LAS ESTRELLAS MAKE MARIACHI, VANCOUVER-STYLE >>>

fundraisers), product design (89), games (77), and music (76) follow close behind.

Technology projects have some of the worst success rates: Vancouverites have listed 195 on Kickstarter since its inception, but only 40 reached their funding goals.

In fact, the majority of Kickstarters fail. At the time of writing, only 742 local projects have succeeded (with 27 running) out of 1,946 listed on the site—a success rate of 38 percent. (Vancouver does slightly better than Kickstarter as a whole, where 36 percent of projects succeed.)

Ansix Engineering has established three successful Kickstarter campaigns. The first two were for quick-change camera equipment (one listed as “camera equipment”, the other as “design” and “product design”), while the third was for a slim wallet.

“The first two projects we started… we really did need Kickstarter, because we didn’t have that much money to produce a mould to create our product,” said Ron Chan, one of the three founders of Ansix, in a phone interview with the Straight.

The camera projects each raised about $34,000. But the most recent, Fantom Wallet, attracted almost 6,000 backers and raised more than $614,000. It was the secondmost-financially-successful Vancouver project.

Chan credits the campaign’s success to being further along in the development process. “It was basically ready to go. We were ready to sell these,” he said.

He pointed out that Kickstarter brought more eyeballs to the page than the company could have reached otherwise. Chan also noted that the company spent about $10,000 on a marketing company to help increase visibility.

The Darkest Dungeon team didn’t employ any outside help but spent a long time preparing. Their game had been in development for eight months before the Kickstarter launched, and running the campaign became a full-time job for the duration of the fundraising.

Both campaigns collected email addresses before the campaign so they had a large interest base before the launch, helping them meet initial funding goals quickly.

Although these kinds of success stories may be uncommon, local companies continue to use the platform to fund their projects. Vancouverites’ Kickstarter dreams aren’t dead yet.

Michelle Cormier is having 2

fun, and why not? The leader of Las Estrellas de Vancouver is in Mexico City, playing music, researching future collaborations, and buying new clothes for her allfemale mariachi ensemble.

“More glitz!” she says, laughing. “Well, you know, a mariachi group needs to present itself as a mariachi group, so we do have to look the part.”

It may come as a surprise to some that Vancouver has a resident mariachi orchestra, let alone one staffed exclusively by women. But over the past four years Las Estrellas have been establishing a good reputation for themselves—and an impressive collection of black, red, and silver stage wear. Building from her love of “the traditional music of pretty much everywhere”, VCC grad Cormier has gone from studying classical guitar, flamenco, and gamelan to leading both a youth mariachi band, which came first, and this relatively new, fully professional ensemble.

“I would often get calls for events that might not be appropriate for the student group, so having a professional group also on hand was a good idea,” she says, noting that some—but not all—of those events might involve the consumption of the occasional cerveza.

“A mariachi band is often called for parties,” Cormier explains. “For instance, I was going to meet with a friend today, but he’s just gotten called for a gig. They’re always on call: it could be for a funeral, it could be for a wedding, it could be for a birthday party, it could be for anything at any time of day. So a mariachi ensemble functions as a social party band, and then there are a lot of pop singers that have a mariachi band. And with the ones at the party, the client requests songs, so you have no idea what songs you’re going to play—which is kind of frightening and also sort of cool, because you have to have a million songs in your head.”

Most of those songs have a common theme, she adds: love. “They’re either love songs, or brokenhearted love songs. But there are also love songs about their place. It’s not exactly patriotism, but they sing songs about their town, about their state… That sort of thing.”

Some modern mariachi bands mix things up a bit further; Cormier notes that she recently heard a group covering Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” and, rather pointedly, “Another Brick in the Wall”. Las Estrellas probably won’t go that far afield for their upcoming Vancouver Folk Music Festival appearances, which will take place both on-stage and off-.

“We’ll be delivering a mix of romantic tunes, some that people can sing along to and some that people can dance to,” Cormier says. “And mariachi music is originally from the state of Jalisco, so we’ll have a couple of songs that are very specifically from there.

“I try to create a nice mix of repertoire,” she adds. “And then,

for when we’re walking around and playing within the crowd, it will definitely be more dance-y!” > ALEXANDER VARTY Las Estrellas de Vancouver play the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s Stage 1 at 12:20 p.m. on Saturday (July 14).

Freeman finds catharsis in old-timey Americana

For a good idea how steeped 2

in the traditions of old-timey music Dori Freeman is, start with the relatively recent phenomenon known as Youtube, which is home to all sorts of videos featuring the Appalachian singer-songwriter performing Americana classics with her dad and granddad. The singer is just out of her teens in the clips, which range from a stripped-to-basics rendition of the folk standard “Hard Times Come Again No More” to the cowboy classic “I Ride an Old Paint”, but what stands out is the way that she sounds like an old soul.

“Those are from 2011, so I would have been about 20,” Freeman says, on the line from her countryside home in Galax, Virginia. “I’d performed a bit with my dad when I was a teenager—in high school I’d go to shows that he was playing and come up for maybe one or two songs. Then, later on, I started playing at this little series that my dad and my grandfather did at this little framing shop and art gallery that my family owns. It was one of the first places that I really performed.”

Fastforward eight years and Freeman has blossomed into one of the most buzzed-about singers in contemporary Americana. Last year’s critically lauded sophomore outing, Letters Never Read, showcased the singer as an artist who hasn’t forgotten her love of a sepia-toned time when gingham dresses were a thing and every parlour had a Philco 90 cathedral radio. But, smartly, Freeman also isn’t afraid to branch out on Letters Never Read’s 10 tracks, dabbling in easygoing twee pop for “Just Say It Now” and adding lounge-revival vibraphone to the Sunday-afternoon folk of “Turtle Dove”.

Freeman was raised on Americana and folk on the stereo around the house, and at jam sessions held by her dad and grandfather. As is often the case, she pulled away from the music she was raised on in her teens, becoming a Warped Tour kid obsessed with the likes of Motion City Soundtrack, Hawthorne Heights, and Fallout Boy.

“Then, when I was 15, I kind of took an interest in playing the guitar,” she says. “My dad had wanted me to do that for a while, and that’s when I started coming back around to traditional music. I fell back in love with country music and really got into exploring it more.”

Letters Never Read covers of Jim Reeves’s “Yonder Comes a Sucker” and Linda and Richard Thompson’s “I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight” suggest Rufus Wainwright and Peggy Lee aren’t the only artists Freeman has an undying love for. Originals like “Lovers on the Run” and “Cold Waves”, meanwhile, suggest that life hasn’t been all honeysuckle and sunshine for the singer, the former exploring the many flavours of hell that are relationships, the latter coming at the issue of depression in a movingly languid fashion. At her best, she still sounds like an old soul. And if she’s found out anything since her 20s, it’s that she’s not alone.

“I hate this word and using it, but it’s the only one I can think of using right now,” she says. “So I’ll say that it’s very cathartic to write songs, and to write about things you’ve experienced that were hard to work through, or traumatizing even. For me, it’s a way of cleansing myself of those emotions and feelings. Also I know how much songwriting from other people has helped me through hard times. So I hope, by being honest, that what I’m writing might help somebody else.” > MIKE USINGER Dori Freeman plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s Stage 5 at 10 a.m. on Saturday (July 14).

For Iskwé, anger energizes the fight for social justice

Although she works with 2

sounds that are far removed from conventional notions of folk music, there’s a good reason why the Cree-dene-irish EDM producer and singer known as Iskwé is going to find herself at Jericho Beach Park this weekend: as folk performers have always done, she frequently concerns herself with the pressing issues of the day. And in this country, one of the most pressing issues is Canada’s shameful unwillingness to address the commonplace abduction, rape, and murder of Indigenous women and girls.

It’s not that she’s a sloganizer: although her hit “Nobody Knows” was inspired by the 2014 death of 15-yearold Tina Fontaine, of Manitoba’s Sagkeeng First Nation, its message is cloaked in a gospel-inflected melody and delivered atop a booming house beat. But the energy in Iskwé’s performance style, on record and onstage, comes directly from the anger she feels about the thousands of missing and murdered women whose killers have so far gone unpunished.

“We have a hashtag that says ‘#AMI Next’,” the Hamilton-based Iskwé tells the Straight from an Ontario highway, referring to a social-media campaign initiated by Inuit social-justice activist Holly Jarrett. “And my niece is two years old, so my immediate goal.… is that when my niece grows up, that hashtag is a thing of the past.

“These are conversations that we have with our kids,” she continues. “These are conversations that I had with my grandpa. These are conversations I’ve had with my mom. And in these conversations we learned that we had to protect ourselves in different ways than other demographics in this country, and that sucks.”

Although confronting discrimination and racial crime makes for powerful art, it can, Iskwé admits, take its toll on the artist. “These aren’t things that are happening to people ‘over there’ that I have no connection to,” she says. “So finding ways to continue talking about them without getting too run down by it is important. These are really heavy stories—and at the end of shows, more and more, I have people, mostly women, that will come up and share stories of their loved ones that haven’t come home, or that will never be coming home.

“So finding ways to rejuvenate my spirit, like the sun-dance ceremony and being a part of community, these are the things that give me rejuvenation as we try to get rid of this problem—the problem of us being viewed as disposable.” > ALEXANDER VARTY Iskwé plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival’s Stage 3 at 5:40 p.m. on Saturday (July 14).

Ranky Tanky moves to a traditional Gullah rhythm

South Carolina’s Ranky Tanky 2

plays music rooted in the Gullah communities of the coastal lowlands and islands of the southeastern United States. Descended from black slaves who survived the harsh conditions of the rice fields, the Gullahs created a resilient hybrid culture out of their diverse African origins. Ranky Tanky takes traditional Gullah songs and rhymes, and gives them bold contemporary settings and arrangements. Late last year the quintet’s excellent self-titled debut topped the Billboard, itunes, and Amazon jazz charts.

Based on a children’s game, “Ranky Tanky” is also one of the tracks. The Gullah expression is clearly a key to the band and the music, so what does it signify? “The loose translation is ‘Work it!’ ” says trumpet player Charlton Singleton, reached in Awendaw, near Charleston. “If you listen to the chorus of the song—‘pain in my hands, ranky tanky’—you work it, you move your hands to get that pain out. ‘Pain in my legs, ranky tanky’— so you shake your legs. ‘Pain in my head, ranky tanky’—you move your head around. ‘Pain all over me’—you dance around. You’re trying to get rid of that pain. You work it. You get funky with it. You move. You groove.

“We gave the rhyme a melody, put chords behind it, and added our rhythm—and now it’s a song,” Singleton continues. “With our instrumentation of standup bass, trumpet, guitar, drums, and our influences as jazz musicians and gospel musicians and folk musicians, rhythm-and-blues musicians, and all of those experiences that we’ve had playing in other formations—when you wrap them all up, and put it into the Ranky Tanky ensemble, it comes out as something unique.”

Ranky Tanky formed in late 2016, after Singleton and three Charleston friends, who had played some years previously as jazz outfit Gradual Lean, got together with powerful local singer Quiana Parler. Their aim was to explore new musical territory for what Singleton calls the “Gullah rhythm”, which pervades the local soundscape.

“In songs like ‘Join the Band’ you can hear the rhythm clearly,” he says, then hums it—syncopated, and accented on the first beat. “Dum ti dum-dum, dum ti dum-dum. It could be a fast song, a midtempo song, a slow song. Our drummer Quentin [Baxter] maintains, and I agree, that the Gullah rhythm is almost impossible to write down, because it’s not just notes on the page, it’s a feel—with different nuances here and there. I grew up listening to it in church and it always seems to be present—even in the way that people around Charleston would play other music. You would find that beat someplace in there.”

Singleton sees Gullah influence deeply and subtly ingrained in Africanamerican music. “We’re celebrating a culture that oftentimes didn’t get a chance to express itself freely. When you’d go to a praise house, as it was called, you’d have people that would sing these songs, and they’d improvise—whether with rhythms or vocally. You could argue that’s the origin of jazz. It goes really far back.” > TONY MONTAGUE Ranky Tanky plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival main stage at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday (July 15).

Master tunesmith Crowell remains resolutely tireless

Forget Tony Robbins: if you’re 2

a songwriter in need of positive thinking you need only consult Rodney Crowell, who not only has developed an effective, commonsense philosophy of songwriting, but is battling back from a disease that could easily have crippled a lesser human.

This, it’s true, is not necessarily surprising, coming from a Nashville veteran who’s capable of rubbing shoulders with former father-in-law Johnny Cash while also quoting the Stoic philosopher Epictetus in song.

When the Georgia Straight reaches the 67-year-old Crowell, he’s taking it easy on his Tennessee patio. And although his voice is soft, his spirit is strong. Despite being diagnosed last year with dysautonomia—a miscommunication between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems that can result in extreme fatigue—he’s recently started his own record label; released Acoustic Classics, an unplugged look at a dozen of his greatest songs; and is about to head west to play the Vancouver Folk Music Festival. After that he’ll go to Carmel, California, to host the first edition of Adventures in Song, a masterclass in songwriting in which he’ll be assisted by Elton John lyricist Bernie Taupin and Tom Petty keyboardist Benmont Tench, among others.

Crowell is resolutely modest in explaining why he, as much as anyone else working in the Americana genre, has the ability to make commonplace tropes—love, heartbreak, and bad behaviour—seem vividly fresh. It’s all thanks to his parents.

“Neither of my parents were educated, but my mother played with words and she twisted things around and she rhymed things,” he explains. “My father, on the other hand, was not a writer, but he was a savant, in a way. Somehow if he heard a song once on a dry-cell radio—the Grand Ole Opry, or something—he’d have it, and he’d know it. And he had a real deep repertoire of songs that he knew—mostly country, from Roy Acuff to Hank Williams and a little later. Being around them, and I guess sharing their DNA, was the perfect combination for me to be a natural-born songwriter.”

The Texas native adds that he was also lucky to move to Nashville in the early 1970s, where he was quickly adopted into the songwriting clan. It was then, Crowell continues, that he developed one of the exercises he’ll be teaching at Adventures in Song: the “Eye to Eye” technique, in which one writer reads his or her lyrics to another. If the reader can’t maintain eye contact, it’s a sure sign that something needs improvement.

“It depends on whose the other set of eyes are,” he allows. “In my case, it was Guy Clark, and those were some pretty piercing, look-into-your-soul eyes. Early on, when I had the opportunity to bring him something new, he’d say ‘Okay. Don’t play it. Just look me in the eye and tell me those words.’ I learned a lot from that, because whenever I wanted to avert my gaze, I knew it was a weak couplet, or I’d lost the thread of the narrative. It was a really good exercise, and he’d do it with me, too, the other way around. But I’d venture to say that with him being nine years older than me and having a more intense set of eyes, it was easier for him than for me!” > ALEXANDER VARTY Rodney Crowell plays the Vancouver Folk Music Festival main stage at 8:40 p.m. on Saturday (July 14).