Daily PANAMANIA Tip Sheet: Raoul and the Big Time

You know what's world-class? PANAMANIA's music festival programming. Here's our guide to the must-see free music shows of the day, every day, during the fest.

By Kelli Korducki

You know what’s world-class? PANAMANIA’s music festival programming. Here’s our guide to the must-see free music shows of the day, every day, during the fest.

Today’s PANAMANIA showcase is all about Canadian talent. But, in a mix of largely straightforward singer-songwriter offerings, Ottawa-bred, Toronto-based actor-musician Raoul Bhaneja and his crew of old-timey accompanists stand out. Throwbacks in a zoot-suit-and-fedora kind of way, theirs are the sorts of anachronistically wallowing blues tunes that wind up being counterintuitively satisfying, maybe because they appeal to our most self-indulgent—and thus, most honest—selves. “My wife done left me/ Told the kids that I am dead” is an actual lyric in this group’s songbook, and perhaps one that you can expect to hear tonight. That’s endorsement enough for us though, if we’re being honest, any band that prominently features the slappity-thump of an upright bass gets our thumbs-up.