

Publicists and reviewers have a habit of calling his band a “revolutionary folk orchestra”, but that’s a description Mark Marczyk wants to reconsider, especially having spent last February in the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv.

“I was part of the protests in February that ended up with about 150 people in body bags and the whole city burning,” the Lemon Bucket Orkestra’s singer, fiddler, and founder explains, interviewed on the beach during a break from Vancouver Folk Music Festival workshops. “It came to a point where I was on the Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv, and I came to terms that this could be my last night on earth. I was surrounded by cops and flames and burning tires on all sides, and it looked like it was going to be the end—and then it wasn’t, and the people prevailed. So after having that kind of experience, my conception of what revolution means has changed a little bit.

“I don’t want to get into an emotional reaction and say, ‘Well, we’re not revolutionary anymore,’ ” he adds. “We are revolutionary, but that experience has definitely changed the way that I think about what music should do for people, and how it can be used to effect social change.”

In other words, Marczyk once wanted to play the fiddle while Babylon burned. But now that he’s seen Babylon burning and nearly gotten scorched, he’s happier with the community-building possibilities of a good party—like the riotous Balkan hoedowns that ensued whenever the Lemon Bucket gang, 16 strong for the occasion, took to the stage at last weekend’s folk festival.

Driven by the irresistible wallop of Rob Teehan’s sousaphone and Jaash Singh’s doumbek, this pancultural juggernaut created a brass-and-fiddle rave with every performance, and the dancing got even hotter once the musicians left the stage to join the crowd.

“Pretty much at the end of every show, we break that barrier between performer and audience, I guess,” Marczyk says. “Some people say, ‘Oh, do you ever get sick of the gimmick of coming off-stage?’ And the answer is ‘It’s not a gimmick. It comes from a genuine place.’ We want people to be a little more aware of the community that music incites, and how it enables community to develop.”

Marczyk’s views on music and society developed during an earlier, two-year-long visit to Ukraine, where he discovered a community of dancers and musicians happily combining the tango with Roma music, klezmer, and even rock, often on the street. Busking remains an integral part of the Lemon Bucket Orkestra, as a way of both fine-tuning the band’s material and creating transient communities of music-lovers.

“The street is a great place to see people’s reactions,” Marczyk notes. “But there’s a philosophical bent to it as well. We want to play for everyone, everywhere, regardless of political leaning, class, societal status, or financial situation. We’ve got to make our rent and all that, but we always try to get out and do stuff for the community, and busking is that. It’s playing for people and saying, ‘You give me whatever it’s worth to you. If it’s worth a smile, give me a smile. If it’s worth a slice of pizza, give me a slice of pizza. If it’s worth your business card and an offer to come stay at your yacht club, then that’s fine, too.’

“All these things have happened to us,” he adds. And no doubt more will happen soon.

The Lemon Bucket Orkestra plays the Mission Folk Music Festival on Saturday (July 26). - Straight.com

"Of course, the addition of two other side stages going until after 9 p.m. meant that you could almost always be assured of something you wanted to hear during the evening. Ontario’s Lemon Bucket Orkestra found local fame from its ridiculously high-energy second stage set on Friday, its joint Balkan Block Party with Tamar Ilana & Ventanas on Saturday night, and the A Touch of Brass set with Mokoomba and Brasstronaut on Sunday."

Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/entertainment/Review+Vancouver+Folk+Fest+great+rhythm+despite+rain/10046740/story.html#ixzz3ATR4gsDR - Vancouver Sun

Described as a “Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk band,” Lemon Bucket Orkestra has taken home Sunfest’s top prize.

On Thursday (July 10) the Sunfest committee announced Toronto’s Lemon Bucket Orkestra had won the 2014 Galaxie Rising Stars Award, along with its accompanying cash prize of $3,500.

Nine top Canadian world music ensembles were in contention for the award at Sunfest, which took place July 3-6 at Victoria Park. A jury of industry experts selected this year’s recipient.

Nominated for four Canadian Folk Music Awards and a 2014 Juno (for its debut full-length album Lume, Lume), the four-year-old Lemon Bucket Orkestra (LBO) has grown from an initial quartet of buskers to a 15-piece guerilla folk force with an array of grass roots followers and mainstream fans at home and abroad.
Those discovering the band for the first time quickly realize that its shows are more than concerts. They’re ecstatic street parades that erupt from the collision of nostalgia and imagination.

Music critic Alan Cross describes the LBO as “a traveling musical caravan burning brightly across the night sky.”
Two years ago, the group enjoyed worldwide media attention from the likes of CNN and The New York Times and garnered 250,000 YouTube hits after playing an impromptu concert on a delayed Air Canada flight en route to a three-week tour of Romania.

The Galaxie Rising Stars Program has contributed to the growth of Canadian music talent for over 15 years and has provided monetary support to over 900 Canadian artists. - London Community News

The Toronto self described Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super band, the Lemon Bucket Orkestra has kicked off it’s Canada wide tour this month, breathing their style of music and energy into audiences across the country.  We caught up with band leader Mark Marczyk and member Christopher Weatherstone backstage Lee’s Palace for a chat before they hit the road.
 
CG: How excited are you  about this tour?  How do you think it’ll be different from the last couple of tours? 
Mark: We’re really excited!  And location is everything.  People celebrate in different ways all across the world. We’re expecting that it’ll be different in different places.  We’ve already been to Windsor, Montreal and Halifax. We’ve seen a little bit of different sides of the festivals.  We’re excited to see what else Canada has to offer.
 
CG: Were you guys surprised at the feedback that you got when you did the European tours?
Mark: The European tours were great!  Everybody was very receptive, very warm.  We didn’t really know what to expect: whether people would like it, whether they would criticize us, or whether we would do justice to these songs that people hold very, very close to their hearts.  Both young and old people seemed to react very positively.  Younger audiences were pretty surprised because when you look at us, you don’t expect that we’re traditional folk musicians, which over there in a lot of cases are greasy old men at weddings and funerals and stuff like that. And we’re–
Chris: We’re greasy young men!
Mark: Yes, and here you have these talentless young greasy men who come into their country belching out their tunes in terrible accents but with a lot of good intention, and a lot of heart.  They loved it.  I think it gave them something to be proud of:  that people from across the world are dedicating their lives to their culture.

CG: Would you say the fact that you are spreading awareness about that particular type of music in a younger generation is one of the things that you’re most proud of in this particular band?
Mark: It’s not awareness.  Our band is focused on eastern European music and culture.  That’s something that speaks to everybody in the band on different levels, but that’s just a mouth piece for general openness cultural expression, to musical expression and to bringing tradition into your life, whatever that tradition may be. Whether it’s from Eastern Europe, or from Asia, or from South America, or whether it comes from a place of high art or avant-guard or it comes from the streets. We’re going try and make a space for all of that to come out.  Not necessarily all at the same time, but we’ll keep bits and pieces all over the place.

CG: What have you learned from doing the European tours that you take with you on this next tour?
Chris: The audiences were so responsive over there.  At times within the first two seconds of a song, they were losing it. Toronto is a more reserved culture for concerts, so we were used to having to draw it out of people and get them going and that’s something we’ve gotten good at.  But over there we learned to hit the ground running because that’s what they wanted to do and now I guess we just try to hit the ground running.
Mark: We do that now here and we realize that you don’t have to necessarily cater to audiences.  Definitely you’re open and receptive to their energy and you can change a show based on the kind of mood that an audience is in, but I guess one of the things that we learnt from those tours was that “don’t take for granted that every single human being on this planet wants to celebrate, wants to feel intense emotion, whether that’s good or bad, people want to feel.”  This music is that.  It draws emotion out of people.

CG: One thing I notice about you guys is how much you encourage the audience to get involved with the process.  You treat it not like a performance but an experience.
Mark: Music shouldn’t be relegated to the stage, that’s the way I look at it.  The stage is a great place for artists to express in a sort of consolidated form what they’d been working on for a long time, but it’s not the exclusive place for music.
Chris: It’s a very Western, modern commodified kind of idea that you compartmentalize art and music into these safe spaces; people pay for tickets and come for the experience and you put the artist up on a stage or a pedestal.  It’s the delivery of the product of ‘music’ or ‘art’ to a paying audience. Before this commodification in Western culture, music was always integrated into culture as part of a celebration, part of a ceremony or part of a special time of year, but always within the communal aspect.  We’re just trying to break that border down again for people. It usually shocks people because they don’t expect it, because they’re so used to that separation between performer and audience.

CG: Would you say that has really accelerated your success in the last four years?
Chris: It certainly helps us to build an audience.  People, who ordinarily wouldn’t be in the loop for a show, stumble across us on the street and experience something they didn’t expect and then they know about the band.  So, I’m sure it hasn’t hurt
Mark: People often ask, “How did you guys, being a party band, get so well-known across Toronto and across Europe?”  There’s really no secret, just get out on the street and play.  If you like to play music, go play music. Don’t think about the strategy:  like how many shows I should do and what’s the right place for me and the right niche. Just go out and play!  If people like it, they’ll come out.

CG: The last few months have been really big for you. You’ve received a Juno nomination and an Indie nomination, as well.  How has that affected you, in terms of how you make music and how you play music, in general?
Mark: I would be lying if I didn’t say that it wasn’t a little bit exciting to be at the Junos.  There is all this glamour around it, all these stars, and this huge gala event.  It was interesting, but it doesn’t change anything about the way we perform music, or the way that we write music.  In fact, if there was anything that we learnt, it was how outside of the mainstream of music we are, and how proud we are to be outside of that mainstream.  At the same time, it was also how honored we are that people from within that realm of music have recognized what we do and understand that there’s something there that’s very special.

CG: You have 16 people in the band.  That’s a lot of people to create with.  How does that work?
Chris: Generally Mark will bring in a tune that he thinks suits the sound or the nature of the band.  Sometimes, someone else will do it.  But from that point on, it’s a very democratic process – a very collaborative process.  Mark will have a strong idea of what he wants to do with it, but from there on in suggestions are welcome. By the end, we pretty much will have a fully formed piece which is our own arrangement and our own interpretation that contains little bits and pieces and elements of everybody’s musical ideas. So, the vision of one person makes the overall aesthetic choice, but then the sound and ideas of the whole sixteen-piece group creates the finished product.
Mark: For me, from a personal perspective, it’s a really satisfying process.  When it started, it was that I’d bring a song, and tell everybody exactly the parts to play because they never heard this music before. I’d listen to fifteen different versions, come up with an arrangement and say this is exactly it. Without sheet music, everybody would try to figure it out.  As people got more comfortable, and as we went on tour, people heard the music from other bands and they started to become more comfortable about expressing themselves within that niche.  People got more comfortable with voicing their own musical background.  Now, rather than coming with a whole complete arrangement to the band, and saying, “Here you go”, it’s more, “I think this song is going to suit us let’s try it”.

CG: Will there be more lemons in the bucket or are you guys capped?
Mark: We’re never capped.
Chris: It’s very fluid.
Mark: What I’ve realized is that people come and give to the band as their life dictates. The great thing about being in such a big group of people is that you have people giving more and less at various points. People will have various things going on in their lives, and they’ll want to go and play with another band and express themselves differently for a little while. Because we’re so big, we can let that happen. At the same time, as a band leader, I try to encourage that because it means people are going out and getting different experiences that they then bring back to the band. That’s not only musically: that could be just going out and spending more time with your family, or going out and giving time to another part of your life – whether that’s in dance or design or travelling or whatever it happens to be. I’m sure that in the next couple of years there will be moments when we’re down to ten and then back up to twenty and it’ll shift.  We’ve let everybody know, even the guys and girls that have come through the band, that they’re always welcome back, anytime they’re ready to give the energy that Lemon Bucket requires that the door is open and that they can come and join us again.

CG: If Lemon Bucket Orkestra was a person, would that person be male, female and if you had to describe that personality in one word what would that be?
Chris: It would it a hermaphrodite. It would be a really enthusiastic, fun hermaphrodite!
Mark: It’s kind of tough, since because the band is fluid, there are times when the masculine energy is super strong, and you feel a strong male presence and other times, the feminine energy comes out.  It’s very fluid and expressive in a different kind of way. So it’s hard to say if the band is a guy or a girl.
Chris: Right now we’re closer than ever to a balance between those two energies though.  There are more women in the band, and especially on this tour.  There are more women in the band than there usually was.  We have more women on the road with us.  It’s becoming more integrated. - Culture Grabber

Lately, it seems as though everywhere I go, the Lemon Bucket Orkestra is there. The 15-piece band performed two shows for this year’s Luminato Festival, one as part of the Slaight Music Series at the Festival Hub and the other at the post-show event for the TSO’s annual late-night concert, and just this Thursday kicked off their first-ever Canadian tour with a concert at Lee’s Palace. And with their tour including stops in Toronto, Sudbury, Guelph, Montreal and Ottawa, we’re sure to be seeing them pop up at least a few more times before the summer is out.

Self-described as Toronto’s “Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super-band,” the Lemon Bucket Orkestra boasts a unique blend of jazz, folk and world music with a spirit of wild spontaneity. Formed in 2010 in Toronto, the group began to make international headlines in 2012 when a video of their impromptu performance aboard a delayed Air Canada flight to Romania became a viral hit, now close to clearing 300,000 views on Youtube.

Two years later, these people never seem to run out of steam. Thursday’s kick-off show included two sets and an introductory dance workshop with members teaching folk dance styles from the Balkans—which, once the participants worked out their own self-conscious jitters, made for some good pre-show fun and showcased the group’s participatory spirit. And after the entire band made its way onstage—sousaphone and all—they generated an uproarious energy that had the audience cheering and dancing within a matter of seconds.

It takes a very special kind of group to be received with such open arms at Roy Thomson Hall one week and at a venue like Lee’s Palace the next. As to be expected, the audience itself was a mixed bag of people: I stood next to one concertgoer who had travelled from Windsor for the show, speaking to another who had first heard the group at his excursion to the symphony earlier in the month. And while the band’s overall aesthetic—from its attitude of joyous noisemaking to accordionist and co-founder Tangi Ropars’ customary heart-rimmed sunglasses—leans towards the rowdy, there is clearly top-notch musicianship at work. The band is incredibly tight, with a skilfully balanced approach to their instrumental makeup and a big, bold sound that seems like effortless play.

The tour, which intends to “turn the Canadian wilderness upside-down,” takes the people of Lemon Bucket to venues in Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta, Quebec and Ontario. On the local front, watch for them at Sudbury’s Northern Lights Festival Boréal (July 5-6), Ottawa Chamberfest (August 1-2), the Ashkenaz Festival right here in Toronto (August 30-31) and the Guelph Jazz Festival (September 6). You can read more about Rob Teehan, Lemon Bucket Orkestra’s sousaphone player, in his “On the Road” profile with The WholeNote; band details and updates for the summer ahead can be found on their tour page at lemonbucketorkestra.com. - The Whole Note

The wildly original Juno-nominated Lemon Bucket Orkestra, a Toronto collective which describes itself as a “balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk-super band,” rode a hay wagon into downtown Windsor Friday to kick off Carrousel Around the City.

The group — diverse in garb and instruments — entertained bemused passers-by on the steps of the Windsor Star offices at Ouellette and University starting around 4 p.m. Six Serbian community dancers in traditional dress helped boost the impromptu street party.

“They’re a lot of fun,” said Buddy Miloyevich, chair of the Serbian Carrousel, who brought the Lemon Bucket Orkestra to town.

The annual Carrousel of the Nations villages will be displaying a smorgasbord of culture and cuisine around town this weekend and next. The Lemon Bucket Orkestra kicked off its summer tour Friday night at the Serbian Centre. - The Windsor Star

London’s never seen this particular brand of insane energy before.

Imagine a band of 17 musicians jumping wildly, playing everything from fiddle to saxophone, bellowing out their fantastic, dance-inducing blend of Balkan-gypsy-party-punk.

A well-known staple of the Toronto music scene, Lemon Bucket Orkestra made headlines on their way to tour Romania in 2012 when they surprised passengers aboard a delayed Air Canada flight with an impromptu concert. The fun-loving group will play the Forest City for the first time as part of Sunfest.

While touring Eastern Europe last summer, the band picked up a new collection of songs for their repertoire. They studied with the Hutsuls, or highlanders, of Ukraine’s Carpathian Mountains, the Lautari of Romania (a clan of Romani musicians) and various trumpet virtuosos in Serbia.

“One of the most important things is to pay respect to traditions we’re drawing on. We listen a lot, we try to get the style, rhythm, accents, and then we let our own influences seep in,” says frontman Mark Marczyk, whose background is Ukrainian.

Although he dabbled with violin as a kid, Marczyk didn’t start playing in earnest until seven years ago, when he moved to Ukraine to teach English.

“I had a run-in with a bunch of folk musicians, moved in with them and they put a fiddle in my hands. I learned by ear … I fell in love with the people and the whole culture of traditional music, and also busking and street musicianship — making it available for people and letting people celebrate in unexpected places,” says the artist.

But his attraction to the genre runs deeper than his bloodlines.
“It’s the stories — not even in the language, but the way the music is built and expressed. There’s a certain type of intensity to it, whether it’s joy or sadness or ecstasy or tragedy, and it has really intense ups and downs.
“It’s coming from places of poverty and affluence, where there are really large extremes … They are places that have seen a lot of war, political and social shifts.”

Four members of the band recently returned from politically unstable Ukraine, where they put together a project to offer support to people through music.

“We worked with local musicians, travelling around the country to play for a huge range of people from soldiers to protesters, (terminally ill) patients to kids in orphanages and farmers,” says Marczyk, who is writing a book about his experience and the stories people told him.

Catch Lemon Bucket Orkestra at Sunfest on Thursday, July 3, at 8:30 p.m. at TD Bandshell or Friday, July 4, at 10 p.m. on the Galaxie Stage. - Metro News

Self-branded "Balkan-klezmer-gypsy-party-punk super band" Lemon Bucket Orkestra entered the Ukrainian crisis this spring with their Lemonchiki Project, but now they are turning their attention back on Canada for a lengthy summer tour.

The outing will run throughout the whole summer, starting in the second half of June and stretching until early September. The tour is structured around festival stops, which are interspersed with various other dates. The group will be heading as far west as Vancouver Island and as far east as the Maritimes.

See the schedule below. Note that it includes a hometown send-off show at Lee's Palace in Toronto on June 26.

"Toronto has been so good to us, and we couldn't ask for a better home," said the band's Mark Marczyk in a statement. "Without the support of the Toronto community, we would never be able to share the music with the rest of the country."

Tour dates:

06/20 Windsor, ON - Carrousel Of The Nations- Serbian Flood Relief Benefit
06/21-22 Halifax, NS - Halifax Multicultural Festival
06/25 Kingston, ON - TBA
06/26 Toronto, ON - Lee's Palace
06/28-07/3 Montreal, QC - Montreal Jazz Festival
07/03-04 London, ON - Sunfest
07/05-06 Sudbury, ON - Northern Lights Festival
07/08-09 Halifax, NS - Halifax Jazz Festival
07/10-11 Calgary, AB - Calgary Stampede
07/12 Edmonton, AB - Shumka Stage
07/13 Calgary, AB - Ship & Anchor
07/16 Banff, AB - Wild Bill's
07/17 Victoria, BC - Recyclistas
07/18-20 Vancouver, BC - Vancouver Folk Festival
07/24-27 Mission, BC - Mission Folk Festival
07/29-08/01 Ottawa, ON - Ottawa Chamberfest
08/02 Ottawa, ON - Animate the Capital (parade)
08/06 Kamouraska, QC - La Vieille-Ecole
08/07 St. Anne Du Monts, QC - The Sea Shack
08/09 Gaspe, QC - Bout Du Monde Festival
08/13 Lac Megantic, QC - Benefit Show-Terrasse Du Centre Sportif Mégantic
08/14-16 Sherbrooke, QC - Traditions Du Monde
08/25 Montreal, QC - Jewish Montreal Festival
08/28 Midland, ON - Brookside Midland Cultural Centre
08/30-31 Toronto, ON - Ashkenaz Festival
09/06 Guelph, ON - Guelph Jazz Festival
09/07 Orillia, ON - Ashiko World Music Festival - Exclaim

Best Performance of Juno weekend

OK, so Serena Ryder has an amazing voice. But it was a club show that deserves the honour for best performance.

Early Sunday morning, in one of the final Juno Fest shows of the weekend, Toronto's Lemon Bucket Orkestra delivered an amazingly frenetic, gloriously anarchic and ultimately joyous set of acoustic Slavic weirdness in the bowels of Shannon's Irish Pub on Carlton Street.

The madcap acoustic orchestra, which failed to win World Music Album of the Year on Saturday, started off onstage before marching into the audience and eventually winding up on top of the pub's bar, tables and ledges -- with nothing less than ecstatic results.

Adding to the emotion was the band's decision to drape themselves in Ukrainian-flag scarves, a show of solidarity with Russia's least comfortable neighbour.

The Winnipeg Folk Festival needs to book this band. - Winnipeg Free Press

KIEV I now share something with the millions of immigrants who escaped conflict and came to North America with nothing but their stories and memories of unfolding history: the desire to share mine.

A month ago I arrived in Kiev to work on the score of a film about the 1932-33 famine known as The Holodomor.
My assignment was to travel across the Ukraine, record rare sounds from local masters and amateurs, and arrange them to tell the story of the genocide that left up to 7.5 million dead and continues to shape ongoing events in the nation’s struggle for independence.

Despite warnings from my American director to “stay away from the flame” and focus on the task at hand, I went to Kiev’s Independence Square, the Maidan – just once, I told myself.

What I found there was an ad hoc village of canvas tents, tires, fragmented crates, sliced barrels and flags. It was a self-sustaining enclave with field kitchens, libraries, clinics, toilets, warming stations and a stage. Bags of ice and snow scraped from the street by volunteers and reinforced with other materials formed massive barricades protecting the site from vehicular traffic, advancing riot police and “titushki” (government-hired thugs).

Volunteers guarded entrances, doled out hot food, sorted warm clothing and blankets, and carried supplies from one part of the Maidan to another.

The spirit of these volunteers – risking their lives in subzero temperatures – stirred my own Ukrainian ancestral passions and compelled me to remain at the Maidan for the next few weeks throughout the revolution, even as bullets and grenades hit bodies near me, and concerned friends in Canada and the United States begged me to return.

Most journalists focused on the leaders and parliament. I got to know the people who built this village – not politicians or generals or international financiers, but electricians, beekeepers, massage therapists, shop class teachers, tattoo artists, waiters, farmers, journalists, students – whose goals had outgrown a desire to have closer ties with Europe. Their aim became that of basic human rights: to live in a non-corrupt democracy in which the government defends the rights and freedoms of its citizens.

The Ukrainian president and Russian media minions mis-characterized these people as “extremists” and “terrorists” and even went as far as to claim the peaceful revolution was a neo-Nazi uprising.
Fighting broke out February 18 between the protesters wielding busted-up cobblestones and homemade Molotov cocktails and the secret services armed with tear gas, fire hoses, grenades and Kalashnikovs.
For the next three days, government forces pushed back protesters, beat or killed them, took hostages and burned buildings.

I saw unarmed men, including journalists and medics, shot through the head, neck and chest by snipers and protestors trying to carry their bodies to safety shot with no less discrimination.
Meanwhile, the “terrorists” caught and detained police, told them not to follow the instructions of a corrupt dictator and set them free.

While snipers were still picking people off at the perimeter of the Maidan, those same plumbers, window-pane makers and piano teachers flooded the square with supplies: tires, logs, kielbasa, milk, gas and cigarettes.
Sasha the electrician and Ihor the I.T. specialist took shovels and sacks of rocks into their hands and rebuilt the barricades.

Iryna the marine biologist and Maria the chorister cleaned out the detritus of buildings ransacked by government forces and moved medical supplies to makeshift hospitals set up in cafés and cultural centres, where Tanya the medical student was getting her first practicum operating on injured frontline protesters.
Markian the taxi driver became an ambulance driver, while Tetiana the soccer mom became a fruit deliverer.
As a new government takes shape and international media discuss how to save Ukraine from disintegration and financial collapse, tens of thousands of people from across the country flood the streets of Kiev with flowers, candles and rosaries to pay their respects to the deceased men and women hailed as the “heavenly battalion.”

When I return home to Toronto, I will go back to being a musician and professional celebrator, but I will not forget the epic fight that called on me to put down my violin and bottle of vodka and become something else.
Mark Marczyk, whose grandparents emigrated to Canada from the Ukraine during World War II, is the ringleader of Juno-nominated Toronto band Lemon Bucket Orkestra. - NOW Magazine

"Lemon Bucket New Year's Eve with Koljadnynky at The Opera House

Toronto's 15-piece European-gypsy-folk super band Lemon Bucket Orkestra will be celebrating the end of 2013 at the Opera House. Koljadnynky will open the show and get the dance party started. Tickets $20 in advance, $30 at the door; available online or for pick up at La Pallete or Sunrise Records. Doors open at 9:00pm." - blogTO

An acurate introduction to the Lemon Bucket Orkastra (LBO) would be thoughts like “what’s that noise” or “who is having a party?” Nonetheless, one wants to see the source of the ruckus, and what is discovered upon turning a corner or peering over a ledge is nothing short of musical madness. Chris Weatherstone of LBO says the short answer to who they are is “drunk at a party.”

Formed in 2010, the 12-piece can be described as a super band of sorts, with influences of gypsy, party and punk. It as if each member brings an ingredient that is thrown into a blender, turned on high and shot straight into the veins.

“Ukraine, Serbia, Romania, Macedonia, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Hungary: these are all nations with a huge amount of traditional music, some of it hundreds or thousands of years old- these are tried and tested party jams! Not to mention the Jewish cultures from the region, which have produced the incredibly rich world of Klezmer music,” explains Weatherstone. “What we do is we take this music and infuse it with our energy and instincts, which come from punk, rock n’ roll, jazz, funk, hip hop, everything that us westerners listen to growing up. So it is folk music- we’re retelling an old story for a new generation.”

Nicolle: Why is this something that you want to spend your time doing?

Chris: Because the music is fantastic, the people are honest and passionate, and the experiences we get to have together are life-changing. We have all dreamed since we were young of being musicians and touring the world; this group manifests that dream in a wilder and more beautiful way than we could have imagined.
They are lead by three violins- which carry the melody, sometimes with help from a Clarinet or a Sopilka, which is a type of Ukrainian flute. Then visually, their dancer dominates the show in a live setting, and sing as well. The other instruments belong to the rhythm section in various ways- in many regards, Chris says the band is a rhythm machine first and foremost- but in every show, each of these instruments gets a chance to show its unique voice once or twice as a lead.

“This means that our music is always changing- what you see onstage is constantly shifting focus. Our rhythm section consists of Bass Drum, Darbouka, Sousaphone, 3 Trombones, Trumpet, Saxophone, Guitar, and Accordion.”

Their ultimate goal is very simple: to bring their music to as many people as possible so that they can experience the joy and the feeling of freedom that comes along with it.

“We want to inspire feelings of unity and love, and for people to have fun. We want to be a relief from the mundane aspects of life, and bring out the best in whoever comes to our shows- everyone should walk away with a big grin on their face and a feeling of having broken free of life’s concerns,” says Weatherstone.
Four of the group’s members recently hopped on a plane to Ukraine to spend two months touring there and supporting the Ukrainian people. Weatherstone says that it’s that kind of spontaneity and sense of adventure is exactly what makes them who they are. 

By feeding from the energy of the crowd, they are able to release electricity into the sky that can make the heaviest of feet move to their rhythm. Regardless of worries or cares, when life hands you lemons, just dance. 
The LBO recently played in the Vancouver Folk Music Festival on July 19 and 20.  - vancitybuzz