Stories from the Edge of Music #53: THE BIGGEST MUSIC CONFERENCE OF THEM ALL

…and summer festivals take another hit

Yes, I know it’s been a couple of weeks since that music convention in Montreal, but it’s taken that long to recover. Put 2,500 musicians and music biz people in one hotel for five days, and give them a programme that starts at 10:30 in the morning, and finishes at 2:30 the next morning — total exhaustion sets in.

Here’s what I remember of it all — and some short items to make you smile, pass on some information, and keep you in the music loop.

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Buffalo Rose plays our hotel showcase room

WHAT YOU DISCOVER AT A “FOLK” MUSIC CONFERENCE

“Folk” covers pretty well everything except heavy metal, electronic dance music, classical, and disco.

There’s a real sense of community among folkies of every stripe.

This writer, in co-operation with Veronica Kütt, ran a private showcase room for three nights. (From 10:30 p.m. to 3:00 a.m.!)

And among the 26 artists we presented were a Dixieland jazz outfit from Montreal, a band from Trinidad (via Toronto), a rip-roaring Irish traditional group, a Nigerian songwriter, a Portuguese singer, a First Nations artist, a blues harmonica player, and a power rock singer (without her band). Not to mention a wide range of singer-songwriters from Victoria, Ottawa, London (UK), Austin, Toronto, Brooklyn, Whitehorse, Pittsburgh and Kingston, Ontario — and not one of them channelled the spirit or the sound of Joni Mitchell!

Our showcase, like close to 60 others, took place in a hotel bedroom on one of four different floors of the Sheraton Centre. Take out one the beds, add a few chairs, put up some signs and some fairy lights and you have an acoustic stage and a setting to entertain half a dozen people, or 30 folks packed into the room.

In our case, we served chips and cheezies and non-alcoholic beer — and nobody was much interested in any of it. Lesson learned for next time!

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From Nigeria, Kunlé

ARTISTS YOU SHOULD LOOK OUT FOR

Looking back — and you should check these folk out if they play anywhere near you — the highlights certainly included Buffalo Rose, a six-piece band from Pittsburgh with two joyfully entrancing women lead singers. Terra Spencer, a one-time funeral director, is a distinctive singer-songwriter with a great future. Kunlé, originally from Nigeria, was understated and totally engaging. Kåia Kater told an embarrassing story about me. She performed with a bass clarinet player and a bassist. She packed the room and she’s a future star.

Monet & Christian, a husband-and-wife duo who normally work on cruise ships, sang good original songs and were the best harmony singers I heard all weekend. Angela Saini is — in these difficult times — the sunniest, most optimistic of artists. And my friend Mariska Martina offered jazz-edged folk with confidence and real style.

MIP, from northern British Columbia

MIP — yes, that’s her name — normally fronts a power-rock trio of ear-splitting intensity, but revealed herself as a funny, quirky and likeable songwriter with performance chops to burn. And our three exhausting nights ended triumphantly and loudly with Shawn Hall, aka The Harpoonist, and Miss Emily, who is blessed with a blues-edged voice that could blister paint.

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A SENSE OF COMMUNITY

The fact that there were so many delegates hunkered down in the hotel in the middle of the biggest snow dump Montreal has seen in years made everyone seem, well, closer.

“Folk” artists, however you define the F word, are part of a vibrant community; everyone encourages each other, shares the successes and the disappointments.

There is none of the backbiting one finds in the classical world, or the isolation that pop music artists face. The jazz community seems splintered, and only the country artists, at least in Canada, seem part of a supportive family that faces many of the same problems folk people do.

Our American friends were rightly embarrassed and apologetic for the flatulent fool who is their dishonest president. It will be interesting to see how many Canadians will attend next year’s Folk Alliance event in New Orleans.

Trump started a trade war, threatens Canada’s very existence as a nation, and inspired a spirit of nationalism here that I’ve not seen since the sixties.

But the folk communities in both of our countries remain united.

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FESTIVALS IN TROUBLE

Canada’s summer music festivals — battered by the high cost of talent, continually rising infrastructure costs, blindsided by the disparity between the American and Canadian dollars, and always subject to the risk of rain — now face another hurdle.

A few days ago, the Toronto Dominion Bank announced that it was dropping its financial support of jazz festivals across the country. Vancouver and Ottawa festivals were cut last year, and now the Toronto and Calgary festivals have been defunded by the bank. Both festivals have announced severe programming reductions.

Would this have anything to do with the fact that the bank was fined $3 BILLION (US) in a historic money-laundering settlement?

The bank pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. after allowing drug cartels and other criminals to transfer hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit funds.

Festivals were not the only ones to feel the pain. The outgoing TD Bank CEO saw his annual salary severely reduced to a mere $1.4 million, 40 senior executives took pay cuts totalling $30 million, and there was a major shakeup on the bank’s board of directors.

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Ellen McIlwaine

QUICK REMINDERS FOR TORONTO READERS: TWO MOVIES FOR MUSIC FANS

This Sunday (March 9) at the Hot Docs Cinema at Bloor & Bathurst, don’t miss Goddess of Slide, a stunning documentary on the late great Canadian-American slide guitarist and singer Ellen McIlwaine.

This movie is a must-see for guitarists and, indeed, for all music fans. The movie is at 12:30 p.m., an unusual middle-of-the-day time for a movie.

A week later, at the same cinema (and at 12 noon on Sunday March 16) do NOT miss Summer of Soul with incredible live footage of Sly and the Family Stone, the Staple Singers, B.B. King, Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson and many, many others. In its way, this is as significant a music movie as was Woodstock.

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QUOTE OF THE WEEK: IT’S TARIFF TIME!

“Want to construct a clusterfuck? It’s easy. Start with the smoking rubble of a burned-out brain in steep cognitive decline. Add a dollop of acute megalomania. Pour in a generous amount of greed. Now add the impulse control of a coked-up squirrel. (And) toss in some ignorance, along with the inability to learn from mistakes, or even admit that mistakes were made.

“Now take that shitpile of defects, shake well, and bingo! you’ve ended up with Donny Convict’s completely incoherent tariff policies.” — Jeff Tiedrich, Everybody Is Entitled to My Own Opinion

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VIDEO LINK: SOMETHING VERY DIFFERENT

What I was a kid, I tried to play the trumpet. True fact: if your idol is Louis Armstrong, you are certain to fail. But what if you wanted to play classical music? Meet Alison Balsom, a virtuoso English trumpet star who is both articulate and enormously likeable. And, of course, blessed with musical chops to burn. I hope you’ll be as charmed and impressed as I was when I discovered this video:

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NEXT TIME: HERE’S WHAT TO LOOK FORWARD TO

First up next time, a classic road story. Also, the true tales of three first-rate musicians who quit the business. And a list of other Substacks you ought to follow.

Thanks to the recommendation of

Bill King

’s brilliant Substack,

The Sound & Reason

, more than 60 new subscribers signed up for Stories from the Edge of Music last month.

Three of them became paying subscribers. It would be nice if one or two more folk contributed to my $6 a day coffee addiction. (Oh, and still nothing behind a paywall!)