Festival is movable feast of bands
Emerging local bands gain valuable exposure in sharing the spotlight with established international acts, writes Stuart Derdeyn.
Matthew Gibbons is a positive attitude person. The founder of MRG Group is behind the new Westward Music Festival, a multivenue event taking place in Vancouver that aims to prove that big music festivals aren’t over in our immediate area. They just need to be presented differently than mega gatherings such as the now Huka Entertainment Pemberton and Live Nation Squamish music festivals.
Compared to these global corporate entities, MRG Concerts operates a dozen venues and entertainment properties in Toronto, Vancouver and Los Angeles. Among these are the Vogue Theatre and Biltmore Cabaret. Along with the Imperial and Venue, these are the locations of this new multiple-venue music showcase.
“I think Westward is the beginning of a journey, one that comes naturally to us as a business based in Vancouver, which is very intertwined with the music community at the Vogue, Biltmore and Yale,” said Gibbons. “The festival fan in the Greater Vancouver area might need some reassurance of trust and we believe we can clearly deliver that. Our aim is to develop gradually and make the right connections in the community to create something enduring.”
With 15 shows all taking place within a three-kilometre area, the event removes the need for trucked-in sites, camping and traffic jams — all factors that make big festivals carry a hefty sticker price. With wristbands starting at $59.50, up to a maximum of $224.50 for the global wristband, and most shows also carrying individual ticket-price options, attendees have the opportunity to pick and choose between headlining Odd Future cohort Vince Staples (Sept. 16, 6:30 p.m. at the Vogue), a killer bill of A Tribe Called Red with Hannah Georgas, NYC’s jazz-grooving Too Many Zoos and Clairmont the Second (Sept. 17, 6:30 p.m. at the Venue), or Juno Award-winning pop tunesmiths Dear Rouge with Little Destroyer and Seaborne (Sept. 15, 8 p.m. at the Imperial) and others.
It seems like an excellent way to market both a festival and a weekend of quite varied club gigs together under a single banner.
“We’re making the first step, which is to bring the artist. The public makes the second (step), which is to show up,” he said. “And we’ll keep on coming up with different kinds of packages to enable that to happen. Hopefully, the city will also get on board and we can open up some public spaces, because I think there are a lot of opportunities at David Lam Park, beyond the fantastic job done by the Jazz Festival.”
For Danielle and Drew McTaggart of Dear Rouge, any gig in front of a hometown crowd is a good one. Regulars on festival stages across Canada since winning the 2016 Breakthrough Group of the Year with its Universal Music Group debut Black To Gold, the duo is pumped about the possibilities that Westward Music Festival provides for launching the careers of local artists. Dear Rouge received a huge push by winning the $102,700 Peak Performance Prize in 2012. That seven-year-long, $5.2-million initiative funded by the Jim Pattison Group ended in 2015.
“Everybody talks about how the music scene in Vancouver looks now and how can you be part of it and develop,” said Drew McTaggart.
“To come back and headline the venue where we last played three years ago, opening for the Fast Romantics, is really exciting. Plus, it’s the first time we have really had to play some of the new stuff we have been working on for the local fans.”
Following up the success of Black to Gold singles such as I Heard I Had, Best Look Lately and others, Dear Rouge has been hard at work putting the right touches on its followup record. The band isn’t one to rush the creative process. But a new album is due in the late fall and a new single is due to drop in the next month or so.
“We’ve been playing the first album for a long while now, so putting in songs from our new album and seeing how people respond is something we are really ready to do,” said Danielle McTaggart. “Pushing ourselves into new situations has really changed our perspective and, I think, really upped all aspects of our songwriting.”
What has the duo done to push itself ? Taken itself out of Vancouver and into the heady milieu of New York City.
“We are Vancouverites and love it, but everything seemed so much bigger and changed our perspective just in time for starting to write our new tunes,” said Drew. “It’s just so much more of so much more there.”
“You are challenged on all levels, particularly musically,” said Danielle.
“Go see a local band at a small venue and the level of musicianship is so high that you just feel you need to push yourself that much harder. We love being a Canadian band and being in our city, but the world is getting smaller and you need to open yourself up to being adventurous.”
Asked if they feel that something like Westward Music Festival’s aiming to feature local groups in headlining gigs alongside national and international names goes a ways to building that confidence to be adventurous and aim higher, the couple wholeheartedly agree. Along with Gibbons, they feel that the way you get on the map is by being part of something bigger that the world wants to know about.
Could Vancouver become a global music force before the last musician has moved away in search of affordable rent? It certainly happened with the Seattle scene in the ’90s.