Back on April 8th, Mike "Sev Micron" Severin from local internet radio station
The Borderline interviewed prolific local punk musician Mikey Hawdon for an episode of his interview series
Sev's Cellar, which you can hear on demand at
this link, so what should you know here? Like
the Mike Haggith episode we last talked about, this is a
2+ hour interview broken up into two halves, but here, the first half is in the first (higher) file on the website. After briefly talking about his old local band Old Hat (a.k.a. The Roll-Ons) and playing a song of theirs, he plays the cover of The Replacements'
"Favourite Things" from the
Mikey & His Uke series, so if you actually want to skip ahead to just the interview, that starts about 6:30 into the first 78 minute file. In order, Sev talks with Mikey about how he's managing in Toronto during the pandemic, his local upbringing (
The Fairmounts' band name actually comes from the street he grew up on) ...
...how he grew to love music, his fandom of Back To The Future, his beginnings in actually playing music, his inspirations, how he acquired and started playing the ukelele, and how the Mikey & His Uke series began and evolved into it's current form, before playing the cover of The Ramones'
"Bonzo Goes To Bitburg" from that series. Afterwards, Mikey discusses songs he loves, some of the concerts he's played that Sev has seen both locally and in Toronto, Mikey's plans to move back home, some of the trademark personal/free-form questions that Sev asks in every episode, and the best concert Mikey ever played, which segues into audio of his defunct Toronto-based Green Day tribute band The Dookies covering Green Day's
"Welcome To Paradise" at the Montebello Rockfest in 2015, before Mikey talks about the two people he'd love to have dinner with.
After playing the Mikey & His Uke cover of The Buzzcocks'
"Ever Fallen In Love", Sev told an anecdote about discovering The Sex Pistols thanks to Monk from The Rad Zone, before diving back into some of the personal (and sometimes silly) questions, and his front line work in his day job, before playing
"American Jesus" from the Mikey & His Uke series. Next, they talk about
Mikey's appearance on Global News last year, plus more of Sev's trademark questions, and then play The Fairmounts'
"Kicked Off Queen" (which Mikey explains the backstory of, and it references Toronto's Queen Street, not ours). The first half concludes with how Mikey got Harry Waters Jr. (Marvin Berry from Back To The Future) to sing his rendition of
"Earth Angel" from the movie for an early installment of Mikey & His Uke, which is played in full. Now, what should you know about the interview's 57 minutes-long second half?
Part two also begins with another Sev's Vault feature about his old Toronto punk band
The Throbbin' Hoods, before segueing into
"Send You Back To Lithuania" from The Fairmounts' newest album. There is a longer wait for the continuation of the interview proper, which picks back up around 17:30 with a lot more of the fun personal questions, his hockey fandom and celebrity autograph collection, and a
Rising Tide song even gets played to reference the topic of discussion at one point! The proper musical discussion picks back up with the inspiration behind the name of The Fairmounts' new album "Eik Namo" and the experiences he had drumming with
The Inner City Surfers, before playing the Mikey & His Uke cover of The Pogues'
"Streams of Whiskey" (this is the one from St. Patrick's Day that his Surfers bandmate Dustin Jones appears on). After thanking Mikey for coming on and plugging his upcoming plans, ...
...Sev plays Mikey & His Uke's version of Joan Jett & The Black Hearts' "Bad Reputation", before suggesting future plans for the series and playing The Fairmounts' "Never Gonna Be Me". With a musician like Mikey, there is a lot of ground to cover, so bands like Lion Ride and Detroit don't get mentioned, and only The Fairmounts and Mikey & His Uke get played on air in full, but this is a great interview featuring fun topics of discussion from a local musician who has seen and done so much here and in Toronto over the years! This is a long listen, but click here or above to hear this Sev's Cellar episode in full, and stay tuned for a new news post of some kind by Sunday! Thanks everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment