These Two Shoes reviews:

REVIEWED BY JASON GLADU, POSTED ON MARCH 6, 2005

3 1/2 stars out of 5

Winnipeg native Jeremy Proctor is one of those local gems who performs at all of the popular coffee-shops and misty clubs, so it's easy to take for granted his traditional folk sound and home-grown storytelling. These Two Shoes opens with the catchy "Holiday," which features a whimsical penny whistle that mingles with an aged fiddle - the two instruments sound as if they’re dancing with one another. Other standout tracks, like "Sweetness" and "Joanne," capture Proctor's hauntingly beautiful vocals. The reflective "She Won't Marry Me" instantly recalls home: "The sun sets out on the prairies/The wind is howling it's goodbyes/The coyotes are singing chorus/The crickets keeping time." These Two Shoes is a breezy, enjoyable listen from one of Canada's most underrated singer-songwriters. (Independent)

Interview with The Uniter 2003:

http://uniter.uwinnipeg.ca/issue2/pg10.html

Jeremy Proctor - Struggling Towards Success By Jeff Robson, Uniter Arts Editor

Jeremy Proctor is a gifted performer who always manages to draw a huge crowd at his infrequent local shows. A big hit with younger listeners who come for his charming personality and his fun-filled shows, he also pleases more discriminating listeners with his thoughtful and sensitive lyrics. His full-length debut CD, Sundays and Mondays, was released last year, and it has garnered very positive reviews and lots of local airplay on CBC, CKUW, and UMFM. This talented Wolseley area singer/songwriter is preparing for a concert at The West End Cultural Centre on September 12.

Q: How did you get started making music?

Jeremy Proctor: I used to be an actor and I was into acting, but I found that a lot of your chances at success in acting hinged on luck and connections, and there's a lot of competition. I started playing music and writing songs and performing music right about the same time that I started acting professionally. I tended to just gravitate more towards music because I thought that more of my chances for success would rest on my abilities. I thought that if I worked hard at the technical aspect of song writing and music and performance, and if I put my heart and soul into it, people would respond. With acting, I didn't necessarily think that there was much of a chance of succeeding. I just knew too many people that would never have any money and weren't succeeding as professional actors.

Music's just as bad, though. You don't get a whole lot of respect, and there's a lot of competition. It's like you have to prove yourself before you have the opportunity to prove yourself, which is kind of a difficult situation. I like it; I love playing music, writing new material, coming up with different songs, and collaborating with other artists. There's just nothing that I'd rather be doing, but it's still difficult.

Q: How do you feel about the ever-present controversy surrounding the Internet and downloaded music?

Jeremy Proctor: It is spreading the word; it's a great promotional medium. If it's promoting music, but it's also distributing the music, then it's great for promoting, but where are you going to make your money? The more people that stop buying CDs and listen to music that they get exclusively on the Internet, the less chance that the average musician is going to have at making a living off his work. It's not good when the Internet service providers are charging people for access to the Internet and then they're distributing the music that doesn't belong to them. They're violating the copyright by doing that and charging people for it, and that constitutes piracy. If they were giving it away for free, then it would be just another way of distributing the material and that would be one thing, but they're making money off of it. I wouldn't want to stop the Internet for the world, but it would be nice to get some kind of Internet royalty cheque in the future.

Q: You don't do concerts in Winnipeg very often. Why not?

Jeremy Proctor: I like to play shows that are going to be a success. It takes a lot of energy to produce a show successfully, and you just can't do it every week. When I do a show, there's three weeks of work that goes into it. It takes a lot out of you. I'd rather play twice a year and have good attendance than play every week for nobody. But, really, Winnipeg's pretty small. If you really wanted to see me play, you could just invite me over. My goal right now is to play as many shows as I can, but not play over and over again in one particular place, like Winnipeg. It's working out; I've got a bunch of shows booked out East; I'm going to be on the road for five weeks this fall.

Q: You're known for having some pretty goofy songs like "Young boy running naked through the barn yard smoking marijuana," but you also have some beautiful sensitive songs. How do you balance the two?

Jeremy Proctor: I'm a big fan of contrast and irony. I'm always worried that I'm going to play a set of songs that are all going to be the same tempo or sound the same and then no one will ever come to see me play again. I try to write different types of songs partly to keep from getting bored, but also because they come in really handy when you're trying to shake things up during a set. It's just like in art, you want to have colour, but you want to have absence of colour, too. You want to have light and you want to have dark. You want to have all of those things in order to create an image that holds its own and stands on its own and has balance. A lot of the performers that I idolize do that, they write slower stuff and up-tempo stuff. Bob Dylan does that; he has some silly stuff that you hear every now and then, and then he's got the really heartbreaking songs.

Q: You seem to be pretty well tapped into the local music scene. How do you find the music community in town?

Jeremy Proctor: I think the community of musicians in Winnipeg is really supportive of each other. But, the music industry in general is very competitive. I think that Winnipeg bands most of the time support Winnipeg bands, but there's a 1000 bands in Winnipeg and there's a 1000 bands in Minneapolis and there's a thousand bands in Chicago, so it's more of a critical mass. There's so much music out there that no matter how much you try to support the people that you know and respect, there's going to be overlap and there's only so much room for music. We have an awesome independent music scene here in Winnipeg, and people should try to support it as much as they can.

Q: On September 12, you're playing with Carter Monrose, a band led by CKUW's Bill Western. He's also played on your CD, how did you start working with him?

Jeremy Proctor: Bill Western is a friend of mine from elementary school. We used to sit beside each other in math class in grade six and draw these caricatures of what we wanted our rock bands to look like. We'd draw these pictures with characters with Mohawks and earrings and tattoos and Flying V guitars and we would draw stage plots for our instruments and whatnot. We spent hours and hours doing that when we should have been studying math. I guess it's a chance for us to realize our rock star dreams onstage at the West End. It's great, I love having a chance to collaborate with him, and he's an awesome musician and a great guy. Carter Monrose is a great band and I have a lot of respect for them.

Sundays and Mondays reviews:

Rambles review by Rachel Jagt published 26 April 2003

It was quite by accident that I first heard Winnipeg native Jeremy Proctor play. He was in Ontario for a few weeks and played an opening set for Trevor Mills at Hugh's Room. I was blown away by his talent and charmed by his sense of humour; I didn't hesitate to pick up both CDs he had for sale. One of them was Sundays & Mondays, a wonderful collection of well-written and original folk songs and the follow-up to his critically acclaimed 1998 EP release.

Accompanying Proctor are Richard Moody (viola), Iain Whitaker (percussion), Bill Western (pedal steel) and Daniel Roy (percussion), as well as Ruth Moody (Scruj MacDuhk) on harmony vocals. He is an insightful songwriter who pays attention to the little details that make up heartbreak, tragedy and comedy -- he's part tortured folk singer, part quirky observer of the world. His songs are simple and honest, ranging from sad to comical and back again. He opens the record with an upbeat song, "Wendy's Hands," which features Western's pedal steel. He continues with "John Was a Hard Working Man," a love story full of melancholy and regret; "The Phones for You," a comical look at living in a house with lots of other people; and "Harbor," a dreamlike journey.

"Grandpa was a Logger" features Ruth Moody's beautiful harmony, and Richard Moody's viola weaves sadness through the verses. Proctor has a strong, passionate and slightly unusual singing voice; the vocals are always the focus, and are always accompanied by his accomplished fingerstyle guitar playing (he studied with Canadian legend Don Ross).

Another favourite song of mine is "She's Got What it Takes," about how love can take over: "She's got all the moves to turn a man into a fool/She's a corkscrew to an alcoholic." Throughout the 10 songs on Sundays & Mondays, Proctor casually spills these little pearls of observation, like this one from the title track, a sweet ode to remembering: "I like the way you talk lightly of politics/as if you held the world cupped like water in your hands."

Jeremy Proctor is a talented artist who successfully mixes a razor-sharp wit and an appreciation for wordplay with sadness and introspection. It's his words that first made, and continue to make, the strongest impression on me. I was completely drawn in by the songs on this record; they make me wish that he came to play in Ontario more often.