The Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show: Toronto Edition

The Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show (Toronto edition) featuring Coco Love Alcorn, Good Lovelies, and Julian Taylor (solo)

Home Routes proudly presents the fourth of five shows in our #factorfunded series: The Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show. The Toronto edition of this travelling online roadshow features Coco Love Alcorn, Good Lovelies, and Julian Taylor (solo) coming to you from the very cool Tranzac Club.

The story behind the show

In August 1980, Winnipeg Folk Festival founders Mitch Podolak and Ava Kobrinsky produced a tour across Alberta called The Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show. The tour was a school bus full of now legendary musicians – Sylvia Tyson, Stan Rogers, Connie Kaldor and Jim Post – travelling from town to town, bringing one-day mini-festivals to each of these communities. This tour was an important catalyst for the founding of The Calgary and Edmonton Folk Festivals, also laying the theoretical framework for an organization that would begin to take shape 25 years later: Home Routes.

To celebrate their 15th anniversary, and with the generous support of FACTOR, Home Routes is rekindling the name from those legendary concerts that laid the foundation for Canada’s folk music institutions. The 2022 version of the Travelling Goodtime Medicine Show is a series of 5 streaming concerts from premier music venues in Winnipeg, Toronto, Calgary, and Vancouver, available to everyone, everywhere. What could be more folk than that?

About this Concert:

This “In The Round” virtual concert was recorded at The Tranzac Club in Toronto, ON, and will be broadcast via Side Door Access’ platform, on Friday, April 22, 2022 at 8pm ET. Ticket prices start at $20, suggested price $25. This show will be available for 48 hours for ticketholders to watch at their convenience, as many times as they want. 

About the Artists:

Coco Love Alcorn

“Coco is the ultimate musical spark plug… an electrical connector through which the creative energy flows. In my 30 years of touring around the world, I have never seen another performer able to bring people together like Coco does.” ~ James Keelaghan (Artist Director, Summerfolk and renowned Canadian singer/ songwriter)

Recently awarded the 2021 Canadian Folk Music Award for Best Contemporary Singer Of The Year, Coco combines diverse musical influences including jazz, R&B, pop, folk, and Gospel. Her love of improvising, and willingness to engage fearlessly with the audience has made Alcorn an established presence on the Canadian music scene. Alcorn’s career has spanned more than 25 years, 9 solo albums, cross-Canada tours, collaborations, festival appearances, award nominations. Coco also leads the Wonderland Singers, an online community choir and creative singing workshop series with over 200 regular members from around the world.

Good Lovelies

With nine critically acclaimed releases, a #1 single, a JUNO Award, and a devoted fanbase blanketing the globe, roots-pop combo The Good Lovelies are among Canada’s brightest musical lights. The hardworking trio of Caroline Brooks, Kerri Ough, and Susan Passmore — guitar-wielding songwriters all, and queens of the goose bump–raising three-part harmony — enter 2020 at full steam, with plans to write and record new material, reduce their carbon footprint via multiple green initiatives, and to build on their reputation as electrifying performers with extensive touring, culminating in their highly anticipated annual seasonal concerts.

Julian Taylor

Being able to tap into the vein of shared experiences by way of a personalized point of view is a gift the best songwriters are able to build upon from song to song and album to album. Only the best of them are able to transition from being a soother one minute to a soothsayer the next with relative ease, confidence, and expertise. 

Taylor’s inherently cinematic approach to his storytelling has a lot to do with his heritage and upbringing. “It’s an interesting thing to be part Mohawk and part West Indian, because I’ve always had this feeling that I never fit in anywhere,” he admits. “As a mixed person, it’s like, oh, where do you go, and how do you connect with people? That’s all I’ve been trying to do, and my life experience as a person who is mixed helps me do that. These stories are all coming from a person who tries to fit in, but doesn’t quite fit in. That’s really what my work has always been about — that longing to be a part of something.”