FESTIVAL WARMING UP WINTER
Block Heater a musical celebration
Growing pains. Learning curve. Anyway you put it, every young festival has a few obstacles to overcome.
Luckily the people behind Block Heater 2.0 - taking place at four different Inglewood venues - have plenty of experience in organizing a successful music festival.
“The big learning curve for us is that we’re more used to a venue with no walls and our audience is used to a venue with no walls,” says Kerry Clarke, artistic director of The Calgary Folk Music Festival, which is presenting the secondannual Block Heater festival Feb. 10 through Feb. 12.
“It’s been mostly logistics. Our audience is loyal and they really want to take everything in like they do at the summer festival. So we’ve just had to figure out how to get people coming and going from each venue smoothly. After the first few hours of the festival last year, things got smoother. We got better at communication between venues and most people were happy by the end of it.”
Indeed, the inaugural Block Heater festival was a resounding success with most shows selling out. This year, organizers have added the Alexandra Dance Centre to the mix ( joining the Ironwood Stage, The Lantern Church and the Calgary Folk Fest’s own Festival Hall) and two more events to the schedule.
“What we’re trying to do that’s a little different from other winter festivals is create a neighbourhood vibe,” Clarke says.
“We’re centred in Inglewood and all the venues are within blocks of each other. So there is a bit of a vibe when you’re walking down the street, running into people and saying, ‘Hi, how are you? Where are you off to now?’ All these shows end at midnight and the bars in Inglewood are open until 2 a.m., so we hope people will go out afterwards and talk about the artists they saw and hang out.”
Block Heater 2.0 headliners include Texas roots singer-songwriter Hayes Carll, Australian outlaw country rocker Henry Wagons, Toronto-based alt-country act NQ Arbuckle, beatboxing bluesman C.R. Avery and Indigenous downbeat pop artist IsKwe.
IsKwe is one of the featured performers at Block Heater’s opening night Indigenous showcase at Festival Hall. The concert will also spotlight Winnipeg songwriter Leonard Sumner, A Tribe Called Red founding member DJ Shub, as well as Eya-Hey Nakoda ,a pow wow group from the Stoney Reserve.
“We tried to represent the depth and breadth of Indigenous cultures in Canada,” Clarke explains.
“We’re not going to cover everything, but we tried to represent different provinces and different expressions. It’s a focus. Not a segregation, but a celebration.”
Taking a page from the Calgary Folk Fest, Block Heater also offers up an intriguing selection of collaborative sessions such as Country Club featuring a collection of roots and bluegrass artists and Mondo Mundo, which showcases such world music artists as Kobo Town and Taj Weekes & Adowa.
About half of this year’s 25 Block Heater artists hail from Alberta, including rising country star JJ Shiplett, Edmonton folk-pop trio Scenic Route to Alaska, Calgary’s soulful blues rockers The Torchettes and Calgary/Toronto indie folk rock band, Reuben and The Dark. Clarke says it’s a testament to the amount of talent in the province.
“The first Reuben and The Dark show sold out within 24 hours of us putting the tickets on sale,” Clarke says, adding there is still space at the shows for wristband holders who arrive early.
“We added a second and that one sold out in less than 24 hours. There’s something about his songwriting and stage presence that’s really appealing. He represents the best that’s happening in indie music right now and I think it’s great he’s appealing to the next generation of audience members.”
Block Heater comes weeks after another local off-season festival, Big Winter Classic. While the increase in music-related winter events is good news for live music fans and the bands brave enough to haul their gear down the icy roads of Canada in January and February, adding to the city’s arts calendar isn’t for the lazy.
“We (the Calgary Folk Festival) are busier than we have been in the history of the organization,” says marketing manager Matt Ol ah .“We do two festivals now, and present about 20 shows in the spring and 20 shows in the fall. It’s also the same amount of work doing a small festival as it is doing a bigger festival, but with only a portion of the budget. So far it’s been worth it.”
Block Heater 2.0, presented by The Calgary Folk Music Festival, runs Feb. 10 until Feb. 12 at The Ironwood Stage, The Alexandra Dance Centre, The Lantern Church and Festival Hall in Inglewood. Limited tickets are available online through CalgaryFolkFest.com