Early the morning of June 21, after the devastating floods in downtown Calgary, the city’s long-running music festival Sled Island was forced to cancel the remainder of its dates. Many of the touring bands scheduled to play the festival were stranded in the city while festival wristband holders appeared to be up the river without a paddle. For the festival and its attendees, it seemed to be an insurmountable disaster.
Then something curious happened.
Through a series of social media posts, house shows began to pop up all over the city, some featuring the stranded bands, and even more featuring a host of local bands looking to keep the spirit of Sled Island alive, despite its cancellation.
Bands played moist, sweaty basements, some played backyard porches, a group of Toronto bands even took over a pizza shop that was closed because of the floods, and the spirit of music was kept alive. People packed into these makeshift private venues, sometimes wall-to-wall like sardines, to hear live music and bring it back to a base level: sound, ears, and expression.
Daft Punk is playing at my house
Small house concerts, in all styles of music, are alive and well in Canada. And while most music fans will never experience seeing their favourite bands anywhere smaller than an arena or large nightclub, diehard house-concertgoers, as well as the bands that play for them, swear by the intimacy and connection they feel at these do-it-yourself events.
One of the people instrumental in salvaging Sled Island, which ended up being referred to as Flood Island, was Lee Repko, who puts on shows and runs a record label called No List Records out of Winnipeg. After driving all the way from Winnipeg and watching the festival get cancelled his first night in Calgary, Repko was not about to pack it in and go home.
“I saw an opportunity,” says Repko. “I knew there were close to 200 acts in town that now didn’t have shows. I knew that many of them would leave town, but I was certain that the city’s music fans wouldn’t let their festival be washed away by the flood.”
Soon Repko and a few others were on social media, looking for houses to host shows at and bands to play them. Within a few hours, a number of house shows were popping up. By the end of the weekend, at least 30 small shows had happened around the safe areas of the city.
It was proof that music isn’t dependent upon larger venues or bars. And it was a much-needed way for music fans that were in Calgary to bond together and deal with the trauma of the flood by letting off steam.
“People were down for a party and so were we,” remembers Repko. “There were more high-fives than at the Stampede, it was the good-time, feel-good party of the year, all with middle-finger salutes to the nearby raging Bow and Elbow rivers.”
Victoria House Shows B
Over near the corner of Stanley and Grant, in Victoria’s Fernwood neighbourhood, resident Andrew Briggs has been putting on shows in his house since 2007.
With over 120 house shows with high-profile Canadian songwriters like Barney Bentall, Tom Hooper, Jon and Roy, and Vince Vaccaro under his belt, Briggs has created a community of musicians and music-lovers without the trappings of the nightclub or pub scene. In his living room.
A live music fan for as long as he can remember, Briggs says the closure of prominent Victoria venues in 2007 such as Harpo’s (now Upstairs Cabaret) prompted him to bring the music into his home.
“At the time Tom Hooper from the Grapes of Wrath was playing the Strath to, like, five people and I thought, ‘This is stupid,’ so every week I’d bring more people with me,” recalls Briggs, “and by the fifth week it was packed. So we’d sit and drink with him and one night I just asked, ‘How much would it cost to have you come and play my house?’”
Hooper encouraged Briggs to join Facebook, something Briggs had never heard of in 2007, so he did, and soon after he created the “Victoria House Shows B” group to promote his shows.
“I only called it ‘B’ because I didn’t know if there was already an ‘A,’” laughs Briggs. “I’m a music fan first, but I also like to do things for people and see everyone enjoy the music. Also, it’s kind of cool always having musicians around my house.”
Briggs says that he now gets at least one request a day from travelling musicians who have found out about his house shows through word of mouth. He gives them shows, puts them up at his house, feeds them, and gives all of the money he collects directly to the band.
“It does kind of take away your house. I’m not married, and that’s probably why,” he jokes. “The musicians come and play and sometimes they stay for up to a week, so when they come from a distance I try to set up two or three shows for them.”
Briggs usually charges $15 to $20 and has had up to 70 people in his house to watch performances he says are unequalled at licenced live music venues.
“Oh, there’s no comparison,” he claims. “Acoustically, it’s so much better. For example, Vince Vaccaro plays at my house, and what an amazing voice and inflection! And my room is very church-like in sound, so there’s no reverb, and it’s an octagonal shape and it’s an old house with no carpet in it. So seeing him at a club just isn’t the same.”
According to Briggs, he’s continually planning shows at his house, hasn’t had problems with his neighbors (who are invited), or the police (some have attended), and definitely isn’t allowed to move anytime soon.
“People won’t let me move,” he says. “This house has history now.”
The show is in the basement
Do-it-yourself house concerts have been a staple of underground music scenes for decades. From basement noise shows in small towns to large-scale “living room” tours featuring folk artists playing homes all over Canada, house shows are always happening somewhere.
Winnipeg singer-songwriter Greg MacPherson, heralded as one of Canada’s best solo artists by many, has played more house and basement shows than he sometimes cares to remember.
“I’ve had lots of different experiences with house shows, from really, really great, to really, really awful,” says MacPherson, who points out the same could be said of his shows at bars.
“The Show Is in the Basement,” a song MacPherson wrote and released on his 2005 album Night Flares, looks at how house shows can represent the true meaning of music: connection and expression.
“The song is about anti-establishment sentiment and it was about the feeling of ‘anything goes.’ And in some ways I think the house show thing can go in that direction and it can be really exciting,” he says. “You can find out new things about people through music and interaction, and that’s a really special way of connecting.”
Known as a dedicated touring artist, MacPherson was approached by Home Routes, a Manitoba non-profit society who, according to their website, “turn living rooms into mini-concert halls.” In 2011, MacPherson did a Canadian tour through Home Routes that he’ll never forget, he says.
“I got to go to northern Alberta and Saskatchewan and got to see things I never would have seen, and played in people’s homes that would never have seen me. It was a really special endeavour,” he says.
One show in particular has been burned into MacPherson’s memory. To him, it was an exchange with the owner of a home in Camrose, Alberta he was playing at that gave him hope his music could really make a difference. After playing punk basement shows to mixed results earlier in his career (one show in Kalamazoo, MI left him with a broken front tooth), the possibilities of exchange and connection at intimate house shows have always encouraged MacPherson, but the Camrose show was extra special, he says.
“The show was being hosted by an older gentleman in this gorgeous home, and we’re talking about my music and politics and stuff, because a lot of my songs had content that he was interested in,” he recalls. “So we’re talking and he turns to me and says, ‘You don’t know what I do for a living, do you?’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t.’ So he tells me he’s the Minister of Justice for Alberta and it’s a very conservative government there and here I am having a conversation with him about prison issues and things like that in a really respectful and exciting way. We just both laughed out loud. It was one of those times where you really felt like you connected and people were listening to each other and it was over the music and the circumstances.”
Back to the basics
Tiemen Kuipers opened his Talk’s Cheap punk rock record store on Pandora Avenue in downtown Victoria just over three years ago. After hearing that a lot of small bands couldn’t get bar gigs in Victoria, he decided to start hosting concerts in his shop.
“They can’t play a bar because they’d lose money, so they play someone’s living room or my shop and it’s a good time, a fun atmosphere, and they can make a little bit of money,” says Kuipers.
Kuipers claims all of the bands that have played at Talk’s Cheap have come away with a positive experience, and that can only be good for the longevity of Victoria’s underground music scene, one that has hosted house shows for decades.
“The bands love it,” he says. “When you’re in a small room and everyone’s going nuts and the floor’s bouncing up and down and things are falling off the walls and it’s really loud and hot… you can’t get that in a bar. The shows that go off really go off!”
As a touring artist, MacPherson agrees that house and makeshift venue shows serve to remove some of the trappings of the bar show scene and bring the music back to its basics.
“When they work, they are way better than bar shows,” says MacPherson, “because it’s generally folks who are very respectful of the arts and of travelling musicians’ efforts. Sometimes you’ll get to a bar and they don’t give a shit about you, you’re just basically a headache to help them sell liquor. But when you play someone’s home, or shop, or basement, or whatever, you end up with folks who want you there, they’re excited about music, and they want to facilitate a performance, which is pretty cool.”
Like a lot of hardcore music fans, people like Briggs and Repko thrive on house shows and getting a chance to see music in such a close environment.
When the floods came down in Calgary and turned Sled Island into Flood Island, Repko and his community made the best of a dire situation and proclaimed the only thing they knew: the show must go on. (Sled Island organizations later thanked the house show organizers for their efforts to keep the music going in the face of disaster.)
“We all mobilized and saw some sort of incredible throw-down of pure rock brilliance,” says Repko. “There is an intimacy that can get lost at bar shows, where the point is to sell booze and not necessarily rock your socks off. At a basement show I feel more a part of a community than a motley crew. There is a heightened awareness of your space because your bubble gets broken very quickly… and if you allow it, that lost layer can really help you find true rock ‘n’ roll ecstasy.”
Tieman is the fucking man!!!!!