ALL-AGES FEST BRINGS MUSIC TO EAST SIDE
If you want to attract more people to your neighbourhood and your cause, there’s worse things to do than hold a giant musical bash. East Town Get Down, which will run May 26 in eight venues along a six-block stretch of 17th Avenue S.E., is a celebration of local indie bands but also an attempt to show that east Calgary is as artistically vibrant as any other part of the city. The inaugural festival is a joint project between International Avenue BRZ and Major Minor Music Project, which continues to work toward building a better all-ages music scene in the city.
“This is to give people something tangible that they can go and be a part of,” says Graham Mackenzie, artistic director of the festival and one of the driving forces behind Major Minor. “They can spend the night there and see it’s a really incredible place to be with stuff to see and do. I think that will change (the perception) and have people going into Forest Lawn.”
Music lovers will have plenty of reasons to go into Forest Lawn on Saturday. That includes performances by some of Calgary’s most beloved indie acts, including The Dudes, Miesha and the Spanks, Forbidden Dimension, Transit22, Divinity, Dragon Fli Empire, Samantha Savage Smith and expat singer-songwriter Rae Spoon. Young performers such as Marcus Trummer, Danny Zapata, Flashback, Kate Stevens, Bella White and Emily Ripley are among the acts that represent a new generation of Calgary artists. Meanwhile, acts such as Ying Zhou’s Zither Band has members as young as eight years old.
“We are melding the classics and the young people together, which is what we’ve always been doing with Major Minor, and everything in between,” says
Mackenzie. “We have all genres, a bit of everything. The goal is that we get enough turnout and support and interest that we can turn it into an annual thing and grow it next year.”
This year, eight unique venues of various sizes will be humming all night, including the Border Crossing Pub, Paradise Lanes bowling alley, Jane Bond BBQ, FUSE33 Makerspace, Salsa Restaurant, Ensira Ethiopian Restaurant, Fassil Ethiopian Restaurant and the TG Juice Bar.
MacKenzie says the eventual plan is to open an all-ages venue in east Calgary. Since 2016, Major Minor has been working to get such a venue back in Calgary. Traditionally, these sorts of venues don’t last very long because owners can’t rely on liquor sales and they tend not to be supported by the funding agencies, Mackenzie says.
All venues but the Border Crossing Pub will be all-ages and Mackenzie says he hopes the festival shows the importance of having young people as both performers and audience members in the Calgary music scene.
The idea is to offer grassroots support for the 15-year-old musicians who “are going to develop into your Jann Ardens, and your Preoccupations and your Chad Vangaalens and your Dudes,” Mackenzie says. “You need to be creating that.”
The plan is to get a capital grant to buy a new space for an all-ages venue.
“Next year, our goal is to really pivot to lobbying all levels of government,” Mackenzie says.