Though generally only passing through, I really enjoyed what was coming through from the Campsite. I also met a couple of people that I wouldn’t have encountered anywhere else, as this is the one place where non-officially-selected artists could perform. On the one hand, this keeps the whole conference pretty exclusive, on the other, it makes it pretty much a given that artists aren’t just going to simply attend in the hopes of learning from panels or networking.
I’m pretty sure this is Kuné World performing in the Ballroom as part of the Daytime Showcases on Friday afternoon. We ended up seeing a lot of these performers again as parts of different acts.
Waking up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. Acquiring coffee. Attacking the day. Heather has a LIST of people she’s going to hunt down and chat with, I tend to be more organic. I sort of think it’s one of the things that makes us work well together as we were approaching the same problem from very different angles. We’re a booking mullet. I’m the party at the back. She’s the bidness up front. No-one ever expects it. But it was cool meeting people who’d gotten both of us over the course of the conference, finally putting the two of us TOGETHER and those seemed to be the most fruitful connections.
My Son The Hurricane quickly came across as a “typical” renegade marching band (though there’s very little “typical” about this genre) right down to what sure sounded like an opening riff of “Raining Blood” by Slayer. Once they got going though, having a front-woman / hype-lass like the one in the centre of the second pic really made them stand out.
I didn’t get a chance to attack day two right from the get-go as Institute of Musical Traditions had a tizzy that I had to take care of. It would be extremely petty for me to do the math to determine how much I was paying for every hour of productive time during the conference and to charge that back to IMT, but I was NOT supposed to be available at ALL while we were away. It was infuriating and part of me felt that every moment spent on a laptop working on ticketing for people who could log into these things and fix the problems themselves, was a moment lost when I might’ve been meeting Just the Right Person… cause that’s how this business works. Fortunately, I was able to start joining the showcases pretty early in the day, only fielding LOTS OF TEXTS through out the rest of the weekend.
We did take the opportunity to go OUT once a day, wandering London, ON. The food was great, the game store was better. Here’s a stereotypical shot of Heather and Kristen waiting patiently for Rowan and I as we explored the magic of Magic and stalwartly resisted the syren call of our American Dollar Buying Power.I was absolutely sure I would have no trouble reconstructing my musical journey, but betwixt tangled notes, time stamps that have more to do with ACTUAL time than scheduled time, and press photos that often have little to do with who was actually fielded – this is proving hard than it ought to be. This MIGHT be Los Variants. I’m pretty concrete on that. Excellent jam, a whole lot of fun.I probably shouldn’t attempt to name the artists if I’m not sure – but maybe I’ll put it all back together. I THINK this is Senaya!Pretty confident that this was Ellen Froese. Gentle storytelling, one of the first moments of actual stage presence (rather than just amazing music). She was quietly humourous and then painfully beautiful in the vignettes that she painted. I never did quite catch her to say how much I enjoyed her set.The Bombadills.The Bombadills.Logan & NathanVinta – I know this Western European trad group was one of Rowan’s favourites. They were precise and beautifully moody.Kunlé, originally from Nigeria, was spectacularly passionate, killer voice, great drumming.We finished out Friday night with Kaia Kater who IMT had presented back in 2018. I remembered the buzz about her from back then, but a lot of said buzz was about her traditional artistry. Tonight she presented some really beautiful songwriting that had very little to do with trad playing and seemed to stem from the feeling of isolation and terror of the Pandemic and our ongoing cultural chaos. Her last song, the title track off her upcoming album Strange Medicine, was probably my single most-haunting, evocative and emotional musical moment of the whole conference. I can’t wait for this album.
