capital music hall preview #2

USHERING IN THE NEW: MOIST FRONTMAN HELPS CHRISTEN CITY'S LATEST CONCERT VENUE

Author: Ann Marie McQueen
Source: The Ottawa Sun
Date: October 23, 2003

Earlier this week David Usher told the Sun he didn’t know which venue he was playing tomorrow night in town.

While live music fans here may be buzzing about the Capital Music Hall, the city’s popular new 1,000-capacity, Rideau St. band bar which nicely fills a gap between Barrymore’s and the Civic Centre, Usher just knew he was supposed to show up somewhere to step on a stage and perform for some fans.

"All right, I’m playing there," the 37-year-old said laughing, after getting the lowdown on his brand new venue.

Usher was calling from Toronto where he was getting ready to head out on a tour which will take him out west until mid-November to support his solo third album, Hallucinations. Much of his band these days is made up of members from his Montreal-based group Moist, which formed in 1993 and made their debut in 1994 with Silver. One of three producers behind Usher’s album, Mark Makoway, is a guitarist with the group.

When asked about the band’s status, Usher simply says tersely they have no plans to record anything, before getting back to the solo stuff. The dark-haired, heartthrob-ish singer/songwriter says he is excited to play live again, in front of a legion of young fans who can only be called fiercely loyal, and see how his new album changes on stage.

Usher says he didn’t feel any pressure to produce on the third album, in a way that would mimic the combined 1.2 million album sales of his 1999 solo debut Little Songs and followup 2001’s Morning Orbit, which spawned his instantly recognizable hit Black Black Heart.

"Hopefully you’re going to get a song that someone’s going to play on the radio so people know that a record is out there," he said.

That first single is Time Of Our Lives, a tune which Usher says reflects the album’s theme of finding faith and hope in difficult times.

Born in Oxford, England to a Thai Buddhist mother and Jewish Montrealer father, Usher lived in various exotic locales before his family settled in Kingston. He later studied political science at Vancouver’s Simon Fraser University before forming Moist with Makoway and keyboardist Kevin Young. These days Usher is married, though when asked to elaborate, he says he doesn’t talk about his private life.

Critics seemed to love Usher’s first two solo efforts, but have been less kind to Hallucinations. (The Winnipeg Sun’s Darryl Sterdan called it as "ethereal, insubstantial and delusional as its title suggests.")

Usher doesn’t mind (unless someone shows him, he says he usually doesn’t read reviews) and isn’t able to speculate anyway on how his solo talents have evolved since Little Songs.

"I’m always very close to the music," he says. "It’s always very hard to say how things have changed."

Tickets for tomorrow night’s show, which starts at 8, are $20.

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