Hot bands are skipping Ottawa. But Mike Olson writes lots of cool bands are still getting left out in the cold
By Mike Olson
The new amalgamated Ottawa may be the fourth- largest city in the country. But that hasn’t put it on the radar when it comes to the hottest bands on tour.
Our sizeable Corel Centre will only be playing host to Canadian act the Barenaked Ladies in the near future. Local fans of big acts like Radiohead and U2 must watch in vain as their idols come to earth only in hallowed places like Toronto and Montreal.
Some music fans might wonder why the big bands continue to snub us when Ottawa is now a bona fide mega-city.
But it’s nothing personal, says Johnny Vegas, local lounge-lizard impresario and director of entertainment for Barrymore’s.
“To the agents, Ottawa is not that big of a market,” says Vegas.
He says most foreign acts simply don’t do Canadian tours, although they might take a quick jaunt to Toronto and Montreal since both are fairly close to the border. So when it comes to getting skipped over, Ottawa is no different from other Canadian cities like Vancouver, Edmonton or Halifax.
Does the greater abundance of venues in Toronto and Montreal help them to attract the bands?
According to Vegas, more venues alone won’t do it. Booking acts is a tricky business that involves matching the band to the capacity of the club. With room for 500 people, Barrymore’s can be too small for some of the bigger acts. But more often, bands won’t play there because they know they won’t draw enough of a crowd. Vegas says Ottawa probably couldn’t sustain another 500-seater. While he thinks Ottawa has a pretty good range of venues, he does believe there’s at least room for one or two more clubs that can hold up to 300 people, like Zaphod Beeblebrox 2 which closed at the end of last year.
But far more than venues, the responsibility lies with promoters and their efforts to generate publicity. And that may be good news for music fans because the number of local promoters seems to be on the upswing. Acts like Wide Mouth Mason and Serial Joe were recently booked by PRS Concerts.
Those who bemoan the fact that the most popular bands seem to feel they are too big for Ottawa are being unrealistic, says Eugene Haslam, owner of Zaphod Beeblebrox. Despite our new status as a mega-city, Ottawa’s population is still only around a million. He says Ottawa simply can’t compete with Toronto and Montreal, places with populations between four and six million people.
All the same, Haslam says the quality of acts coming through Ottawa is better than ever.
“The fact is that the empirical data shows that we have more bands now than we have ever had in the history of Ottawa,” he says. “There’s more things going on, there’s more local bands, more regional bands, national bands, international bands coming through.”
But Haslam says those who complain about Ottawa’s music scene are forgetting about the dozens of lesser-known, quality acts which play Ottawa each year. He points out that all the bands currently filling the stadiums found their feet in the clubs. Radiohead, for example, played here before the world knew who they were.
Instead of waiting around for the unlikely day that your favourite big band hits town, Haslam advises people to spend $5 and take a chance on an upcoming act.
“Tomorrow’s current heroes are playing here now,” he says. “People just have to understand that all this stuff is lurking right under their noses. It lurks there all the time and you just have to pay attention.”
Haslam says people who complain that Ottawa doesn’t cut it musically should get out of the house and become participants in the local music scene.
“Going to see a band is not always about going to see the band specifically,” he says. “There’s this whole culture that happens from hanging around and seeing the same faces, and building friendships and talking about your jobs – it’s a social phenomenon. It’s much larger than bands, this whole thing.”
And when it comes to fostering new talent, Ottawa can hold its own with bigger cities like Montreal and Toronto.
Ottawa has nurtured such talents as Jim Bryson, Danny Michel, the Wooden Stars, Snailhouse, Weights and Measures, Starling, Kepler, Paperjack, as well as too many others to list.
Rob Snasdell-Taylor, bass player for the local band The Pop Shove Its, says Ottawa is a much better place for independent bands than Toronto.
“You can grow musically, and the people in the scene are generally always helpful,” he says. “Ottawa is the right size.”