Canadian Music Week 2013
Saturday, 30 March 2013 03:40
2013’s Canadian Music Week festival in Toronto ran from March 19th to 24th. While, after 30-plus years, it remains Canada’s largest music festival it is not necessarily its largest Rock ‘N” Roll festival. Indeed even the music festival (hundreds of artists from seemingly every genre and subgenre) portion ran concurrent to radio industry awards presentations as well as conferences, seminars and symposiums.
Ultimately it came time for bands to play at various local venues. Fortunately for this reviewer some of them were Rock ‘N’ Roll bands. The Toronto scene remains a highly competitive forum for serious rock bands. Among them are those carving out a niche in a scene where seemingly fewer and fewer venues feature live rock.
Mixing and mingling with other festival goers the real itinerary of CMW I was looking for came into focus whilst I was getting a sense of what I’d unintentionally missed. Amidst the crowds of fans also lurked familiar local journos, musicians, photographers, publicists, road managers, etc. I was able to navigate my way to the actual music.
One of the more critically acclaimed shows was one at the Front Street East club C’est What on March 22nd which featured proudly Western Canadian acts Billy “The Kid” Pettinger (From Vancouver) as well as Angela Saini (From Calgary). Toronto’s own Meredith Shaw completed the bill. It was doubtless so popular because it featured very elegant and beautiful Canadian women performing thought-provoking tunes.
“Yes, for sure. It was a very welcoming crowd, super attentive and well-attended” says Saini who also confirmed a large group of fans both within the club and waiting outside. As difficult as it was to find the best shows of the festival amidst a title of different bands and shows there were nevertheless big crowds for the choice gigs.
Danish indie band Efterklang was forced to cancel its scheduled March 21st performance due to the illness of vocalist Casper Clausen. I maintain that this could be no great loss to concert-goers as it didn’t happen to be Danish Music Week. But there were some very disappointed local fans who had looked forward to seeing this group perform live.
The same night Efterklang wasn’t playing, Toronto’s The Breaks rocked the Cadillac Lounge, Poor Young Things kicked it at the Horseshoe and Edmonton pop rockers Rend killed at Clinton’s Tavern on the 22nd.
Southern rock bad-ass Mena Hardy was among the acts which closed out the festival at the Hideout on Queen Street West. She debuted music co-written with Runed frontman Brad Keay.
Photos by Kaitlin O’Neill: http://kayohphoto.hosterbox.net/wp/