Festival lassos Beck

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2017 (2436 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

After just two years as part of the city’s saturated summer festival scene, Interstellar Rodeo has quickly become a highly anticipated event for many local music lovers. And buzz for the 2017 edition of the music and wine festival — which begins Aug. 18 at The Forks and runs through Aug. 20 — has been growing steadily since the announcement that Grammy Award-winning alt-rock/alternative artist Beck would be making his Winnipeg debut as the headliner on Aug. 19.

“It’s just so incredible to have an artist of that stature, being able to bring him to our stage at Interstellar Rodeo,” Shauna de Cartier, president of Six Shooter Records, the label that hosts the festival, told the Free Press before the official lineup announcement in May.

“He’s an artist that really embodies what we love about music and artists at Six Shooter and at Interstellar Rodeo — the perfect mix of originality, critical acclaim, popular acclaim… a groundbreaking artist of our time.”

Beck broke through to the masses in 1992 with the singlmise Loser from the album Mellow Gold, which incorporated elements of rock, hip-hop, folk and psychedelia. Over the years the Los Angeles-native remained an unpredictable musical chameleon releasing a string of albums that veered from hard-hitting funk to mellow singer-songwriter-oriented material. He will release the new album, Colors, in October.

His show Saturday will be the first time he has ever played in Winnipeg.

Those who have attended the fest in past years will notice the Interstellar team has made some changes on site this year. Their main goal is to improve sight lines by removing some of the interior tents that would impede “optimal viewing,” as well as adding additional video screens for those sitting further away from the stage. As for food and booze, the bar is moving to where the food trucks were previously stationed and the food will relocate to another portion of the site.

“There are so many changes,” de Cartier says during a quick phone chat last week while she was on site at The Forks doing festival prep.

One thing that hasn’t changed, it would seem, is Winnipeggers’ interest in attending the festival; last year there was a dramatic increase in ticket sales over the debut edition, and de Cartier says pre-sale tickets continue to be on an incline with 2017’s numbers surpassing those of 2016.

“That’s to be expected, though, given the increased expense on talent,” she adds.

It’s no secret that Interstellar’s talent budget was, indeed, maxed out for this year’s fest — headliners such as Father John Misty, Broken Social Scene and Beck all carry hefty price tags, and the additional cost is something de Cartier and her team consider heavily when deciding who to book.

“(The cost) is one of the many risks inherent in producing an event like Interstellar Rodeo. We have built the budget, marketing plans, and operational plans to target the capacity we think the venue can handle and that we think we can attract. And then we boldly step forward,” she says.

Sunday night’s headliner — indie-rock music collective Broken Social Scene — is doing double-duty with Interstellar Rodeo this year, closing out both the Edmonton and Winnipeg festivals.

“The Edmonton one was nice, we got hit with a bit of electrical fury from the gods and then the heavens opened up but, y’know, we got through it, we played, people stayed and it was really nice,” says Brendan Canning, one of the founding members of, and bassist for, the band, whose number of members hovers between 10 and 18.

“It’s nice to be playing something for the Six Shooter folks, we’re just happy to be included in the party.”

Last month, Broken Social Scene released their long-awaited new record, Hug of Thunder — their first since 2010’s Forgiveness Rock Record; it’s a dense piece of work, sonically speaking, but has a feeling of directness, and oozes with the lush harmonies and moody vibe fans have come to adore in their past works and have waited a long time to hear again.

Though this gap between records was by far the longest (they’ve released just five full-length albums in their near 20 years as a band), and the side-projects many members were working on turned into priority projects that earned their own success outside of BSS — including Feist, Metric and Stars — Canning says he always knew the band would reunite.

“There was never really any doubt in my mind. I just felt that the book hadn’t been fully written yet, I always imagined we had a lot more – well, I don’t know about a lot more, but we definitely had some more to add to the conversation. We’re still here enjoying it, for the most part,” he says.

“The Social Scene stuff has been really fun; it hasn’t been a smooth sail because… it just can’t be. This band is never smooth,” he later adds with a laugh when discussing their upcoming North American tour.

“But it’s been really fun and it’s been nice just playing the gigs and having people welcome us back and being able to stand behind a new record we all feel relatively proud of at the end of the day.”

Things may not always be smooth, but Canning says from day one, the mandate of “family first” has been at the forefront of the group and is now at the forefront of their music. The idea of unity is somewhat of a through line on Hug of Thunder; it’s a concept that is important within the context of the band, but one that is also universally necessary, especially now, given the current social and political environments. Canning explains while BSS never tries to be overtly political, it’s important to acknowledge the power of music to affect change and to utilize the reach they have.

“I think the responsibility aspect is a big one because you’re given a platform and how are you going to use it? Are you going to use it to churn out a couple little pop ditties and hopefully everyone likes them, or maybe you want to delve a little bit deeper… when you have the microphone, you should be making use of it for a good purpose. I think that’s something we don’t look upon lightly.”

The theme of unity also pops up in title track Hug of Thunder in a less obvious way; Leslie Feist is credited with coming up with the odd phrase which Canning says was an obvious choice for the album’s title, but what’s less clear is what “hug of thunder” actually means.

“I think it’s a bit of a cosmic concept… It’s just that feeling when you’re sitting at home and you’re looking out the window at the lightning and feel the thunder, whatever that feeling is,” Canning clarifies. “When Leslie sang that lyric, it sort of became the obvious title for the album. It’s just whatever you feel when you look out that window and the rain is coming down and it’s kind of threatening but very life-affirming that you’re part of something much larger.”

 

erin.lebar@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @NireRabel