Well folks, I’ll say it again:  I in no way support competition in music, and frankly think the two should stay as far apart as possible. However, I DO support any clever ruse to trick more folks into listening to our freaky sounds!

It’s a proper pleasure to proclaim that our track Auctioneering Everything has won 1st place in the International Songwriting Competition as Instrumental Song of the Year.  Some of my favourite artists in the world were on the judging panel including Tom Waits, Jeff Beck and Bill Evans (who played sax in the Mahavishnu Orchestra!)

On the touring front, I’m gargantuanly gleeful to announce that after The Opposites’ coast-to coast-tour this summer, I’ll be joining the mighty Oliver Swain’s Big Machine, for a 3 week tour, both as a band member and as a solo opening  act!  We’ll be hitting up the Mission Folk Fest, Canmore Folk Fest, and many more dates through BC and Alberta!  Not only does this band include two of my favourite singers in the world (Oliver Swain and Emily Brandon) but I’ll also get to tour with two of my absolute favourite acoustic guitar players in Canada: Quinn  Bachand and Adam Dobres!

Take a listen to this band’s amazing album here: http://oliverswain.bandcamp.com/album/in-a-big-machine

Lastly – I’m right riled up to report that we’ll be returning to St John’s Newfoundland this September to perform as part of Contact East!   Many more exciting fall tour announcements to come!

Delighted to be announcing the majority of our summer tour dates!   A complete detail-riddled list lurks on our tour page, but here are some highlights:

June 14-16 Tiny Lights Music Festival – Ymir, BC

June 21-22 Campbell Bay Music Festival – Mayne Island, BC

June 23 Victoria International Jazz Festival – Centennial Park – Victoria, BC

June 28-30 – FollyFest – Gagetown, NB

July 5-7 – StanFest – Canso, NS

July 12-14 - Blissfest – Habour Springs, Michigan (solo)

July 20-21 - South Country Fair – Fort Macleod, AB

August 23-25 - Eaglewood Folk Festival – Pefferlaw, ON

In other news- we just found pretty much the nicest review a band could ask for, from back in February when we played the Segal Centre in Montreal.  This new site is reviewing some of my favorite bands in the continent (namely, Snarky Puppy) and it’s an honour to be included!  Here’s an excerpt:

 ”To say that I was completely blown away by the astounding fiddle work of Jaron Freeman-Fox would be quite the understatement. Never in my life have I heard a fiddle played with such an incredible amount of skill and expression. His flawless playing will make you want to dance, it will put you into a deep trance, it might even make you feel like splitting at the seams. The small audience at the bar that night was transported to a whole range of cultures through Jaron’s ability to shift entirely from one style of folk to the next. The band moved from straight fiddle tunes, to klezmer, to the stylings of what seemed to be perfectly authentic Indian music. A true fiddle devotee, Jaron Freeman-Fox actually spent an extended period in India studying their musical tradition and incorporating that into his playing. The end result is a captivating ability to blend opposing styles like no other.”

Lastly, we celebrated an extra digit of thumbs-ups the other day in the world of fishing with facebookworms, and it reminded me of a little incriminating anecdote I’ll leave you with here:

I still distinctly remember the first (and only) time I counted to 1000, shortly before my 5th birthday in my pal’s backyard. It seemed intimidatingly high at the time, and I remember that feeling of “oh-my-crap, I’m actually going to make it” around the late-800′s. 

 After that, my fellow number-loving cohort and I decided to see how high we could each count (politely waiting for the other to catch up, if one of us was too far ahead). After a few thousand, we started just counting in stacks of 100 and adding it on to our respective current totals. I moved away, but we still kept in touch as pen pals, to keep each-other notified of our progress. I made it to somewhere in the 35,000s before I moved on to more practical hobbies, like seeing how deep a hole I could dig in the back yard. 

On that note- I’m thoroughly flattered that enough people care about my sounds&shenanigans, that the number on this page keeps ooching upwards, and I’m going celebrate by spending the rest of the day trying not to fall in the old well (which is whole other story for another number)

We’ve just come off a 14-show romp through Alberta and Saskatchewan, set up by the good folks at HomeRoutes.

We played solo, duo and trio, in garages, living rooms, studios, galleries, churches, and a high-school gym.  The first show included a 3-camera shoot, the last one included a 3-legged dog, and most of the ones in the middle included 3 feet of snow, but every single one of them included a room full of enthusiastic folks with open ears, a delicious home cooked meal, and more hospitality then you could shake a hospital at!

Overall it was a wonderful experience, making new friends across the prairies!  A huge thank you to everyone who hosted a concert, everyone who attended with eager open ears, and especially to HomeRoutes for having us aboard!

We’ll leave you with a video from our show at the ever-generous DanLyn Studios, with mixing/editing courtesy of Dan Sinisac!

The reviews are starting to come in, and it sounds like some fools may actually be enjoying our new album!   We extend our sincere condolences to the families of the infected individuals.  We can only hope and pray that this condition is in no way contagious.

All jokes aside, it’s honestly a beautiful thing to witness this 13-pronged creature twirl off in to the big ol’ wide world, into the ears of friends and strangers alike!

  “Jaron Freeman-Fox calls his band the Opposite of Everything. With a name like that, you might expect his music to be pretty adventurous — which it most certainly is.  His new album begins with a remixed sample from a horse auction that melds into Indian vocal percussion. Before the album is finished, you’ll hear growling that would make Tom Waits proud, a version of the Doors’ “People Are Strange” that makes Jim Morrison sound boring and even some throat singing. Freeman-Fox’s musical exploration has literally taken him all over the world and he finds inspiration everywhere he goes.”- Reuben Maan - CBC Music

Thanks Ontaronions & Quebuccaneers for bringing the awesome at all our CD release shows!  Couldn’t have had more fun on this tour.  Special thanks to all our hosts, venues and presenters and to the guest musicians and dancers who joined our Montreal and Toronto shows!

To sum up the preposterous proportions of perpetual positivity we received on this tour, here are some wonderfully 
flattering words from a review of our Guelph show:

“…All of this praise is just barely touching the surface of the pure fascination involved in seeing Jaron Freeman-Fox and the Opposite of Everything perform live. Their virtuosity suggested years of classical training, and yet their sheer enthusiasm and raw energy removed any sort of pretension. It is a rare pleasure to witness something that is genuinely original, fresh and inventive” - The Ontarion

We have some highly entertaining and potentially incriminating videos from the tour which will hopefully be up soon!  Other upcoming news includes coast-to-coast summer tour dates, a new music video, and a recipe for peanut butter lasagna!

Happy new year!   After many moons and moans, the new album for Jaron Freeman-Fox & The Opposite of Everything has finally landed!

Needless to say, we’ll be bringing grand-spanking-gnu copies of this album on our upcoming tour.  I’m beyond excited to perform this material with the full force of the Opposites, and to share this new album with the world!  I’m not one for blowing horns, but I’ve definitely never been more proud of a recording, and I would venture to say there will be some cortex-crushing surprises in there for even the most stalwart of freak-fiddle-fanatics!

Hope to share it with you at one of the shows below!

February 1 – Kingston – Octave Theatre - Live Wire Music Series 

February 2 – Perth – Studio Theatre – co-presented by The Stewart Park Music Fest

February 3- Ottawa – House Concert

February 6- Montreal- Segal Centre-Indie Series - *help us out and share the facebook event!

February 7- Guelph – Jimmyjazz -  *help us out and share the facebook event!

February 10- Toronto – Lula Lounge - Co-presented by Toronto Downtown Jazz -*help us out and lend us your great aunt’s minivan for this tour! OR share the facebook event!

Greek greets to you from Thessaloniki! We’re fresh off the plane here with the grand gaggle of jet-lagged Opposite of Everything.  Playing  WOMEX tomorrow at midnight, and am so honored, to be playing on the same night as such amazing artists, such as Lajkó Félix  and Vieux Farka Toure’s duo with Idan Raichel!

Thanks to the Canada Council for the Arts and FACTOR for assistance in making this upcoming showcase possible!

 
The brand-spanking-new Jaron Freeman-Fox & The Opposite of Everything album is SO close to being released into the wild, that we’ve even heard reports of a few run-away industry-only EP copies escaping ahead of time!  Keep your ears peeled, folks.  If you do find yourself cornered by one of these strays, watch out-  they are fast, unpredictable, often loud, heart-wrenching, and quite possibly rabid.

To keep your appetites sanctified until the record release, here’s a video from my last Europe tour, shot by my favorite indie video folks in Holland.  InDeKringloop exclusively shoot their videos at the local thrift stores, which makes each shoot a double-whammy of slick eye-candy and cheap used suspenders!

In closing- here’s a few kind (and slightly hilarious) reviews of your truly, from the tour with Ben Caplan last month in Europe:

“In particular, the sprightly virtuoso Jaron Freeman-Fox‘s ability to transform the violin into a new instrument altogether will have you suspecting that, like Paganini and Robert Johnson before him, he may well have sold his soul for his craft.” – Couger Microbes, London, UK

“Jaron Freeman Fox, who was allowed to play a few solo tracks, was a shockingly good musician and singer in his own right, and perhaps unfortunately for Ben, left the audience wanting to hear more from this virtuoso fiddler.” – TheHagueOnline.com, Den Hague, NL

And my favorite (via google translate): “Jaron Freeman Fox. With an Egyptian eye that he has tattooed above his left eyebrow, he is a striking appearance. And we’re not even talking about his playing had. Freeman Fox plays his electric violin like a guitar against his neck clamped loves, where he strikes out all nuts. Phenomenal. The best song of the whole set is perhaps the only song that is now not just Ben Caplan himself, but his violinist. Which incidentally has an even rawer more rasping voice, which he hardest sandpaper as a soft skin-Page toilet felt. “My fiddle, my soul and me,” he sings, and that we feel. Caplan band and let the entire forest as a large beast scream along. Crazy.” – 3voor12, Utrecht, NL 

Greetings from Amsterdam!  Amidst the canals and “coffeeshops” it’s time for an all-too-rare update from JFFville!

I’m currently on tour supporting the boisterous Ben Caplan through TheNetherlands, Germany, London, France and Belgium. Including the legendary Paradiso in Amsterdam, and the In to The Great Wide Open festival!  Check out his music and tour dates on his website!  Also, check back here soon and on my facebook page for our chronicled EU shenanigans.

It’s great to be back in Europe seeing old pals and meeting new ones, and a great warm up for when I return in October for a WOMEX show with The Opposite of Everything! Check out the insane other groups showcasing at the festival in their teaser video!

RECORDINGDONGKONG
The Opposite of Everything album is going full throttle, and eardrum previews should be ready for the fall!  The band is sounding at its finest, there are some amazing special guests coming on board, and all in all, I’ve never been more excited about a record.

Delhi2Dublin’s album has just been released in Canada, and features some JFF writing and fiddling on about half the album.  A lot of this was recorded remotely during my last Europe tour… take a peek on itunes

Also, Josh Van Tassel‘s new album has a face full o’ fiddles on it, and is secretly finished! It wont be released for a while, but I can promise you, it’ll be blowing some minds when it is!

Great times this summer touring coast coast to coast! First with The Opposite of Everything playing Sudbury Northern Lights Festival Boréal, Newfoundland Sound Symposium, MusicWestPort, and the Vancouver Folk Festival. (Massive thanks to all the fests for such a great time, and to the Canada Council for the arts for helping us get there!

Summer continued with some  solo shows premiering new material where I’ve been experimenting with {{looping throat singing falsetto through guitar pedals, and of course, triphonic fiddle- videos to come soon!}} at Artswells Festival, folkWEST in Victoria and the Cultura festival in Toronto.

Check out this video by Michael Berz from a spontaneous Vancouver House Concert with Robin Layne, Sam Davidson, and Simon Nyberg!

Thanks to the wonderful festivals, new friends and fans who made these shows happen! Lastly, thanks to the amazing musicians in my westcoast pickup bands:  Swedish guitar virtuoso Simon Nyberg, Todd Bifford who drums for Maria in the Shower, triumphant trumpet troubadour Shelder Footz, and  my oldest pal on the low end, the mighty Ian Olmstead.  Nothing like summer folk festivals in this beautiful mad country of ours, and I’m already looking forward to the next!

Greetings from Bangor, Wales!  Since my last post in this wobbly web domaniac, I’ve been on tour in India to collaborate with Nomadic Rajasthani Gypsies, to Memphis with my Oppositeposse, and all through Europe on a duo tour with BC gypsy Joanna Chapman-Smith (a much more dangerous gypsy then the Rajasthani variety!)

In the midst of that, I’ve been doing a lot of work from my slowly expanding studio “H.O.B. Sound” (on many a fine project, that I’m sure you will hear about very shortly!) off to PEI to start work on Teresa Doyle‘s album (due out this fall!) and to Vancouver to co-write/record for the upcoming Delhi2Dublin album- (due out this summer!) No rest for the wicked, or the , as they say…

Below are some photos of recent adventures (with many more on my fb page for those interested…), show announcements and general newsy nonsense! Cheerio,

-JFF

Fresh off a 20-hour plane ride, and dumped on stage to do a Juglebandi with Suraj Bhoba – the most senior of the gypsies in the group!

Decided to go for a stroll outside of Eichstätt, and realized I had stumbled upon the German portion of the Camino De Santiago.   If you don’t know the story of my late mentor Oliver Schroer walking the Camino with the violin I now play- read all about it here

MANIC ALMANAC Lays Down the Mac:

“Caboose” From Manic Almanac wins 2012 Independent Music Award!

and there’s a New review in from FolkWorld! A nice Trad-focused online mag, and some nice perspectives on the album:

“From the Casey Driessen style southern newgrass of Road to the northern soul of Waterfall, from the Western Swing of Caboose to the eastern mysticism in Tribe of the Coda…. simply beautiful fiddling on Prayer and The Birds Will Sing Again …. Easy listening it ain’t, Manic Almanac: Slow Mobius is full of surprises and too provocative to ignore.”

Read the full article here!

NEW SHOWS ANNOUNCED!

JFF & The Opposite of Everything will be up to their usual festival escapades this year, including the wonderful Vancouver Folk Festival, Sudbury Northern Lights Festival Boréaland the Newfoundland Sound Symposium.  Once again, we would like to thank the Canada Council for the Arts from the bottom of our hearties, for assistance in making our appearance at the Vancouver Folk Festival Possible.

NEW DISCOGRAPHY:

Traditional Mexican music in the Son Jericho style with many fine guest Toronto musicians including yours truly! You can hear it online here for a limited time!

Amy Cambell - Letters Home – a very fun recording session with the wonderful Amy Cambell, accompanied by nothing but a string section comprised of Ben Whiteley, Don Kerr, and JFF