CKUA Community Members are listeners, volunteers, donors, musicians, sponsors, announcers, staff members or anyone else for whom CKUA plays an important role in their lives. Please contact us if you have a suggestion for a community member article.
Peter North
Ever wondered what exactly a Music Promoter does? Peter North, host of both Dead Ends and Detours and Points North, has been a promoter for almost 40 years and tells us about his experience.
Peter North in Main Control
How did you get started as a promoter?
I got started as an offshoot of being a student in Performing Arts at Victoria Composite high school in the early 70s. In those days, liquor laws were very stringent and you needed a society to get a liquor license - so a bunch of us started one and called it the Geodesic Dome Society for Alberta. We actually built a dome out of two-by-sixes. It was huge – we could get 60 people in it.
Our society used to hold annual parties in June in a little town called Alix near Stettler, and we’d do street theatre, have fireworks, host a couple of dances and sort of take over the town. Somebody had to book the bands, and at some point it became my turn and I just sort of got the bug from that. Our first booking was the group Pontiac in the early 70s, consisting of Lionel Rault, Ron Rault, Chris Nordquist and Rob Storshaw. I’ve actually known Lionel since I was 20. I used to manage Lionel (if you could call it that) back in the late 70s.
Around the same time, I got involved booking a few shows in Edmonton's Theatre 3 after their theatre season ended in April. I had actually been the stage carpenter at Theatre 3 when I was in high school - and I just liked the stage of their new place. There I did shows with P.J. Perry and Bob Carpenter, the great folk singer. I noticed they were playing both Winnipeg and Vancouver folk festivals, and of course this was long before the internet or ways of finding people. I just called the Winnipeg folk fest office and they gave me the name of their agent (who happened to be Richard Flohill).
P.J.Perry
And Richard led me through the whole thing about how to book American acts including work papers and immigration stuff that had to be done. They played two nights, and they were amazing shows. They’d just left Paul Butterfield's Better Days band, and were really at the top of their game. I could probably still write down the set list. That was my first international touring effort.
I then went back to school in Thunder Bay, taking Arts Admin at Confederation College. It taught me a lot about the arts world in general, including grants and accounting. After a short stop in Toronto I made it back to Edmonton at the request of Larry Wanagas, who started Homestead Recorders. We started booking more bands together and then one day kd lang walked in to audition for a western swing band and within months, if not weeks, Larry was managing kd - so we were booking her everywhere.
What are the steps in promoting a show?
I'll use the example of my most recent show, the Front Porch Tribute to the Band, which runs January 19th and 20th at the Ironwood, and January 21st at Festival Place.
You start with an anchor date from a great venue like Festival Place, who have been very supportive. You don’t just want it to be a one nighter. Then you go and find a couple other great venue gigs; in this case two nights at the Ironwood. And then it’s my job to promote those shows, because the Ironwood is like a lot of places – it's a showcase room with a door deal, which means you charge what you think will work and you take the door, the club takes the bar.
Ironwood Stage & Grill Festival Place
I’m responsible for paying for the guys’ rooms and their wages, I hire the publicist, make sure the posters are done and put up, help with the promotion in Calgary and Edmonton. That’s where the trick is - not to lay an egg in a certain marketplace or else you’re going to be out of pocket.
In this case I also produced the show. So Ron Rault and I started the process of picking tunes and then inviting the other artists to give us ideas about what songs they would like to perform; coming up with set lists and a flow to the show; and just the logistics of who would be on stage when, making sure The Band's repertoire is properly represented from the earliest days right through to the last incarnation with Levon Helm and Rick Danko and Garth Hudson, the last original members.
Do you have any words of advice for people interested in becoming a promoter?
So many people are trying to be promoters, with varying degrees of success. It’s such a different landscape these days, with more acts than ever out there, and lots of people wanting to become a musician. But there’s no middle class of musician – they’ve almost been wiped out. You’re either playing the Jube or Rexall Place, or working door deals and hoping someone’s going to show up. The days of guarantees of playing 6 nights in a hotel tavern and making good money a couple of times a month, allowing you to work on other artistic endeavours… those days are gone.
Northern Jubilee Auditorium
To a degree they've been replaced by folk clubs and community theatres but those are one-nighters, and competition for those gigs has become even stiffer over the last 2 years with the implosion of the American economy. Lots of great American acts are roaming the land up here playing for half of what they would have played for 2 years ago.
I also think there are more people between the audience and the artist, vying for a piece of the pie - everybody’s taking a slice. I’m appalled by the greed factor; by some of the fees that certain artists want these days. In some cases they can get it, but in others, managers are ruining their artists’ careers. They have to go back a couple years later with their tail between their legs. I can think of people I’ve worked with, who 4 years ago were asking $5000 or $10,000 are now asking 6 or 7 times that amount. And it’s not based on a proportionate rise in popularity.
Everybody looks after themselves in that business. You have to be really tough, laying down the law sometimes, knowing when to place a desire to work with somebody on the back burner and realizing the financial equation just isn’t going to work in your favour - a lesson every young promoter needs to learn right off the bat. Sometimes it’s just cheaper, if you really want to see someone, and you really appreciate their art, it’s just cheaper to get on a plane and go see them somewhere and then you get to see the whole damn show. Because when you’re a promoter, you’re always doing financial settlements in the back, or managing catering; making sure the venue’s looked after, paying crew members, making sure they haven’t trashed the hotel room…
John
"We dream of a world as good as CKUA!"
CKUA Listener John, living in Fort Benton, Montana
Here I am last winter just south of Lethbridge, near Cutbank, Montana, working on the MATLine (Montana-Alberta Tie Line), an electric transmission line under construction from Lethbridge to Great Falls, Montana. It was being built from a Canadian-owned firm, Tonbridge, now by Enbridge. I brought diesel fuel to all equipment up to the border; that is how I came across CKUA; I didn't have a chance to actually work in Alberta.
Dennis
Our CKUA friend Dennis contacted us during his swathing recently..."It went great. Close to 2600 acres finished now. Worked until 11:30. And I was listening to CKUA." I asked him for photos and he sent these. Enjoy!
Dennis and his grandson and son-in-law
The Swather
Here are some recent photos swathing canola...taken from the cab. The swather has auto-steer, activated by GPS. It steers itself in a straight line across the field.
AutoSteer
1844 total acres (Dennis had done 2600 by the time he sent me this photo)
View from the cab
Bob Kenyon
Bob Kenyon
Meet Bob Kenyon - a CKUA listener, supporter, volunteer, and facebook commentator. Bob stopped by for a visit to our Green Room one Friday in June, and told us his story.
My dad was a real tinkerer - he actually built his own stereo component unit and his own speaker boxes. He listened to CKUA a lot because it was on FM, and he liked Classical, big band & show tunes. I had a radio in my bedroom, and listened to rock stations. I discovered CKUA after I got tired of hearing the same stuff over and over...when you have a dial on your radio, you tweedle it around! Friends of mine at Jasper Place High School had also told me about 580AM – and they suggested I listen at night, to (whispers conspiratorially) ‘Underground Music’ with Tony Dillon Davis. As I grew up, my tastes changed; but even when I was young I liked folk music. I still have my original Simon & Garfunkel ‘Bookends', and recently got my turntable going. I've now been listening to vinyl – and just love it!
I went to all the great concerts in Edmonton – Jethro Tull, Led Zeppelin, Cream – there were 3 marvellous venues in Edmonton: Edmonton Gardens (long gone), the Sales Pavilion (long gone), and the Kinsmen Field House, with its dirt floor for the track & field meets there.
A few years ago I went to Cypress Hills. I could pick up CKUA from Medicine Hat to Cypress Hills, but right as I drove into Saskatchewan, I lost the signal, almost like it stopped right at the provincial border… a couple days later I drove back by Brooks & Drumheller, & I could hear CKUA from Medicine Hat all the way to Edmonton.
The CKUA announcers will play old artists, who might have been out of the music scene a while - like Tom Jones releasing a new album. You don’t hear that on other stations. Nor will you hear about people passing away either – but CKUA played Janis Joplin and the Full Tilt Boogie Band, when Rick Bell died.
CKUA does so much for arts & culture here in Alberta, but I think in terms of finding new listeners, we're often preaching to the choir – we've somehow got to get out there to people who don’t know about it. A lot of younger people who probably don’t listen to CKUA, would probably like it, but they just need to know when to listen.
And now CKUA's the only one I listen to – there are some fairly good internet stations, but by far CKUA is the only place left to go. I wake up to CKUA, go to bed with CKUA, got it on in the car...
Bob is publisher of YaGotta.ca, "Adventure Tourism Information About Places Ya'Gotta Go To!"
Olivia
Dear Baba,
Hello. My name is Olivia and I am 12 years old. I’ve been learning Spanish ever since I was in first grade. Naturally, my parents have been trying to make me listen to Spanish music. I’ve really tried to enjoy it, but I’ve always gotten bored because I couldn’t understand the lyrics.
Just last Christmas, my mom got me a CD of this Ecuadorian band called Sarazino. Once I started listening to them, I was totally amazed! You don’t even have to understand the lyrics to fall in love with them! Their music is so catchy with really cool beats. In a few of their songs they have electric guitar solos and ambulance sounds.
Just like most bands, some of their songs are better than others. My favourite ones are: Cochabamba, Nadia and Desbaratado. I would really appreciate it if you played some of Sarazino’s music.
Thanks for reading this letter!
From, Olivia.
P.S: My parents are CKUA donors. My whole family loves CKUA! CKUA is how I discovered and started to love Michael Franti at age 8. You guys are a radio station like no other!
Hello Olivia,
It was such a delight to find music of 'Sarazino' yesterday, and then to share it with the wide world of CKUA.
Your email is a testimony of what CKUA is and can be even more so, ever expanding and inclusive. Much honoured to have you and your family as our listeners and friends.
Thank you, and I do hope we keep in touch, maybe one of these days you will have some of your own music to share on the air waves ...CKUA is here for all of us...
Baba
Michael Keyes
The CKUA Music Library is humming with projects these days – everything from digitizing music in our Digital Music Library, to making music charts (and a whole lot in between). These projects, which help build and enhance our musical resources (both digital and analogue), could not be done without the generous help of our volunteers.
Michael has been a constant in the CKUA Music Library for many years. Michael comes in, without fail, every Thursday evening, to work on the project that he likes best in the library – that of putting labels on CDs, and taking old labels off of CDs. Many bottles of rubbing alcohol and Googone later, Michael is still working here, for which we are very grateful!
Michael has an eye for detail and is very meticulous, and is always looking for ways to do things better and more efficiently (he even designed and made some tools for the job, which he gave to the CKUA Music Library).
Thank you, Michael, for your years of dedication to the CKUA Music Library!
Anita Jenkins
Growing up on a farm in the 1950s, isolated from everything, Anita Jenkins developed a taste for the music she heard on CHED – one of the only stations strong enough to broadcast out into the rural part of the province. She says she heard all kinds of rock music – Big Bopper, Little Richard, Chubby Checkers, and B.B. King. But it wasn’t until she went to the University of Alberta a decade later that she discovered CKUA.
“I was a huge fan of Bill Coull,” she says. “He had a lifelong career, having started at CKUA when he was 18 – he was extremely talented. Every now and then I’d be inspired to phone him, though I didn’t know the guy – his name was “cool”, his music was cool, and when I finally met him he was like a schoolteacher. It’s funny how your image of the announcer is nothing like (the real person)…"
"I don’t think I’d listen to any jazz at all if it weren’t for CKUA – Bill Coull taught me about jazz. Because of him, I took out John Coltrane’s ‘Love Supreme’ from the library. I feel like I have a Master’s degree in music from listening all these years. I would not have known anything about the sophisticated music I listen to if it weren’t for CKUA.”
CKUA helped Anita not only develop her musical tastes, but also played a romantic part in her life. She met her future husband in 1966 (she says it might have been on a blind date).
“He came to my apartment and I had the radio on, and he said, ‘Oh I see you listen to CKUA too’…when CKUA went off the air in 1997, I told my husband that we needed to get a divorce – CKUA was the only thing we had in common!”
Anita soon went from being a listener to being a volunteer. She answered phones for 20 years, and found that one of the exciting things about phone campaigns was getting to meet the announcers (all of whom she knows now). Today, her CKUA volunteer role is as Coordinator for the Winspear Centre in Edmonton. She makes sure that volunteers, called CKUA ambassadors, are available for selected concerts held at the Winspear. Ambassadors set up a table and bring along a CKUA banner, information about CKUA programming, and giveaways such as CKUA guitar picks. They chat with concert-goers who stop by the table (many of whom are ardent CKUA fans already).
"I knew our family was musically inclined – I’m the oldest of 11 – but I realized just how much we shared a love for music after I’d become a volunteer for CKUA, and I was answering phones. The announcers would always say the names of the volunteers on air. My sister in Calgary mentioned one time that she’d heard my name on the radio. Then, on a separate occasion, my brother said that he too had heard my name on the radio. I didn’t know that either of them listened to the station. So we’re all connecting through CKUA without even knowing it."
Susan Campbell
Shortly after her move, one idle Friday night, Susan was turning the dial and stopped at 94.9. CKUA happened to be running a campaign, so Susan called in to donate. She asked to hear anything by Ken Hamm – a musician she’d follow from “bar to bar in Thunder Bay when my university friends and I were like groupies” – and 20 minutes after her request, she heard his music played on her boom box. That, she says, was the beginning of her love affair with CKUA.
It took her a couple of years before she was brave enough to volunteer. She thought that volunteering at CKUA was a kind of elite opportunity – and she would have to wait for someone to die before a space would open up.
She started out on phones and “had a whale of a time…in the old days we’d phone out if the phones weren’t busy.” Sometimes she would get pledges from Andrew or Tofield or Mundare, and it would be “Joe Blow on his field – harvesting, or on the fields in spring”.
In 2001 she retired from the Department of Justice, where she worked as a legal policy analyst, and she started a cake business in Edmonton. “I was raised on cake,” she says. “My mom was an at-home mom who cooked real food & baked real baking, so my idea of cake, is cake!” Because she doesn’t use food dye to colour her icing and decorate her cake, she is a “dollar-store junkie…one time I made a cake with a train that actually ran on a track” for a little boy celebrating his birthday. Every campaign Susan creates elaborate theme trays of baked goodies and brings them in for the CKUA volunteers and staff.
A couple of campaigns ago, Susan worked for CKUA in hospitality, where she has stayed on as a regular volunteer, usually signing up for 4 shifts each campaign. Susan says “most hospitality volunteers are seasoned vets. We do it because we like it. But it is a lot of hard work, running up and down the stairs, feeding a lot of people; cleaning out the fridge…” Susan says that her life revolves around the campaigns. This year she scheduled a visit home to her ailing mother around the fall campaign dates. "If I were to win the lottery," she says, "the campaign would indeed be short and sweet. In the meantime, I'll do my tiny part."
Her appreciation of CKUA stems from her respect for the announcers. She is “amazed at the humility – every announcer is an encyclopaedia of music – happy to share, excited to find something new, listener responsive… most announcers asks listeners to send emails.” She continues, “Holger Petersen. – I hear him on air, then I buy some music, it’s from Stony Plain Records, and it’s 4-5 years before I learn that this announcer at CKUA is a giant of Canadian music.”
As a pure listener I have been thrilled from the minute I found the station on the dial, from ‘Oh God I love this’ to ‘Who’s this on the dial’. As a supporter of Canadian and Albertan talent, I don’t think there’s any equal. I never listen to anything else.
Claude Debussy: Nocturnes
by Montreal SO & Women's Chorus / Charles Dutoit
 |
Patricia Petibon - Melancolia: Spanish Arias and Songs Reviewed by Orest Soltykevych, host of Saturday Breakfast |
