Marv Machura: Home
Welcome Friends! Thanks for stopping by and enjoy your visit!
Here's my latest video project completed by the talented Les Sayer of End of the Hall Productions. It is an interview taken at the Hayloft and shows clips from other video performances he has captured over the last year.
Here's to the upcoming...! I will keep you posted on upcoming show as they come up. Thanks!
Next show: July 30th at the Crown Pub, Edmonton.
Take a look at my new video from my Warm Summer Night CD: "Badlands." Produced and filmed by Michael Short of Mystic Productions. Let it roll...filmed in the Badlands near Drumheller and at the Hayloft in the County of Strathcona and starring Haley Myrol. And thanks to all who came out to the Release Party! A great time and special thanks to The Suitable Men for playing such a great opening set.
Thanks for all the people who helped celebrate: Alberta Bound: A Tribute to Gordon Lightfoot. We had a great turnout and a wonderful show!
Thanks Festival Place and The Early Stage, The Tofield Hotel, The Shop for hosting such great parties and shows last month. Check out the new video--a live version of Badlands filmed at Festival Place--on my You Tube channel. Link to videos.
Here's a very nice interview published in the Sherwood Park News: I think Catherine Griwkowsky just caught a sizable slice of Marv Machura here. Read on....
Marv Machura to Play Festival Place - Catherine Griwkowsky (Sherwood Park News 08/11/09)
Marv Machura will be spreading the Western Canadian musical identity at Festival Place on Wednesday, Aug. 19. The South Cooking Lake resident has been crafting characters for his narrative tunes for decades. “It comes down to writing about what you know, and being inspired by Ian Tyson.” Machura says, “how he is able to write from a narrative perspective.”
This spring, Machura released Warm Summer Night, an album he had been working on for about two years. Machura continues to hang onto the folk tradition of storytelling. The singer-songwriter said he wants to create something authentic.
While some artists sing about Nashville, he doesn’t know anything about it, so that’s not what he writes about. Sure, there are lyrics on universal song themes of whiskey, women, and pickup trucks, but his songs focus on Alberta and Saskatchewan themes like the oil patch, buffalo, and cold, snowy winters.
A highlight of his song writing came when he was “playing for the agony of my friends” and he played a Gordon Lightfoot song. One of his friends asked, “When did you write that one, Marv?" “I could have died happy then: they thought I had written this really great song…it was one of those moments that told me I had reached a certain level.”
So what was it that inspired Machura to get into singing and songwriting—and guitar playing? “It was the devil,” he jokes. But seriously, he explains that he had an epiphany at the age of four when he first heard a singer/guitar player around a family kitchen table play “Try a-little Kindness.” “I can vividly remember that moment, and I haven’t looked back since,” he says. “I’ve taken a lot of side trips down the path, but I still fundamentally come back to that kitchen table.”
Artists like Tyson, Lightfoot, John Denver, Steve Earle, and Fred Eaglesmith continue to be inspirational for him as a singer-songwriter. But Machura also listens to music outside the roots genre like Neil Diamond and Karen Carpenter.
While he plays an acoustic guitar, his music has a definite sense of rock and roots—and is more energetic than some acoustic music. Recording seemed to be challenge for Machura for years until his 2003 release: Diamonds for Fields of Clover. “Something clicked with the sound,” he says. “I don’t know if I changed all that much, but suddenly I felt really confident in my own voice.”
- Catherine Griwkowsky
Special thanks to our might radio stations CKUA, CJSR, and CBC for all their support of the new disc: as well as the fantastic press from Roddy Campbell at Penguin Eggs, Vue Weekly, Eden Munro at Vue Weekly, Fawda Mithrush at See Weekly, and Peter North of the Edmonton Journal. Don't forget to support CJSR and CKUA in their upcoming fund drives!
New pictures and press clippings to be posted soon! Here's a CD review by Eden Munro: Vue Weekly and a few other recent write-ups...
"Edmonton singer-songwriter Marv Machura currentl abum in the last six years, Warm Summer Night, finds Machura setting things in motion with a good kick on the big and heavy '70s-style rock of "Woods of the Cree," before opening it up a bit for the title track. On the next track, "Hold You," Machura duets skillfully with Ann Vriend, while Dhalia Wakefield and Marty Siltanen offer welcome backing vocals throughout. There's a folk-inspired vibe that carries through the record as Machura sings original songs that are right out of the tradition of narrative songwriting, telling stories of blizzards, badlands and oil patches. He can turn it up loud, too, as he does for a crushing take on the traditional "Buffalo Skinner." V " - Eden Munro, Vue Weekly, Edmonton
"Marv Machura, a winning singer and talented guitar player, is an Alberta-based singer-songwriter who has released two CDs and is soon to release his third. His music has been described as “pure Canadiana” and is a roots-based mix of rock, blues, country, and folk. Known as an artist who continues to define the Western Canadian experience, Machura’s three-piece band is gaining a reputation for high-energy live performances." - Feb 2009 RPP Sherwood Park.
"Marv is the essential Canadian Cowboy Folk singer. His songs take you out on the prairie at forty below, to the range on the old Appaloosa, and to the heart of the city. His band is tight, featuring such notables as Marty Siltanen, another powerful voice in Canadian Folk." - Feb 2009 Blue Chair, Edmonton.
To purchase music and other merchandise, please click on "Purchase Music" to go to a secure e-commerce site. To book the Marv Machura Band, please contact me directly and/or check out my press kit for details.
Have a great day! And see you soon! - Marv
"...and he may go to Hell, or even Vancouver, but he'll always be Alberta's Child." - Ian Tyson