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A short list of women and gender non-conforming Canadian artists
ETA: Because this is awesome, we’re creating an accessible database for Trans folks, Non-Gender-Binary folks, and Women to add themselves and/or their bands so that bookers can find them. We launched it in Winter 2020; you can check it out here (and also add yourself or your band!). All of the artists in this short list are also in the database! ETA 2: When this post was originally published in Spring 2018 on our old website, it generated 138 replies from members of the community, listing more than 600 artists and bands. We’ve collected this information in the database above, and are looking for volunteer to help flesh out the…
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2017 Canadian Festival Report Card
The 2017 Festival Report Card is here! For the past twenty years, the music industry has seen its stages dominated by men in most genres and scenes. With the exceptions of the occasional women-focused festivals, like Lilith Fair, women have tended to see very little representation on stages, and nowhere is that more noticeable than at a festival, where sometimes hours can pass before a woman, a racialized person, or an LGBTQ, Two-Spirited, or Gender Non-Binary person walks on stage as a member of a band. With that in mind, we’ve been tallying up the numbers, and are presenting them below. We’d like to give a huge thank you to…
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Music City – A strategy
The points I’ve included below – headlined ‘A Strategy for Music Peterborough‘ – was created with my hometown in mind, but swap out a few names and organizations and this would be useful in any city to frame the way you approach different sectors with a view to creating a cohesive push to highlight music (or, I think, almost any local art or cultural highlight) and create a Music City mentality. I’ve made a few edits from the original document to make explicit the sort of things that I take as a given, but which aren’t obvious to everyone (like gender parity, inclusion of racialized people, good working conditions, etc.). A…
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A brief commentary on band websites and bios
I get a bit frustrated when I’m working to promote a band and they don’t have what I need in an easily-accessible format. Considering that all promoters are looking for the same things from artists, it always boggles my mind a bit when I can’t find what I’m looking for an an artist’s site, or when their bio is so poorly-written that it’s unusable. Remember when writing your bio that you’re talking to several audiences – fans, bookers/promoters, and media. Make sure that what you’re writing would be interesting and useful to those audiences – are there descriptive sentences that reporters and promoters can use to tell their audiences…
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2015 Festival Report Card
In 2015, two volunteers collected data on festival lineups in our second iteration of the Canadian Festival Report Card. This report graded Ontario festivals on gender parity on their stages. Here are the results: A 45% – 50%+ (2 festivals) Home County Music & Art Festival ON – 61.11% Summerfolk ON – 60% B 35% – 44% (3 festivals) Hillside Festival ON – 38.10% CityFolk ON – 37.84% Live From The Rock Festival ON – 36.84% C 25% – 34% (2 festivals) Eaglewood Folk Festival ON – 33.33% Mariposa Folk Festival ON – 30% D – 15% – 24% (1 festival) Northern Lights Festival Boreal ON –…
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On not getting gigs or grants.
The work I do means saying “No” a lot more than “Yes.” Whether I’m working as a booker or jurying a grant or award, the ability to say no clearly, politely, and unequivocally is one of the most valuable skills I’ve developed. As AD of the Peterborough Folk Festival, I’d generally get about 700-1000 submissions from musical acts, and I’d have 25 or so slots to fill. At minimum, I’d be listening, evaluating, and saying “No” 675 times to hopeful artists who’d poured their time, energy, sweat, and cash into their work. The jury for Artsweek Peterborough ((A festival which I saved from certain death, restructured, and ran for 2 years.)) got…
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Musicians: It’s worth paying artists.
You’re a musician; you work hard to hone your craft, you practice, you rehearse, you write and re-write, you book your own gigs and manage your website and do your own promo, and when you make some money you plough it back into your work, upgrading your gear, fixing the car, paying rent on your rehearsal space. You’ll fiercely defend a musician’s right to get paid, making jokes – sometimes bitter – about driving $5000 in gear in a $500 car to a gig where you’re paid $50. You lament the culture of free music – people so used to downloading Kanye illegally that they forget that most musicians do not…
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Fuck Instrument Thieves
A lot of my friends and acquaintances are musicians, and so fairly regularly I see notices crop up on forums and social media about stolen musical instruments. Every damn time, it makes my blood boil. Any performance-level instrument is worth a few hundred dollars, at the very least – most a lot more than that. Depending on quality, age, and customization, they can be worth much more – easily thousands of dollars. So I understand why it’s tempting for the sticky-fingered, desperate, or unethical person to grab a guitar and go, heading to Craigslist or shady pawnshops to offload their ill-gotten beauties. ((I’ll admit sympathy for some thieves, based purely…
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Folk Music Ontario Conference
The Folk Music Ontario Conference ((Formerly the Ontario Council of Folk Festivals!)) is an annual event that draws just under a thousand artists, presenters, and other music industry people to hang out together, jamming, learning, and talking music for four days every October. It’s always a highlight of the year, a chance for bookers, promoters, writers, and DJs to hear some of the best emerging touring acts in one place over one weekend in one hotel. This year, the conference takes place in Mississauga, Ontario. Secret Frequency founder and writer Candace Shaw will be in all of her usual haunts at the conference – wherever there’s good music or good…
