This Halloween, the Centretown Recording Alliance is challenging local musicians to record and submit songs – originals or covers – as part of a musical exercise celebrating local music.
But there’s a catch: the songs must have a Halloween theme.
The challenge is the eighth in a series of Centretown Recording Challenges that began in 2011 “as a way to encourage our friends . . . to step outside their musical comfort zone,” says Sarah Wotherspoon, interim administrator of this particular challenge – or, as the CRA site describes her, “interim spookministrator.”
Contrary to the name, participants don’t have to be from Centretown. Instead, they are required to maintain what the website calls “the spirit of Centretown.”
“They don’t even have to be from Ottawa,” Wotherspoon says. “It’s all about creative inclusion and support, and hopefully helping to push each other in new directions.”
Although this is the first challenge to have a spooky spin, many previous challenges have had themes, including Canada Day and Christmas.
“It really helps to kind of give it a focus,” says Dave Banoub, 31, the guitarist and lead vocalist in Centretown rock band Yuma County, but “a focus that then there’s tons of room to vary from.”
The challenge isn’t a contest. Rather, participants gather once the submissions are received to listen to what others came up with. For Banoub, the community-building aspect of the challenge fuels a desire to produce new and high-quality recording.
“It pushes me not to settle, to want to impress my friends,” he says. “I feel like it makes me work a little bit harder than maybe I normally would.”
If traditional Halloween tunes such as Monster Mash aren’t musicians’ cup of tea, they don’t have to rule out the challenge. Banoub says the submissions should yield “something for everyone,” spanning genres from pop punk – the bulk of recordings – to electronic and singer-songwriter ukulele covers.
“It’s all over the place,” he says.
The challenge offers a chance for new musicians to try their hands at recording or writing in a new genre, but also to get to know the tightly-knit Centretown music community, the spirit of which permeates the alliance.
“It’s a very friendly and easy-going bunch,” says Banoub. “I think a lot of people have been around for a while, but everyone’s always trying something new and there’s new bands forming all the time.”
Yuma County, for example, was born out of a previous challenge – Wotherspoon, incidentally, is the group’s drummer – as was local group finderskeepers, says Banoub.
Above all, the musicians seem to have an appreciation for their community. Steve McCrimmon, 29, says he appreciates Centretown’s “great” venues and promoters, as well as audience members and record stores. McCrimmon plays in Fresh Hell, another local group that includes a few members from finderskeepers.
“I am proud and excited about so much that happens around here,” he said in an email. “There is a sense of commitment to our little scene/music/community that I love.”
Both Banoub and McCrimmon are working on Halloween-themed tunes. Banoub says listeners can expect a “ghost love song,” while McCrimmon’s will recall “a crazy time my wife Kendall and I had in Florida last Halloween.”
The deadline for submissions is midnight on Oct. 29. Intrigued musicians can email recordings to the Centretown Recording Alliance at centretownrecords@gmail.com, or upload recordings to a sharing service and email the link.
The finished products will be available online for free download by Halloween at centretownrecords.bandcamp.com.