The Waverley Hotel has a brand new look and Vig Schulman has booked one of Canada’s premier roots acts to showcase the renovations.
Elliott Brood will provide the entertainment on Thursday (Feb. 25), as Cumberlanders get their first chance to see the new stage and test out the new dance floor, which now sits on the raised side of the bar.
Tables and chairs occupy the former dance floor space, with a full view of the new 12x20 foot, fully loaded stage. The old stage was about eight feet deep and 16 feet wide.
The new-look bar will also contain a larger kitchen space. The former kitchen is now a ‘green room’ where entertainers can relax before shows.
“This is a game changer for us,” Schulman said. “It just ups the ante in terms of professionalism of venue. It puts us in another ball park for entertainment because that many more ticket sales allows us to engage pricier bands.
“It’s nice to have a venue in Cumberland that is still the place that people want to go to, and the artists want to play,” he added.
The Juno Award-winning Elliott Brood will make the Waverley one of only two Island stops on their North American tour, in support of their fifth album, Work And Love. The band’s fourth album, Days Into Years, earned the Juno Award for Roots Album of the year.
They changed direction somewhat for Work And Love, working with an outside producer, Ian Blurton, for the first time.
The songs are more personal in this latest effort as well, with songs about broken relationships and other trials of adulthood.
Casey Laforet, Mark Sasso and Stephen Pitkin recorded Work and Love in the spring of 2014, as the ice was breaking on Lake Ontario. They deserted their families and holed up in the Tragically Hip’s Bathhouse studio, scarcely emerging – waking and playing and playing and playing, one song a day.
The magic usually happened some time after midnight, when they were “just tired enough.” Blurton would come out and lure them into a new place: a different, even truer landscape.
Tickets are available online at cvw.tickit.ca/ and at the door, while supplies last. Doors open at 9 p.m.