If you’re the glass half-empty type, it only takes a glance around to see that we’re in bad times.  Ecologically, financially, politically and socially, there’s a lot of fodder for thought, protest, and despair.  And yet I feel hope.  I look around at the world, I watch video of Pete Seeger at Occupy Wall Street singing ‘We Shall Overcome,’ I see people giving each other a hand up when they’ve stumbled, I see people taking the time to make things with their own hands instead of feeding the corporate greed.  And I hear a lot of really, really good music.

We’re just weeks away from the Canadian Folk Music Awards, and this year I’ll be taking part as the host of a workshop called ‘Good songs for Bad times’ with fabulous artists Dave Gunning, Evalyn Perry, and Melissande.

Featuring performers from diverse musical styles and backgrounds, we’ve got one brief hour to talk about the Good songs they’ve written during or about Bad times. You can join us at 1pm on Sunday, December 4 in Alumni Hall in the Victoria College Building at the University of Toronto. Tickets for the workshops are $15, or in combination with your Gala ticket, $50, and you can purchase them here.

I’ll be at the Gala as well, presenting the award for Contemporary Album of the Year – you can watch the live broadcast Sunday, December 4 at Roots Music Canada.

Lastly, I have the honour of being nominated for the CFMA’s 2011 Unsung Hero Award, which is a pretty nice thing.

Would you like to learn more about the artists who’ll be taking part in the Good Songs for Bad Times workshop?

Evalyn Perry

Called “equally funny and dangerous” by CBC Radio, award-winning songwriter, poet and ironic social commentator evalyn parry is gifted with a sharp pen, a quirky musical sensibility and a wicked sense of humour. From 19th century cycling heroines to 21st century sailors; from “feminine protection” to bottled water to the quest for the Northwest Passage, evalyn’s outspoken creations hold out a powerful vision of social and personal change, while her irreverent wit holds nothing sacred.  Fierce, funny, poignant and provocative, over the past decade parry has toured music, storytelling, pride, poetry and theatre festivals across the continent, taking her unique perspective on the world and transforming it into art that spans genres, genders and generations.

Melisande

Sultry in both official languages, Melisande holds her audience in the palm of her hand throughout her performances.  While Quebecois traditional music has a strong place in her life, she embraces a diverse range of influences and styles, blending them like a well-seasoned soup into songs with broad appeal, deftly delivered.  On stage, her presence is warm, engaging, and energetic, a performance which doesn’t stop merely at delivering songs – she engages the listener in a tacit dialogue.

Dave Gunning

Firmly rooted in the East Coast tradition of songwriting that hearkens back to the traditional music of the region, Dave Gunning blends the past and the present in songs that feel as familiar and welcome as a beloved and well-worn sweater on a cold day.  As accolades pour in, Gunning stays true to himself, his songwriting never swayed by concerns about marketing or genre – he writes what he’s prompted to write, and allows those songs to stand on their own.  Finding inspiration and motivation in the people and stories he knows, Gunning’s works often speaks of hard times and bleak days, but never leaves the listener without the sense that all is not lost; the next day might dawn brighter.

You can join us at 1pm on Sunday, December 4 in Alumni Hall in the Victoria College Building at the University of Toronto. Tickets for the workshops are $15, or in combination with your Gala ticket, $50, and you can purchase them here.

I always feel a bit gormless for a while after the festival, not really sure what to do with myself and not terribly focused.  After a year of planning, of having my schedule revolve around the festival, the weekend itself goes by so quickly that it seems like I missed it.  Can we go back? Can we slow and stop time so that I can talk to a few more people, hear a few more acts, get a few more things done?

It’s also a relief, I won’t lie – we pulled it off, another great year, and while our ambition always outstrips our abilities, it’s impossible to doubt that this was one of the best years of the festival in memory.  Some years it rains, some years technical things go wrong or acts don’t live up to your expectation or volunteers flake out and don’t pull their weight.  This year, the weather was lovely, the events ran so smoothly that it felt weird, the musicians were terrific, and our Coordinators were on their game.  Everyone was happy, great to work with, and responsible.  It was, in a word, charmed.  Lots of work, still, but work where the payoff was a great festival.

It’s bittersweet for me, because this is my last year as Executive Director of the festival. I wear multiple hats, so I’ll still be involved – most notably as Artistic Director for one more year – but for the past five years, I’ve had the opportunity to shape the vision of the festival, to lead a great team of committed, pleasant, and talented people towards a festival that embraces a wider audience and that has a growing reputation in Canada.  It’s both difficult and exciting to let that go. I’m not sure what my life is like without the festival at the centre of it.

I first volunteered for the festival as a parking attendant in the late nineties.  Later, I came on board as the Coordinator for the Artisans Village, and after a break, as the Coordinator for the Club Crawl.  Watching Aengus Finnan and crew as the Shelter Valley Folk Festival took shape, I got a lot of ideas about how we could change our festival to be better, and I put my name forward as Director.  I remember the feeling of panic and fear when the AGM was over and I’d been voted in; I’d never done anything like this, never put myself forward for anything this big, and I wasn’t certain I could pull it off.

I remember PFF 2007 like it was a dream; it still seems like a shining moment to me, mostly because of the stellar lineup and the euphoria of everyone on our team over making it work.  It hasn’t ever felt quite like that again – every year has been different, but that one was striking because so many of the Coordinators and the Board were new, and the look in in everyone’s eyes when the festival was over was one of wonder and excitement. And exhaustion.

We’ve made a lot of changes to the festival since then, dropped things that weren’t working, added things that seemed to be missing, and worked hard every year to make sure this is the best festival we can present.  Despite being one of the lowest-funded folk festivals in Ontario and probably Canada (mostly because we’re one of the last free folk festivals in Canada), we put on a great show and this year, over 10,000 people came out and enjoyed it.

That’s not to say that getting here has been easy; honestly, I can say that there’s been hard times throughout my run as a festival volunteer (the PFF has no paid Staff).  Lots of times I’ve been angry or stressed beyond what I thought I could bear.  I’ve heard things about myself through the grapevine that have been heart-breaking in their misunderstanding of my intentions.  I’ve had people I considered friends do things that were painful and upsetting, and I’ve seen enough unprofessional behaviour for a lifetime.

The goal has always been to raise the bar for arts and events in this area.  Peterborough has great energy, good artists, and a wellspring of ideas, but they’re stifled by lack of confidence and professional rigour.  They’re willing to accept low pay, poor performing conditions, and little respect because they don’t have the confidence to try harder and ask for more.  People don’t like being challenged on this; it’s been the status quo for so long, and habit and familiarity has made it difficult to combat.  I feel that it’s getting better, and I think the festival has had a strong impact on that by bringing in great emerging artists from across the country.  These acts are new, but they rehearse, write, perform, and approach the business of music with a professionalism that belies their short time in the business.  They bring musical sounds and influences from other cultures and scenes, and hopefully inspire local artists to add new sounds and ideas to their own repertoires.

I’m proud of this, and I’ll continue to be proud of this.  I’m proud of all of the work we’ve done with the festival over the past five years.  And I’m excited for the future – both to see what my life is like when the festival is no longer the centre of my year, and to see what is accomplished with the festival in the future.

This year marks a change; a change in personnel, a change where five years of strategizing and planning have paid off, and now it’s time to think ahead another five years, and to bring in fresh minds and ideas.  This festival exists only because so many volunteers are so willing to give up their own time to make a dream happen – the idea that a community can come together without boundaries, without huge corporate sponsors, in the spirit of local multi-generational celebration and cooperation to create an event that is uniquely Peterborough in its shape even while it welcomes people from beyond our city.  The idea that you can run a professional urban folk festival where a friendly, relaxed atmosphere pervades everything.

It’s exciting and satisfying, and I can’t think of a better way to have spent my time over the past 5 years than to help make this happen.

I had a variety of reactions to that, from ‘Pssht, get over it,’ to ‘No, seriously dude: get over it.’ I know Hip-Hop and Rap have a low reputation amongst the Folk community, though I’d underestimated how reactionary and unwelcoming some people would be.  I don’t have much patience with people who write off a whole genre of music, especially those who haven’t really given it a listen.  You may hear that all Rap is about violence, drugs, and hos,* but if you actually like, listen to it, you’ll find that even when that imagery is in heavy use, there’s a lot of other stuff going on. “Rap music is the continuation of the Folk tradition,” I’d say, generally to raised eyebrows and shaking heads.

Which is why, watching one of last week’s episodes of The Colbert Report, I was so excited by and exchange between Stephen Colbert and Talib Kweli that I leapt up and danced around punching the air for a couple of minutes. You can watch the exchange (in Canada) by clicking here, but I’ve transcribed it:

Colbert “What is Rap, really?”

Kweli “Rap and… Hip-Hop… is a vehicle, it’s a tool for expression, and it’s more Folk music than Folk music actually is, because it’s speaking – ”

Colbert “It’s more Folk than Folk?”

Kweli “That’s right – because it’s speaking the language of regular folk. Y’know what I’m saying? When Folk music got popular, it’s ’cause it was stripped down,  it was in the language of what people actually said; and that’s what hip-hop does very well.”

There are plenty of Folk artists currently writing and performing whom I quite like, and whose music I find relevant, but as a whole, the Folk music scene can be a toothless, bland beast malingering on the opposite side of the politics it once espoused. It’s not really anyone’s fault; there are a lot of babyboomers in the Folk scene, and they got old.  Nostalgia has overruled their sense; Stephen Harper can plonk out ‘Imagine’ ’till the cows come home, but I like to ‘imagine’ John Lennon spitting in his face while he does.

Folk music had a lot to say, once, and was powerful in its delivery, but that was more than 30 years ago, before I was even born.  Folk music now has lost its power by avoiding politics and focusing on romance or the supposed simplicity of an earlier time, a nostalgia for things that never existed.  When it does deal with social or political subject matter, it’s often the politics of the 60s, or too preachy, simplistic, and heavy-handed for most audiences.  When I want to hear about things that are relevant to my life and the world I see around me right now, I turn to Rap and Hip-Hop.  Because the torch that Folk let fall has been picked up by the rappers and DJs; they’re talking about people struggling to survive in a hostile environment, about how they and their families and friends respond to social injustice, racism, and hard financial realities.

Folk music was the music of poor people, people who lived close to the means of production, who earned their meagre pay by mining or farming or rough, physical labour and yearned for a day when things would be more equal.**  The reality these days is that the working poor are in call centres and bargain stores, a time when being poor means you’ve never been to a farm or had the opportunity to grow or make something tangible with your own two hands.*** The wheel has turned quickly; the sympathy of the people isn’t with unions – which are pretty well seen as rich fat-cats and corrupt representatives that protect the upper middle-class at the expense of quality and fairness – or with the issues of the past.  It’s with the rise of a relatively-unprotected, urban existence, where the difference between making rent this month and living in serious debt is largely outside of your control in an almost Dickensian way.

Rap and Hip-Hop are as much a comment on and a protest against these conditions as they are a celebration of getting out of them.  And when you listen to what have been classed as ‘Conscious‘ rappers, you hear progressive views on community, equality, social justice and protest that seem to be the direct inheritors of the folk movement – or perhaps, more than inheritors, because they have raised some pretty rudimentary ideas up into adulthood.  There aren’t so many of those easy slogans or simple answers that Folk music has often fallen back on; the politics are complicated.  As a Feminist and someone who leans towards pacifism, I find the sexism and violence in some rap music problematic, but it doesn’t keep me away from the genre, nor does it change the fact that some truly great artists are people whose views I don’t share.

After Shad K performed at the Peterborough Folk Festival in 2008, I had people from all walks of life, ranging in age from their twenties to sixties, come up to me and with wonder in their faces tell me that they had no idea they could like Rap music.  It’s one of those rare victories that I’ve savoured ever since; tuning other people in to the amazing and important work being created by Rappers and Hip-Hop artists is a pleasure and a privilege.  And when you open your ears to something new, you might find yourself more familiar with the feeling of community, struggle and and passion than you’d have imagined.

*The word is used to illustrate opinions,with all respect. Do your thing, ladies.

**I have thoughts about how the middle class of the 60s romanticized poverty and the “simple life” much like the French aristocracy did in the 1700s, but that’s a topic for another day.

***Being able to afford chickens and have a yard where I can keep them, and grow vegetables, is a privilege I’m aware of; I have a complicated relationship with the urban homesteading trend, because I’m reasonably certain that this back-to-the-earth stuff is aristocrats playing at being milkmaids.  I can’t shake that sense of romance myself, but I do know that it’s pretty well bourgeoisie bullshit.

This is my fourth year as Artistic Director and Executive Director for the festival. I first volunteered for the festival in the late nineties, when I got stuck as a parking attendant for hours without water or any clear sense of what I was supposed to be doing.  Since then, I’ve coordinated Healing Arts and the Club Crawl, eventually taking on the positions I’m in now.

The festival is run by a small, dedicated, and hard-working group of volunteers, many of whom have been with the festival for years and work, month after month, year-round to bring together three great days in late August.  We’ve made a lot of changes to the festival in the past 4 years, changes I’m very proud of because they’ve made the festival infinitely better, and infinitely easier to run.  We’ve tightened up, planned carefully, and created a strong foundation for considered growth.  But change always angers people, especially when they see it as negatively impacting themselves.

Last year, when I proposed that we cut the Club Crawl, it was not the first time I’d argued that it was a waste of effort that reflected poorly on the festival as a whole.  Originally conceived as a fundraiser for the festival, the Club Crawl rarely worked as such, generally losing money despite our best efforts.  In my opinion, it was a clusterfuck; paying artists a pittance to play in venues unsuited for live music, running technicians ragged as they dealt with jury-rigged gear and practically no switch-over time.  Venue owners didn’t feel they were getting a good deal, either, and as a result, often dropped out or screwed us in some way at the last minute.  The final straw, for me, was when one of our funders praised the festival as a whole but suggested in strong terms that the Club Crawl didn’t live up to the standards they expected as a baseline for paid, professional artists.  I agreed, and either argued persuasively to the Board of Directors or just browbeat them (they may want to comment on which) into axing the Club Crawl for 2009.

I have to admit I was completely taken off guard by the anger from several local artists.  What I saw as a shitty gig or tokenism they (I guess) saw as inclusion. And I’m sorry they felt that way; it reflects poorly on local audiences and venues that a $50 gig with no real soundcheck is considered okay for a skilled artist who’s been playing for years.  I know it’s a lot harder to get into the festival now than it was in the past, because there are fewer slots.  But I think it’s important for any publicly-funded arts organization to treat artists with respect, and part of that respect is to create opportunities that operate at a professional standard – decent pay, decent playing conditions.  Another facet of that respect is to set the bar high and encourage the community to reach it.

My philosophy for booking has always pretty much been the same, from my very earliest days as a promoter, through my MoHo days, to now.  I book great professional artists who are good to work with, and I pay them as well as I can and ensure they work in decent conditions.  My resources are limited and I’m bound by the conditions of my funders, and this means that, if I’m going to follow my own ethical code, I book fewer artists, but better gigs, than we’ve done in the past.

In addition, we receive funding from the terrific Arts Presentation Canada program, run by the Federal government, whose purpose is to increase diversity at festivals, and who stipulate that their funding should be used to book artists from out-of-province as well as emerging and culturally diverse acts.  I see this as an opportunity to introduce Peterborough artists and audiences to the sounds and ideas that are happening across the country, but it also means that there are fewer slots for local artists than in the past.

I’m extremely lucky because I book a free festival, so I don’t have to worry about a draw – every year, 7000-9000 people come regardless of who’s playing.  Personally, I prefer to support emerging acts in any case, and I really don’t like the idea of blowing half or more of my artistic budget on the last two acts of the night.  But it also means that we miss out on those tasty admissions fees that can make up a third or more of a festival’s funding.  The idea of fencing off the festival area and charging admission has been bruited about, but none of the current Board are comfortable with the idea of changing 21 years of tradition in such a fundamental way – we like the festival free and accessible.  So we do our best with the funding we receive, and I think we do a pretty damned good job.

There are so many things I wish for the Peterborough Folk Festival - good god, how I’d love to expand and do three days in the park, to rebuild that concrete stage with a proper proscenium and offices and dry storage underneath,  and re-terrace the hill.  How I’d love for us to own our own sound gear, to build some permanent platforms in the park, and to do weekly concerts throughout the Summer and a Winter series.  I want to draw in the communities of new Canadians in Peterborough and become relevant to them, and I’d like to see more participatory workshops where our audience get to learn how to do things.  I want to see fewer and fewer cars in the parking area, and more and more people arrive on foot or via transit/canoe/bicycle. I want to see an increasingly diverse crowd of people enjoying the kind of music they can’t hear anywhere else in the City.

My dreams always outstrip my abilities, and our finances.  I am constantly disappointed by what I was not able to achieve in any given year.  But by consistently setting the bar higher for ourselves, we reach a little higher every year, and do better.  It’s hard work, but I think we can’t ask any less of ourselves than we ask of our community.  And I think that, if we don’t ask for high standards from our community, we tacitly encourage unprofessional-ism and sloppy work.

Join us, August 27 – 29, 2010, as we try to reach a little higher than we have before; there will be mistakes, absolutely, and things that don’t quite make the grade.  But there’s a spirit of sweetness, or openness, and a sense of community that you won’t find elsewhere.  Moments of beauty that you can share with friends and family, great music, delicious food, and fabulous crafts.  For all the heartache I’ve occasionally felt over the PFF, the end is always worth it.

This year I intend to step down at Executive Director of the Peterborough Folk Festival; if you’re interested in the job (it’s primarily a volunteer position, involving grant writing and administrative work, but comes with a small honourarium), you can get in touch with me and we’ll talk about it.

I am continuing, as I had planned, as Artistic Director, and stepping down as Executive Director.  Partially for continuity, and to be there in a mentoring role to whomever becomes ED, and partially because I really love being involved with the festival, and the things I’ve always dreamed of doing will be possible if I’m freed up in other areas.  Also because I’ve already started booking acts for next year.

Raging Asian Women were the runaway success; they’re  incredible, and wonderful, gracious people who completely get the festival and the spirit of the event and enhanced it by their presence.  Unity were also amazing; I wish the weather had been better before their set, as more people ought to have heard them, but the first song in particular was freakin’ crazy-good. David Newland soldiered on throughout the entire weekend, inspiring and enlightening wherever he went.  David Simard is always a treat to be around, and his music is gorgeous.  Sheesham and Lotus were fabulous evening hosts, and put on a terrific set (as attested by their CD sales, which were through the roof).   Elliott Brood were brilliant, and the perfect end to the evening, and the super-sweetest guys on earth to work with.

But I’ve been telling people that music is a part of the festival, not the point of the festival, and trying to impress on anyone I talk to about it that the whole point is to work with decent people and create a community spirit that everyone can carry away with them into their real lives.  There are too many good bands out there; I don’t ever need to book assholes, people who are going to be dicks to my sound techs, my volunteers, my hosts, my audience or me.  This is a community festival, not a music festival; this is not one of those horrible, insane events where 20-somethings are herded like cattle into enclosed spaces, charged exorbitant rates for water and food, and sponsors decide and brand every aspect.  This is the sort of festival where you can spread out a blanket on the hill, alone, with friends, or with your family, listen to music you don’t hear every day, soak up some sun and see people in your community out doing the same thing.   The music is what brings people to the park, but what sets our festival apart from anything else in the County is the sense of the broader community.

And when I say ‘community festival,’ I don’t mean that I only book bands who are from the community (which is not the festival’s mandate, and if I did book only local bands I’d lose 1/3 of our funding), but bands that serve the event in some way – by exposing our community to new sounds and ideas, by celebrating diversity, by cracking open doors to musical styles and genres that you don’t otherwise hear, by presenting music you’d never listen to on your own in a setting without risk or judgment.  My goal is to bring together people from all over our community in an inclusive space where no-one feels like they don’t belong, where everyone is welcome; free, accessible, comfortable, easy-going, and lovely.  I want everyone to see something of themselves reflected on the stage, and everyone to see something completely outside of their experience.

This is the first year where I feel that we’ve really made significant moves towards that vision; I’ve always been proud of the work we’ve done, but this year it seems like we’ve finally found the right format for the festival that will make it possible to achieve that dream.  We’ve got a long way to go, and a million tiny kinks to work out, but I am so proud of the grace and patience and quiet strength of our volunteers, especially our Board of Directors, of the talent, ability and friendliness of the musicians that joined us this year, and the open minds and hearts of the people who joined us in the audience.

Our community: much bigger and more interesting than a scene or a genre.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

I mean, the general public have very little criticism; last year I could barely move ten feet without being slapped on the back and told that it was the best PFF ever. The only post-festival complaint I heard was that the t-shirts didn’t have the year on them (we’re remedying that this year!).

But the whole summer had been a barrage of anger from ex-Board members, who hated that we were adding a beer tent and hated that we were moving the festival to Saturday. I couldn’t understand it at the time – I mean, some of these people had campaigned for a beer tent when they were on the Board, and the change of day just seemed like common sense, from a promotions standpoint.

This year I’m getting a lot of anger from musicians who didn’t get booked; like, a really disproportionate amount of anger. We don’t pay all that well (I do my best with the funds I have), we’re not super high-profile. We’re one of the smallest-budget festivals in Ontario. Our audience is almost entirely drawn from people in this County. I was having a hard time piecing together where the rage was coming from.

Some claim that they’re angry because I’m not booking enough local acts, but a glance at my lineup this year reveals, if anything, too many local acts, or acts with local ties (it’s awesome though – seriously – but I might be in trouble with one of my funders if I’m not careful). I generally book about 50% local, but this year it’s a lot higher.
I’ve also had a few out-of-towners rage at me.

But, in thinking about it, and talking to people about it, it seems pretty clear that the anger, the vitriol, are all coming out of the success of the festival. It’s artistically better, more beautiful, better-attended, better organized, more fun, and higher-profile than ever before. I’ve worked on the festival for a long time, and I’ve never heard anything more than the occasional grumble from bands who didn’t get booked until the last couple of years. Nothing like this.

But then, you don’t get angry about not getting booked for an okay, mediocre or shitty gig. We’ve made the festival a good thing, and as a result, people get pissed off when they don’t get in.

So, crazy as it is, I’m going to take every bitchy thing that’s said about me or the Board or the festival by a musician as a testimony to our success. Because if they didn’t care about whether or not they got in, I wouldn’t be doing my job.

This girl is not coming to this show.

Over at the Ptbo Canada blog, there’s a discussion about a poster put up by a local bar promoting cheap beer on Tuesdays.  It says “Cheap jugs” and features a close-up shot of a well-endowed woman’s cleavage. The discussion centres on whether or not the sexist image is too far over the line, and I have to admit that I don’t think it is (it is totally sexist and only like, grade school funny, but that’s beside the point). But as a promotion for the bar, it’s seriously weak.

As a promoter, my goal is usually to fill a venue.  And my equation is simple (and sexist! I know!). And I’m going to share it with you right now.

Men (straight or gay) go to venues where there are women.  Women (straight or gay) go to venues where there are women.  Therefor, successfully promoting to women is key to successfully promoting a venue.

Lots of people are going to argue with me on that; you can fill a room with dudes, certainly.  But further to that, I’d add another equation.

Straight dudes buy drinks to give themselves the courage to offer to buy drinks for women. Therefor, women at a venue = more bar sales.

I’m working on experiential data here, not any sort of scientific study, but I think I’m probably right in a very simplified way (there are lots of other reasons straight dudes buy drinks, like working up the courage to talk to women, working up the courage to dance with women, and because they’re alcoholics). A good night at a bar is high bar sales and not too many rowdies.

Posters that feature skimpily-clad ladies don’t attract women to shows, and I’ll tell you why: it’s usually a dead giveaway that the people attending the show are all straight males, probably in their very early twenties.  And who the fuck wants to go to that show? I read a poster like that to mean that there’s going to be like, a bunch of idiots, certainly, and probably at least one drunken fight that no one could really explain the cause of.  It’ll be boring and irritating and you’ll get groped. Most people will arrive drunk already, and some asshole will start moshing (go start a fight club or something, kiddo). However good the band might be, chances are the night will still be bad because of the crowd.

Sure, not everyone consciously reads the poster that way, but that’s the message it sends.

And when I read “Cheap jugs, Tuesdays” plastered over a photo of a woman’s breasts, I translate that to ‘Lonely broke losers who don’t know how to talk to women and have, at best, a really sketchy idea of what women are like hang out in our bar on Tuesdays!’ and I think ‘Thanks for the warning! I’ll go somewhere else!’

Am I making a lot of generalizations in this post? Sure am.  This is not the most nuanced or subtle analysis of promotions I could write, but I think I’m making my point: if this is your tactic for attracting people to your venue, you’re probably failing.

Read on for things you can do to avoid being that jerk I use as an example and never book again (or in the first place).

1. Many talent buyers are also artists.

Very few children grow up thinking “When I’m older, I want to be a Talent Buyer!”  In fact, the talent buyers I know are also musicians, graphic designers, musicians, photographers, musicians, painters, musicians, and  hackers.  Don’t come at them with the attitude that they don’t understand what you do or that you, as the ‘talent,’ are somehow superior to them.  It’s better if you behave as though you’re dealing with a peer, no matter what your general assumptions about talent buyers are.

2.  One phone call, one email.

If you find yourself calling again without a reply to your previous call to pitch yourself, it’s because I get a lot of these calls/email and I don’t have time to repond.  It’s not because I missed your message or email.  I get tonnes of messages every week, and people who email/phone repeatedly to hassle me for gigs compound the problem.  When I want to book you, I’ll get in touch.

3.  Rejection doesn’t mean that you suck.

I can’t say this enough: 850 submissions this year, 25 slots.  My short list was 150.  The final decision can be a painful process of whittling away very good acts I really want based on who I’ve already got, and when it gets down to the final choices, it’s a matter of very excellent band vs. very excellent band.  Not getting booked may come down to a million factors that have nothing to do with your talent.

4.  I pay what I can pay, and my budget is largely out of my control.

Whether I’ve been booking for a bar or the festival, the money I’ve got is all I’ve got.  I’m not trying to cheat bands out of money, and I don’t have a secret reserve hidden away somewhere.  Last year after booking the festival, I came in $50 under budget, which went to something else we needed to spend money on.  I also run a free festival, and don’t have to worry about ticket sales, so I’m not blowing half the budget on one headliner; everyone gets paid within a reasonable range of each other.

5.  It’s a business, and if you don’t like business, you don’t have to be in it.

I hear people complain all the time that they don’t like writing bios, selling themselves, etc. – the whole ‘I just wanna be an artist, man!’ schtick.  And that’s cool.  If you want to play music in your mom’s basement for your cat and your significant other, go ahead.  People who want to get paid for gigs have to work at the business side, and spend as much or more time on that than on rehearsing and playing and writing and recording.

6.  I didn’t just fall off of a potato truck.

In fact, I’ve been doing this longer than many of you have been in bands.  So any line you feed me I’ve heard about a million times, and any tactic you take I’ve seen played as many.    Be calm, be polite, and be professional.  And for chrissakes, don’t be ‘cool.’  The respect of a peer plays better  than what comes across as the disdain of an idiot.

7.  I book acts, not buddies or boyfriends.

I’m not Paris Hilton; this is not a competition to be my BFF.  Becoming my new best friend at a conference or a bar (or god knows, on Facebook) doesn’t mean I’m going to hire your band.  And it doesn’t matter how cute you are.
If you’re a friend and I don’t book you, it’s not necessarily because you suck.   See point #3.  Most of my friends are musicians, and I can’t very well book all of you, because then I’d be one of those nepotistic jerks.

8. No one is entitled to a gig.

Played in this community for twenty years?  Been booked by every promoter in town except me?  The most brilliant genius of our time? Spent a year caring for lepers?  Help old ladies across the street?  Good for you.  I don’t care.  If you aren’t what I’m looking for musically, I’m not going to book you.  I have a responsibility to my audiences, my staff, my venues and my funders to book appropriately, and I’ve got my professional reputation to consider as well.  If every other promoter jumps off a bridge, I’m not going to follow. Also, see point #3.

9.  Always be nice/polite/respectful to staff and volunteers.

When you walk into a venue for the first time, you have no idea what the dynamic is or who people are.  Be respectful; the woman in the pushup bra working merch might also be the promoter, and the frazzled guy with the ripped jeans might be the AD. And if you’re a jerk to any of my volunteers or staff (seriously, that kind of behaviour enrages me), you’re not coming back, and everyone I know is going to hear about it.  I know you don’t think being nice is very rock’n'roll, but word gets ’round.

10.  If you want to know why I didn’t book you, guess or make something up.  Don’t phone/email.

I don’t have time to tell every one of the 825 bands I rejected this year why they didn’t make the cut.  I get a lot of passive-aggressive and sulky messages from artists or their agents every year when I hit ‘Not Accepted;’ don’t make yourself memorable because you were a sore loser.  It’s not going to recommend you for next year.

Ah, and here’s a bonus:

11.  If you know me, and you’re thinking of sending a jokey email or something about how you do some of these things, stop yourself.

There’s y’know, no point.  If I like you, it’s going to make me uncomfortable, and if I dislike you, it’s not going to help.

When I was 13 or so, miserable, the least-cool kid in the village where I grew up, I was a super-huge fan of Jordan Knight and the New Kids on the Block.  I had the requisite t-shirt, the wall covered with photos carefully ripped from the pages of Tiger Beat, and the Barbie Doll.  I knew every word to every song.  I had the Hangin’ Tough: Live in LA video, and we used to spend hours in the living room watching it and mimicking the dance moves.   My sisters and I can probably still pull some of it off.  In high school it became completely lame to like the New Kids, and I had pretty much worn out my ears on them, so while I still in theory liked them, I moved on with everyone else I knew to Pearl Jam and Cat Stevens (I went to an arts high school, so Cat Stevens was mandatory).

But going back to 13-year-old me, I want to highlight something.  I wanted to meet Jordan Knight so badly.  I had never wanted anything so badly, and possibly have never spent as many years wanting anything so much in my life.  Even though I knew if I met him I’d probably be paralyzed with nerves and have absolutely nothing to say, I still wanted it with a desire that was beyond my power to understand or control.  It wasn’t a sexual thing, though I did have a big crush on him.  It was just a longing that informed much of who I was for a couple of years, a focused intensity.

Jordan Knight at the Trash (photo Sam Tweedle)

So there I am, 15 years later, working as an arts administrator in Peterborough, an established artist and music professional in my own right, and the promoter tells me that Jordan Knight’s coming to town.  And for all of my practiced calm, my cool collectedness, there was a flutter in my heart that I tried hard to tamp down.  I told myself that I was excited ironically, like the cool kids, and that $20 was a small price to pay for that most delicious of mockable delights: the has-been.

I also asked the promoter if he was in his right mind;  I mean, Christ, the Red Dog?  Don’t get me wrong; I’ve spent loads of evenings at the Red Dog, and before my time it was a seminal Peterborough venue, but right now it looks more like a country bar than anything else, and some of the sound equipment had a distinct ‘too many beers have been dropped on this gear’ sound.  I couldn’t imagine this former pop prince hopping and strutting around on the Red Dog stage.  In the weeks prior to the show, there was some malarkey and both the venue and the promoter changed: we were heading to the Trash.

On the evening of the show, Sam and I headed over to the bar.  Sam had gotten a hold of Jordan’s people, and though he was still in the early-days nervousness of being a professional writer and interviewer, he’d secured their permission for a short interview after the show.  We were both giddy.  The room started to fill; there were ten guys and about 200 girls, lots of NKOTB t-shirts, lots of of pretending we were here because we thought it was funny and not because OMG JORDAN KNIGHT!!11!!

The opener was some light hip-hop act, good-looking but completely forgettable, and then Jordan Knight came onstage, and the whole place went slightly bananas.  Everyone there knew every lyric (often better than Jordan did); everyone was transported back to that time, when we were all kids and all in love with NKOTB.  Jordan… well, he was alright.  He was off-key a fair amount, and was singing mostly to backup tracks with a DJ occasionally pumping up the crowd a little bit.  He had relatively little charisma, seemed lost without a script, and his dancing was probably not as good as our living-room mimicry.  Somehow it didn’t matter.  None of us really thought that Jordan Knight was a particularly singular talent; it was a time in our lives that he symbolized more than anything.

When the show was over, Sam talked to his people, and we bypassed the line of fans waiting for their $50 autograph and 60 seconds of face-time, walked into the Blue Room and found ourselves sitting on bar stools with Jordan Knight.

Sam did his interview (read Part I, Part II); I made a couple of comments about my school-girl fandom (“Don’t call it a Barbie Doll.” he said with a laugh), and we took some photos, and then it was over and we walked out into the crisp night air on a giddy high.

Dudes! I am totally standing next to Jordan Knight!

What was said and who he is or isn’t wasn’t important to me then, nor is it now: I didn’t get an autograph, and wouldn’t even have a picture if it wasn’t for Sam.  But over the coming weeks it began to occur to me that when I was 13, seeing the New Kids in concert was as likely as going to the moon, nevermind meeting Jordan Knight or him playing Peterborough or getting to sit down and talk to him.  And I realized that if that could happen, so could anything, and that in fact everything I’d ever wanted could be on a slow journey towards me, taking its time because the greater the distance between myself and the things wished for, the more time it’d take to get them to me.  If it took 15 years for fate to bring Jordan Knight to a bar 15 minutes from my house, then the job or the partner or the project I’d been longing for could be right around the corner, or at the very least on its way.

Yeah, it’s a small thing, and maybe a silly one, but the great revelations of our lives don’t always come in a solitary canoe on a still lake, or in the expectant hush of a great cathedral.  Sometimes they come because a fallen pop idol and a grown-up former fan cross paths in a slightly seedy student bar.  And my mind keeps returning to this moment, especially in times when I need hope that all the hard (and sometimes thankless) work will pay off and the goals I’m striving for are worthwhile and reachable, and I think about the distance between an American pop star at the height of his career and a 13-year-old in an Ontario village, and I believe that really, anything’s possible.

The key, I suppose, is to recognize your goals when you reach them and to still want them when you get there.  And I think I’ve got that part down.

The Juno Awards 2009

Though the Wiki page doesn’t discuss it, there’s been a fair amount of controversy over the Junos as long as I’ve been aware of them – what Canadian music junkie doesn’t know the story of Stompin’ Tom returning his 6 Junos in a garbage bag in protest at how little airplay Canadian musicians get in Canada?  And this year, the word in the music press and the general muttering online has been that this year’s nominees are embarrassing (and here’s what Matthew Good thinks).  Well, Canadians love to argue, and maybe we grouchily love the Junos for that reason – they provide a lot of fodder.

I was pretty stoked when I got a letter in October asking me to be a juror for the category ‘Roots and Traditional Album of the Year – Group.’  Ever since, at 15, I first really became aware of the great Canadian music that wasn’t getting played on the radio, I’ve wanted opportunities to bring all that great stuff to the ears of people all over the world.  Through my work at the MoHo and the Ptbo Folk Festival, I’ve had plenty of chances to present (and pay, which is always a treat) great artists, but an opportunity to judge the Junos means participating in the national conversation on a different level.

Stompin' Tom made a stand for Canadian music

While I agree that maybe Nickelback don’t deserve their 5 nominations and my dislike of Celine Dion is almost legendary, if you dig beyond those initial categories you’ll find some really great music, most of which you probably haven’t heard before unless you’re already dialed in (in which case you’ve been hearing about these musicians for a few years).  I wouldn’t say 2008 has been an amazing year in this regard, but even in a slowdown you find some crazy gems that get you all excited and remind you why you’re in this long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs.

The way the Juno process ran for me this year was like this:  After sending in my acceptance and agreement to keep my trap shut about judging until the process was done, I got a letter with my username and password for the Digital Media Distribution Service.  I log in, and find my category waiting for me.  35 albums or so, in full with band bios and photos.  I load up the albums to listen while I’m doing housework or making dinner, and pick my top ten for submission.  About a month after those get sent to CARAS, they figure out who the official nominees are, and send them back to me (and the other judges, I presume) for the final round of voting.  I rank the five nominees, and send that off to CARAS, job done.

I know 35 albums sounds like a lot, but consider that for the festival I’ll listen to approximately 800 artist submissions this year (though rarely more than one track of each, and it’s a nice break to get to deeply listen to a whole album).  It was pleasant to run into old favourites as well as artists I’d never heard of before who blew me away. My ten initial picks are below; I would’ve had a much easier time if I’d gotten to pick a top 15, because I know there are at least five more albums that I considered to be really, really good.  I guess you’ve got to cut it off somewhere, eh?

Twilight Hotel

The final 5 was a crazy-difficult decision; out of 5, 4 ended up being real favourites of mine.  I listened to the albums non-stop for a couple of days before ranking, and a couple of weeks of wembling over that ranking before  taking a deep breath and hitting ‘send.’  It’s a hard thing to weigh which is the best of any given group of really talented musicians, and added to that is the pressure of knowing what a boost a Juno award can be to record sales and a career.  And the Canadian music industry is a small one, so you know a lot about the people in it, whether you know them or not.  You have to strip away all that, and your personal knowledge of the bands, and your friendships, and just knuckle down to decide which album is the best.

If you’re curious, here’s my top ten, in alphabetical order:

Another Noon – John and Roy

NQ Arbuckle

Courting Stories: True Love and Treachery -  Skye Consort and Miranda Mulholland
Highway Prayer – Twilight Hotel
Hold On – The Sojourners
La Traverse Miraculeuse – Les Charbonniers de L’Enfers
Mountain Meadows – Elliott Brood
Ride – Hungry Hill
Sweet As the Grain – The John Henrys
Tradarnac – SWING
XOK – NQ Arbuckle

And the five official nominees are:

Congratulations to Chic Gamine, Winners of the 2009 Juno

Chic Gamine – Chic Gamine
Mountain Meadows – Elliott Brood
XOK – NQ Arbuckle
Highway Prayer – Twilight Hotel
Fast-Paced World – The Duhks

And no, I’m not going to say who my final votes were for, so don’t bother asking.  There’s no one on the two lists above who isn’t awesome, and who doesn’t deserve a listen (go buy their albums!  Go to their shows!).  Anyone who knows these artists knows that this is a high-quality group, and I can assure you that there were a lot of other fabulous artists that didn’t make it onto my short list.   Like everyone else, I’ll be watching with interest to see who gets the award this year.