Well may you ask. In “days of olde“ when Jill and Gordon Johnston ran the Swing Street Coffee shop there was a paper mache beatnick like figure that bestrode the building. Aptly named Beannick he had to come down from his perch when Jill and Gordon sold the business. For many winters he sat under piles of snow biding his time for some future role in the life of the community. During their tenure at the Swing Street Cafe Jill and Gordon ran a subscription series of concerts every winter at the Studio Stage Door that, for years prior to the Key City Theatre, was pretty well the only concert venue for live music in Cranbrook. During that time we were treated to outstanding performances by the likes of Martin Simpson, Garnet Rodgers, Stephen Fearing, Alex Houghton, `Four Men and a Dog`, Ron Kavna and Andy Irvine.   Jill and Gordon had the incredible knack of finding performers of tremendous ability and talent. They established a concert standard for the relatively unknown performers who were, in reality, music legends. Well all things come to an end and so did the concerts series. However, with some recent prompting from Terry Miller of Cranbrook Community Theatre fame they have, under the patronage of the once famous Beannick,  resurrected the subscription concert series. This winter will be the fourth series of concerts in this the modern Beannick era.  Over the recent past I have been fortunate to hear and photograph some of the outstanding performers in the series. Here are some images to stir memories of great music:

(The above images are  from a few of the concerts in the series. A number of the concert reviews have been published in The Townsman and over the next little while I will transfer them from my archives to the JOURNALISM tab in this blog).

The Winter 2012 subscription series is already under way with a performance by Garnet Rogers a little while back. The blues guitarist Sue Foley and her musical  partner Peter Karp will be performing on Tuesday October 16, 2012  and the blues slide guitar legend Kelly Joe Phelps will be performing on Wednesday December 5, 2012. The subscription series is sold out in advance but occasionally tickets are turned in for resale on the night of the performances. For more information contact Terry Miller at  tmiller@cintek.com             .

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