Sarah Greene has an album release show tomorrow for her new album Toronto Blues, the night of Groundhog Day. I love groundhog day, it's my favorite big-name holiday of the year, it's the day the groundhog awakens from turpor, looks around, and realizes it's not dead. The ultimate reason to celebrate! And no greeting cards required, winter's answer to midsummer. Sarah Greene was, along with Martin Crawford, the bam part of the bim-bam one-two punch Torontopia-era countryesque unit the Pickups, a refreshingly Canadian sounding, intelligent, urban cowpoke band with rounded R's and slide guitars and naively optimistic outlooks on the limitlessness of the future and the inherent goodness of people around us, to me they were my "best roots/country/folk" act of my mid-2000's sensibilities, Sarah and her band and her radio show on CIUT were a fixture of Wavelength's mid-Sneaky Dee's era seascape, until one day she was suddenly snatched up by the scent of saltwater air and moved her self downriver to Halifax. Greene returned to Toronto a couple of summers ago with a new maritime sensibility and a sharpened ear for a melody, and after road-testing at her monthly open stage at the Tranzac she recorded a lovely lovely new album under the production guidance of Dave Celia. Album release party is tomorrow at the Tranzac, Wednesday February 2, at 8:30pm. We will all be in a festive mood to begin with since we'll be celebrating the fact that the groundhog was buried under 30cm of fresh snow thus making its shadow invisible. We should all do our best to show up to support her, not only because she has lent so much support to the music harbour where we all dock our dingies but also because Toronto Blues is a great sounding album! Well, the early bed tracks I heard were awesome, Celia might have run everything through a moog and added click tracks and wanky tabla solos and made a ghomeshi out of a groundhog but I have been assured that there isn't anything more sullying than a few tactful recorder solos and backing vocals. We'll see, and hear, tomorrow, and wish Sarah Greene all the best on the launch of her new ship. Here's a copy-paste job from the facebook page for the event, Sarah in her own words, with the details:

• A CD release party for my first solo album, Toronto Blues. Recorded by David Celia at his home studio in Mississauga, the recording features Dave on drums, guitar, ukulele, harmonica, organ and more, Mike Evin on piano and other keyed things, and Chris Banks on bass. They all sang. Abigail Lapell lent her beautiful voice, as did Ben Veneer. Gregory Campbell played violin and Robert Carli rocked out on tenor sax.
  
  For the CD release concert, we're going to be joined by Joan Besen (on my recorder part!), and Capella Sherwood will help Greg with the strings.
  
  You should come! It'll be lovely.
  
  7:30 doors
  8:30 Ben Veneer
  9:00 Abigail Lapell
  9:30 ish David Celia, Mike Evin and Chris Banks warm things up
  10:00 we'll play you the album, and then some
  
  $7 helps pay the band
  
  You can hear the new songs at: http://www.myspace.com/sar ahgreene
  
  Ridiculous video c/o Mike: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuNEQ0Lq6CY