Japan Tour

It’s been a busy summer, but the highlight was definitely going to Japan with Countermeasure!

It’s always fun to tour with my second family, and this was a successful trip. Five gigs in just over a week, with some lead time at the front to sightsee around Tokyo. Our audiences were fantastic and we’re hoping to go back again next year!

A highlight from the trip was singing the song we’ve learned in Japanese, Love Letter From Canada (I kid you not, it was a hit in the ‘70s) with one of the original singers, Yoko Hatakana! How cute is she??

またね、日本！

Marla

Your Turn to Roll

I was considering how to build upon the success of my Formula 1 video, and coincidentally, Countermeasure was looking for a fun new project, and that happy confluence is how this next video was born. To get in on the excitement of their ground-breaking Kickstarter, we decided to do a cover of Critical Role’s theme song, Your Turn to Roll.

The project was Elana’s brainchild, and she recruited me to do the arrangement. I threw it together and we recorded and released it within two weeks, and got a great amount of traction and recognition from within the community. Very exciting!

Enjoy!

Marla

Overdue Update

It came to my attention that I haven't updated my website in a long time, so I'm going to fill you in on everything that's happened in one fell swoop!

Countermeasure has been very busy lately - we just got back from Japan a couple of weeks ago! It was both a wildly successful tour and my first chance to see the country where my dad's side of the family came from. A life-changing experience, for sure!

I've started a mixed barbershop quartet called West Train! We competed in the Ontario District Barbershop Harmony contest in April and placed third in the province, a result we were very happy with given how we'd only pulled the group together a short while beforehand. Excited for future performances!

I've had probably my busiest spring at work to date, working on four different shows including season six of Top Chef Canada for the Food Network and season three of Home to Win for HGTV. Things are wrapping up just in time for us to start on season six of The Amazing Race Canada. Never a dull moment!

The musical I mentioned in my previous post went well and was a rewarding experience. I've also been taking voice lessons since I've been focusing on my singing so much lately, and they've been paying off. Not much to report on the writing/composing/photography front these days - too busy with everything else!

I'll do my best to keep this website more up to date but we all know that can be a struggle... :)

Cheers!

Marla

Life is Fine

Countermeasure just released a new music video before our tour. It's gained a lot of traction so far and we're really excited about it. I present, "Life is Fine"!

Marla

B.C. Tour

Countermeasure recently announced a B.C. Tour! It'll be our first time out to the west coast. I'm extra excited because I have a lot of family out there that I haven't seen in awhile, and who haven't seen me perform.

Our dates are as follows:

March 11 - Vancouver
March 12 - White Rock
March 14 - Nanaimo
March 15 - Sidney
March 17 - North Vancouver
March 18 - North Vancouver

For show locations, times, details, and ticket info, check out our (brand new!) website.

It's always a great time, touring with these folks. :)

Marla

Takin' It Home

Countermeasure's released a new travelogue music video, full of footage taken by group members during our European tour last summer. Takin' It Home is from our second album, Made to Measure. Video preview frame pictures my backside. Check it out!

Marla

Crank It Counter-Krokwise

Countermeasure was busy over the holidays with little caroling gigs and benefit concerts, but it's been awhile since we've had a show longer than a couple of songs. 

With that, I present:

This Sunday, a double-bill with the Harvard Krokodiloes who are here on tour. The show's at 3030, a bar in the Junction where Countermeasure's sound guy, Chris Poole, is the resident audio technician, so we'll have home field advantage! Should be a good show. You can buy tickets here. Hope to see you!

Marla

European Tour

First of all, Merry Christmas! I'm having a nice lazy Christmas this year so I thought it would be a good time to talk a little bit about the tour that Countermeasure went on this past summer. It was an incredible experience, one I'll never forget.

We left at the end of July and flew to London, England, where we spent about four days and performed a few shows. That was an exciting weekend - seeing the tour kick off, performing in new venues every day, putting our feelers out to see whether European audiences would like us as much as they did when we were there the previous year (they did). After that weekend we boarded a bus to Edinburgh, taking in the beautiful English countryside.

We stayed in Edinburgh for three weeks, and it's one of my favourite cities I've ever been to. It really started to feel like home. The point of the trip was to perform at Edinburgh Fringe - we did 14 hour-long shows in total, plus several promotional shows of a handful of songs around the city. It was really a fantastic experience - never before have we had the chance to take multiple runs at the same show in such a condensed period of time, and was really incredible to see how much it solidified our skills. Our show enjoyed an unexpected amount of attention and traffic, considering it was a first-time show in the Fringe. It was pretty thrilling. You can read some of the reviews here and here.

After Edinburgh, we headed to Italy for a week. This was kind of the 'vacation' part of the trip - we had several days off before Vocalmente, the vocal festival in Fossano which was the reason for this stop. Italy is beautiful, but I have to say I never felt quite at home as I did in Edinburgh. But I enjoyed the heat more than the cool rainy Scottish weather!

Our involvement in Vocalmente mostly consisted of taking part in the Swingles Camp, a series of workshops put on by our friends the Swingles. But we also opened the festival in a double-bill with local group VoXes, in one of the most incredible concerts I've ever sung in my life. We were singing in the moat of the gigantic medieval castle in the middle of Fossano, for probably close to a thousand locals, who gave us one of the warmest receptions we've ever seen, including a double encore. What a night!

After a month away it was a bit of a drag to return to regular working life, but it was also nice to be home. It was an amazing tour, with success far beyond our expectations. It'll be hard to top that in the future (but, I always say that with each new thing Countermeasure does, and somehow it always happens)!

Marla

Made to Measure

Countermeasure has finally finished our second full-length album, Made to Measure. I listed to it for the first time a couple of days ago and I've had it on repeat since. I'm incredibly proud of this project and I can't wait to hear what people think of it.

We're having a release concert in a week, July 14, at Harbourfront Centre. It should be a good show, and it's also the warmup for our tour (we leave in three weeks! Ack!) More about that later.

For tickets, click here. For a little preview video, click here.

Can't wait! :)

Marla

Coming Up

It's been awhile since I posted. It's hard to keep these things up to date, isn't it?

I've been bouncing around between different projects and thus haven't really had anything worthy of posting lately. Did some editing on my novel - someday I'll do more with that - considered various ideas for new music to write, etc. But I should have some post-worthy material soon! I just got a ukulele last weekend and I've been playing it a lot, and hopefully will have a video to post soon. I've also been dragging my camera around in an attempt to take more photos so there should be some of those to put up, too.

In the meantime, Countermeasure has been the most exciting thing happening. We had a few shows lately that went over well, and we're working hard putting together material for our second album and our tour this summer. We're probably two-thirds of the way through tracking Made to Measure, and I'm really excited about it. We'll be releasing it this summer, probably June or July.

Our tour in August is beginning to seem like a reality, too. We'll start in London, England for a few days and do a few concerts there; then we're off to Edinburgh Fringe for a whopping three weeks and 18 shows; and then to Itally for the Vocalmente festival and a few more shows. We'll be gone for an entire month! Exciting. We've been working on polishing our show, complete with choreography and everything.

We'll surely be presenting our final show before we leave sometime, and also have a CD release party (those two might be the same thing), so stay tuned for that. We'll also be opening for Naturally 7 in May, which will be awesome! More about that later.

Marla

Projects on the go

Haven't posted in awhile - I've been incredibly busy with numerous different projects!

The main reason for being busy is that we're in the midst of  The Amazing Race Canada at work! The schedule sets a frantic pace but it's a very rewarding show to work on. It's fun to see the public response it gets when each episodes airs. That goes until mid-September, so it's going to be a busy summer!

I've had a few other projects on the go, as well. This past Saturday, I did a photoshoot with Scott Murdoch of Five by Five Photography, which means I'll have some new modelling photos to share sometime in the near future! I also recently finished a new arrangement for Countermeasure of Hawksley Workman's We Will Still Need a Song, which we'll be performing at the wedding of one of the group members next weekend. I've also been working on my solo singing and guitar playing for a few other little side things, as well! Whew.

Countermeasure has a new video out and I also managed to find a recording of an older composition of mine, so I'll be posting a bit more material in the next few days. Eventually I'd like to start writing posts in more of a blogging style rather than just updates on projects, too. But in the meantime, have a couple of photos that I've taken recently that I like!

Marla

London Bells

At our concert on May 16th, Countermeasure brought in some videographers to record our performance for the purpose of getting some good-quality promotional video material. Well, the first song is up! This is London Bells, and it's probably one of my favourite songs that we sing. I'm really happy with the video. :)

I hope you like it as much as I do. :)

Marla

Upcoming Shows

Perhaps I'm a little belated in posting this, but better late than never, right?

Countermeasure has a handful of shows coming up in the next couple of weeks!

Tonight (May 16) is a big one: we've rented Glenn Gould Studio so that we can film some promo material. The more people the better, so tickets are an extra low $10! It's rare that we do a full-length show for so cheap, so it's a great opportunity to check us out. More info here.

At the end of the month is Sing! The Toronto Vocal Arts Festival, and we're involved in a number of events for that:

• May 23: an appearance on CP24 Breakfast to promote the festival, between 9-10am.
• May 27: performing with the Nathaniel Dett Chorale in "And Still We Sing" - a tribute to Billy Strayhorn, at Koerner Hall. More info here.
• May 28: "O Canada: Our Nation's Greatest Hits" at Glenn Gould Studio. More info here.
• May 30: Short performance on the Distillery Stage at 1:50pm - FREE!
• May 30: "Come Together: Beatles tribute", at Tapestry Opera at 4pm. More info here.

I'll come back to this post and add more information about those concerts as I get it. But in the meantime, I have to go prepare for tonight's big show!

Marla