Audience Connects with Indie Artists

Concert Review

That's Edmonton For You

When: Sunday afternoon Where: Louise McKinney Park

In a CJSR interview last Thursday, That's Edmonton For You producer-director Trevor Anderson wondered whether the live portion of his band's commissioned song suite would be a success.

"I just hope that people will come out," he fretted, "and that we'll get the support we need."

With somewhere around an estimated 2,000 people filling Louise McKinney Park on a sweltering Sunday afternoon, it looks now as though Anderson was needlessly worried about the reception he and his crew of local musicians--tasked with writing, recording and playing an album's worth of original tunes about sustainability--would get.

That's right--sustainability, not usually a topic that gets much play in the rock world. But with suit-wearing participants from the ICLEI (Local Governments For Sustainability) World Congress wandering over from the Shaw Conference to mingle with a crowd of music lovers, it made perfect sense. The entire enterprise kept with the theme; there were small pavilions devoted to recycling, delicious, locally produced food from Julianna Mimande, a water truck for those who had brought along their own containers, and another tent that promised free water for anyone promising to listen about recycling for five minutes.

After opening sets from Andrea House and Yes Nice, the super group that is the That's Edmonton For You! Indie Rock Orchestra wandered up to multiples of guitars, keyboards and percussion. All 10 musicians stayed on throughout, shifting around between instruments as needed.

Anderson--dapper in white shirt and pants plus David Lee Roth-style panama hat--stood to the side with a toy piano for punctuation, relating droll anecdotes that rambled around the topic of the show.

The songs themselves--adeptly studio-produced by Doug Organ, with string arrangements by Moni Mathew--made a good transition to live, with very few problems or clashes. There were clear highlights --Workin'Hard For Easy, with Colleen Brown and Amy van Keeken from The Secretaries channelling Heart, and Ted Wright's We Are Mountains, with drummers Scott Davidchuk and Gravy pounding away while two kids sat off to the side mimicking them. The string quartet to the side added small touches throughout the show, but it was on the raucous We Are Mountains that they really stood out --a strange, 20-second interlude that gave way immediately into more of Wright's relentless rock 'n' roll.

The city's new poet laureate, Cadence Weapon, showed off a laconic, Beck-esque singing style on Lazy For Everything, Lyle Bell of Whitney Houston offered A Devil in the Woodpile, and Shout Out Out Out Out's Nik Kozub tied it together with the pulsing electronic title track.

In the end, an exhausted Anderson --looking forward to a beer and an ice bath--couldn't have been happier.

"It's exceeded my wildest expectations-- you could feel this connection between the audience and the musicians."

Media Contact

Thomas Colonna
+1 780-288-5528
media@iclei.org

 

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