Globe and Mail - Friday March 17, 2006

Many flavours of jam

BRAD WHEELER

As long as the creeks don't rise, the Sunparlour Players perform every Wednesday night at the Tranzac. They're not your average blues-rock duo -- they're not your average anything.

The bearded singer-guitarist presents as a young Garth Hudson, in an old dark suit with no shoes (so as to better manipulate an organ pedal board). He sings about family, farm work and not wanting to die, and he exerts himself to a sweaty shade of purple-red as he howls. He is 28-year-old Andrew Penner; he is polite; he is Mennonite; and during the day he shines shoes beneath the Royal York Hotel.

Penner uses another foot to stomp a bass-drum pedal, as does his partner, a darker, angular fellow who plays percussion, a Rickenbacker bass and a xylophone -- at times, simultaneously. He wears red Converse sneakers with an old pinstriped suit and a porkpie hat. He is 29-year-old Mark Schachowskoy; he is polite; he is Mennonite; and a genetic scientist by trade.

The pair gets up to all sorts of things, mixing up drone blues and straight-line new-wave rhythms. Some of it sounds like a hillbilly version of U2 -- as if the Irish band were stranded in a mountain cave, and Bono devoured the Edge and half the rhythm section to survive.

Penner, whether on banjo or a resonator steel guitar, is a generous performer. There is a gospel-revival-tent energy in the small pub-like front room. (It's a mixed crowd of university students and older music fans).

It's getting near 11 p.m., so time for a set break, which gives everybody a chance to breath regularly again. A hat is passed for the Players, and there's also a sweepstakes for a prize of homemade jam (red onion and basil) and mustard (Ukrainian). A Mennonite upbringing instilled a pride for preserving foods, according to Penner, the son of an Essex County farmer.

"We started raffling them off because we thought it'd be fun to have something to sell at shows beside our EP," he says, referring to the duo's five-song CD Alive at the Tranzac. And also, "We don't have any T-shirts yet."

The two men have known each other most of their lives, since the age of 5 when they were Sunday-school chums in the Ontario township of Mersea, down Windsor way. They took separate paths after high school, but recently hooked up again in Toronto. They'd played in different groups over the years (hard rock and metal bands), but have found a rural, primal groove as a duo.

"We just tried to see how big we could get with two people," Penner explains. "Whenever you have several instruments that you play at the same time, it makes you simplify what you're playing."

In May, the band expects to release its first full-length album (Hymns for the Happy). Until then, they'll play at the Tranzac, where they draw full rooms of fans attracted to huge, honest music performed full bore.

"With a lot of the songs we play, you need to go to a place," says Penner. "You can't go halfway with it.

"I guess what we're trying to do is just grab people by throat, and say 'Come on along with us for a little while. It's going to be fun, and we think you're going to be happy when you're done with us.' "

The Sunparlour Players play the Tranzac every Wednesday, 10 p.m., through April. Pay what you will. 292 Brunswick Ave., 416-923-8137.