The Sackville-based band celebrated newly released album Make Strange Friends
On Friday, Nov. 21, Caged Animals celebrated their newly released album, Make Strange Friends, with a launch party and concert. Caged Animals is the Sackville-based band of singer songwriter Vincent Cacchione and artist and musician Magali Charron. Joining them on stage were musicians Gallen Olinski, Luke Patterson, and Steven Lambke, who also opened the night. The celebration took place at The Living Arts Collective, located on 25 Lorne St., in a crowded room filled with approximately eighty fans of all ages, filling both the pews and standing space. The night closed with a performance by Julie Doiron with Dany Placard. After the show, multi-media visual artist Graeme Patterson summed up the experience as “pretty heart-warming” and “reminiscence of some past Sackville rock show vibes.”
It was Caged Animals’ first live playing of the full album, which was “nerve-wracking,” says Cacchione in an interview with The Argosy, adding that the songs have “existed as kind of impressionistic recordings for a long time and so it’s a little different to get them into your hands, and into your throat, and into your head, and out into the room.” Cacchione’s nerves did not show, as he also accompanied himself on the bass guitar for the first time as well, saying he was just like the musician “Sting.”
Make Strange Friends serves as an intimate look into the life and mind of its songwriter. Cacchione shared how the record had been in progress since moving to Sackville with his family, Magali, Alaska, and Casper, in 2020. “Radio Down,” is about an “imaginary road-trip” Chacchione takes with his dad. Cacchione says that “everything about this record I made, feels like this place to me, and was influenced by this place and living here.” “Crow”, the fifth song on the album, was the first song he wrote while living in Sackville. Cacchione dedicated “Crow” to Jon Mckiel, maritime musician and producer, who helped with the record, making it “everything it could be” says Cacchione, adding “and whose friendship I truly appreciate.” Following “Crow”, Caged Animals performed “The Blood Moon” which is a “homage” to a time before Sackville, when Cacchione and Charon lived in a neighbourhood in Brooklyn located underneath the train tracks. He dedicated the song to his son Casper, the youngest listener in the room, who upon hearing his name, left his supervisor in favour of joining his performing parents on stage for “Big Bad Wolf,” standing happily behind Charron who described him as a “nice warm presence.” Interactions between happy band members, audience members, and Cacchione referring to the audience as “beautiful friends” at the end of the show, created the sense of being in a warm and welcoming space. The performance closed to applause and whistling from the crowd. Cacchione said that after it ended he was asking himself “did we do it? I wasn’t even sure.”
Cacchione thanked Lambke and Doiron for sharing the stage, describing them as “two songwriters I greatly admire.” Lambke is the Director of You’ve Changed Records, a Canadian record label based in Sackville, and the record label that released Make Strange Friends. Lambke opened the performance with a few older songs and, encouraged by cheers from the crowd, a new song that is “partially about walking around on the dykes” according to the musician. Like Cacchione, Lambke also felt a bit of nerves, saying perhaps they were “seasonal nerves” or, due to “the potent intimacy of our showspace.” The showspace was intimate, with most people seeming to know each other from past Sackville arts events. The stage was set in a corner of the room, meaning audience members were standing at eye-level in front of the performers. This set up did not detract from the event, with all of the performers thanking Glenn Barrington, who ran the performance space of the initiative. Lambke finished his set with a second new song dedicated to Julie Doiron, who closed the night.
Julie Doiron started her set singing without musical accompaniment amidst chatter, which quickly died out at the sound of her soft voice, familiar to many in the audience. Joining her on stage was her partner and Quebecois musician, Dany Placard, who sang vocals and played guitar. Doiron performed in English, French, and Spanish, pulling from a repertoire of songs from over thirty years. Doiron’s performance contained “enough stories shared to fill a prog-rock epic,” says audience member Harris McSheffery, and lead to Doiron enlisting the laughing listeners to find her a claw-footed bathtub.
Unperformed was the absurdist radio drama at the end of Make Strange Friends, starring Bertholet Charron and Larry “Ratso” Sloman. Listeners can find Make Strange Friends on Spotify and available for purchase on bandcamp for $9 or as a $24 vinyl at: https://cagedanimals.bandcamp.com/album/make-strange-friends