Ron Hawkins among Copper Kettle performers
Ron Hawkins, of Lowest of the Low fame, will be part of the day’s entertainment line-up at Mad River Park during Creemore Springs’ Copper Kettle Festival August 22, along with six-piece horn band Turbo Street Funk, jazz singer Tia Brazda, country band Big Tobacco and the Pickers and Not Ottawa, featuring Roly Platt.
Hawkins has released more than a dozen albums in his 20-plus-year career as a musician, first as frontman for Lowest of the Low, then with the Rusty Nails and now with the Do Good Assassins.
Lowest of the Low’s debut album Shakespeare My Butt, released in 1991, was placed in the top 10 of Chart Magazine’s Top 100 Canadian Albums of All Time three times.
Hawkins is now promoting his 2015 release Garden Songs, a collection of 10 ballads recorded live-off-the-floor in just one week.
“The Do Good Assassins, previously we made our debut album, which was a double album made in the way that most records are made over a period of time with overdubs and stuff like that. It was a big undertaking,” said Hawkins. “The band is so tight and capable that when it came time to make the next record I had a whole other big adventure planned.”
Hawkins said in the meantime, his manager encouraged the band to record the old school live-in-studio album with no overdubs, in two tracks.
“Just to sort of experience that thing and see if we could pull it off and so as it turned out it was four or five new songs and we went to the back catalogue and took some ballads out and made that record,” said Hawkins. “So it was a bit of a left turn for me. I wasn’t planning to do that.”
The intent was to make a stripped down recording that focuses on Hawkins’ abilities as a singer and songwriter.
As a lyricist, Hawkins is among Canada’s best with his earliest songs remaining long-time favourites, partly because of their poetic portrayal of life in Toronto in the 1990s.
The Lowest of the Low has had several break ups over the years but last month the band played Toronto’s Festival of Beer without co-founder Stephen Stanley.
“It felt good and it felt weird for me. I think it’s the first time in 25 years that I have walked onto a Lowest of the Low stage without Steve but for the most part I guess we now have to decide who we are doing it for. Do we not do it, out of respect for our past or for Steve or do we play for those fans who were having a great time and singing all the lyrics? Like always with Lowest of the Low, we are in a holding pattern and we don’t really know… A long time ago with that band, I learned to never say never.”
Hawkins said these days he wears many hats as a performer and with the Do Good Assassins in Creemore there is bound to be Rusty Nails and Lowest of the Low music on the set list.
“That’s how I am wired, always moving ahead but it is good to throw in stuff that people know,” he said.
Hawkins will be performing with the Do Good Assassins beginning at 4:15 p.m.
The Mad River Park stage is located at the south end of Mill Street. Entertainment begins at noon.
For the full line-up, including an appearance by the Beinn Gorm Highlanders, visit copperkettlefestival.ca.
There will also be food, a beer tent and brewery tours.
Children’s activities include pony rides and games with face-painting, crafts and balloons by darci-que.
