Co-founder of the groundbreaking weekly music series Wavelength returns to active Sunday-night duty at The Garrison with a new music series..
In this week’s Night Shift column, The Grid‘s Paul Aguirre Livingston noted the paucity of reliable Sunday-night entertainment options in this town and, for a certain sector of the populace—i.e., experimental/underground/indie-music enthusiasts —that vacuum is partially explained by the discontinuation of Wavelength as a regular Sunday-night happening. Citing erratic attendance and the difficulties in finding innovative artists to book week-in week-out, the organizers behind the groundbreaking music showcase series—which provided an early-career springboard to practically every Toronto indie artist of note between 2000 and 2010—decided to phase out the weekly event refocus their energies on staging special one-off events and annual festivals.
However, at least one member of the Wavelength braintrust is missing the Sunday-night routine: Duncan Macdonnell—better known to Wavelength regulars as the series’ regular emcee, Doc Pickles—has announced plans to host a new “low-key/high-ambition” weekly series, Crosswires, at The Garrison beginning Sunday, Feb. 26 (a week after Wavelength’s four-night 12th-anniversary festival draws to a close). But as much as he’s eager to provide a stage to local upstarts and veterans alike, Macdonnell is especially keen on reviving Wavelength’s original pay-what-you-can policy, which has understandably fallen by the wayside as the organization puts on more ambitious (read: more costly) events. In a missive sent out today, Macdonnell writes:
I believe PWYC is an ethic. It levels the playing field in so many ways, I’ve seen shows from the point of view of working for Sony Music or the Drake Hotel, and I’ve seen shows from the point of view of being the starving artist praying the reed organ stays in tune for just one more song, and the one single act that levels the playing field is to throw open the accessibility of the show with a PWYC price point. Pay-What-You-Can is the cardamom of price structures, it’s just perfect. If you make it free, people will take it for granted. If you overinflate demand or overcharge for the show, a whole host of people materialize to take a cut of the kitty, none of whom have anything to do with the creation or execution of the music.
We’re living in a climate that is eerily similar to the days of Mayor Mel and Priemer Mike, when our elites met the creativity of the community with an incredulous mix of hostility and apathy. The only way to change anything is get out there and to do it yourself, with an interdependent temperament and an independent state of mind.
The inaugural Feb. 26 edition of Crosswires will feature Brent Randall of East Coast crew The Pinecones, The Tres Bien Ensemble (featuring members of Wavelength faves Wayne Omaha and Oxford County Circus) and a “special guest” who Macdonnell claims to have “idolized for 20 years… she’s also a transplanted Easterner, but she’s playing a show [in February] so I’m going to wait until then to announce who she is on CrosswiresToronto.blogspot.com.”
If you can’t figure it out, well, all I can say is: a-Doi.
