“What'll I do if you never wanna come back
Sittin in a city that is always on the attack
What'll I do if you never want me back
Come with me come back we'll live again”
-Rural Alberta Advantage - Edmonton
Now I don’t mean to harp on Edmonton, or Alberta for that matter, but I feel that I’m due some space to make a critique, after all it’s the place of my birth and the first 26 years of my life. I return often to this province and this city, and I’m always struck upon my arrival at how unapologetically grey it is… Well that’s a little unfair as there are shades of beige. This was the case when I arrived there last summer to visit family and to document a new festival that was happening. SOSfest, the Sounds of Old Strathcona.
For those that don’t know, Old Strathcona is the arts district of Edmonton, and home to the cities largest festival, the Fringe. On the streets you’ll find buskers, trying to eek out a living amongst the drunken weekend rabble who seem only to eager to prove their masculinity through physical violence, and playing in some of the worst weather imaginable, my friend Daniel Buxton would often be seen playing for hours every night in minus thirty degree weather.
Edmonton remains, as it always has been a blue-collar, red neck town. Many of the young people coming from across Canada to work in the Oil Patch in Fort McMurray five hours north, showing up in Edmonton every couple of weeks with pockets overflowing with cash, to spend it on drink, and drugs, and start drunken brawls. In fact there isn’t a morning when the paper is free from a list of stabbings the night before, usually outside a bar or a nightclub. I’ve known many people who have left Old Strathcona and Edmonton for this very reason.
However much like Detroit of the 1960’s and 70’s with the rise of artists on the Motown label, and bands such as the MC5, and Iggy Pop, and more recently Jack White and the White Stripes, Edmonton too is home to an amazing assortment of talented musicians, drawing inspiration from the malaise and the greyness around them. They freely tell tales of the violence, and the heartbreak they see within the city they love, because they do love it, there is a heart and soul that no matter how much hate, and depression someone from Edmonton sees there, or no matter how far they travel there always remains a connection to this place, and they always come back, some for a day, or a week, others to live.
Old Strathcona, known simply by most as Whyte Ave, is a district that I spent much of my time as a youth, drinking, doing drugs, and lingering about nearly every day. The people I spent time with, were artists, musicians and generally people most would consider outcasts, because they spent too much time drinking, and doing drugs. Yet it’s these very people that make up the cultural character of the city, it’s these people whose music is heard in the bars and the nightclubs every night around town. It’s these people who pay the bills in sub zero temperatures with nothing but a guitar and fingerless gloves, and it’s these people who were happiest to hear about SOSfest.
With the more arts inclined set of Old Strathcona, especially those who have been around for years, they see it as a return to the glory that was once Whyte avenue, a place where there were buskers on every corner, sharing their ideas, and their music with not just the tourists to the area, but each other, with spontaneous jams occurring everywhere in the summer, sometimes with an open hat to pass around, and sometimes in the park just for fun. They lent vibrancy to the area; they lent colour to a city that was becoming increasingly colourless, and softness to a city where aggressive attitudes were on the rise all the time. White avenue changed, the old wooden signs and store fronts were replaced by the bright neon signs of new bars, and the logos of a corporate American chain culture, and with more and more fights and violence on the street at night the soul of the district became disillusioned, fractured and seemingly overnight disappeared into the grey.
The music however survived, it became a way out, and it became in many ways stronger. It moved from the parks in the summer, to the basement of someone’s house, to the café’s and bars that offered more open jam nights. If there was a place to play those musical fixtures of Whyte ave were sure to be there, looking for a new home, and a new place to play, only venturing down to Whyte to share stories and pints at the Black Dog. It led to perhaps an even greater meeting of the minds. Open mics turned into a way for the new kids to mix with the Old Guard, and there was much cross-generational-cultural-pollination. Suddenly everyone knew someone with a recording studio in their basement, and there were more local recordings available, albeit on a very small scale. At least every show I went to at SOSfest every band had a CD, and many had vinyl records for sale (just further proof that it doesn’t take a label), and even some tapes. One could amass a very serious collection of recordings whilst attending the festival.
Every single show I took in at SOSfest was loaded with immense talent, and anyone of them with the right motivation could take it as far as they wanted to, that said though some don’t want to, but others such as the Shout Out Out Out Out’s, and Cadence Weapon have been doing a remarkable job of pushing themselves out there, with the former being credited to starting a riot at a performance in 2009, and the latter being named the Poet Laureate of Edmonton in that same year. There is definitely something happening within the musical scene in this very grey city.
So SOSfest was seen less as the Sounds of Old Strathcona, but as a way to Save Old Strathcona, to take back the streets and try to re-capture a bit of what it used to be. I wrote just after returning for the festival that even in its first year SOSfest is one of Edmonton’s most important festivals. It was styled after Calgary’s Sled Island festival, which is a great coming together of people from around the world, and hosted by multiple venues in Calgary, and as big as it’s gotten, I hope that it’s something SOSfest never becomes, because SOSfest carries much more importance than Sled Island. SOSfest is a cross-section of the music of Alberta, from the exquisite cowboy music, to the fast, and crusty, and rough edged rock and roll, not to mention the Blues, and the Hip-Hop. It is a strong example of the strength that music can offer when the originators find themselves in a place that is seemingly unsupportive. When there exists a dichotomy between time and place, there also often exists an inspiration born from the love and the hate that is created, and this is far too true of Edmonton. While many try to be positive in the music they write, there are those like Cadence Weapon who write more honestly, and not hide from the truth that are the streets outside, “Yo, It’s corrupt where I’m from, Edmonton… Tough!, The swedes could speak about the heads we drum…Rough!, City lights will leave you red with blood”, but when performing it live he told a story about working in Oliver Square at the McDonalds, and speaks highly of the city he loves.
Summed up SOSfest isn’t about promoting Edmonton’s music scene to outsiders, It’s about giving voice to the musical community, and showing Edmontonians the great variety of music that comes from within. There is love here Edmonton.
Unpublished