DETAILS

Sled Island 2009
Olympic Plaza
Wednesday, June 24 - Saturday, June 27

More in: Rock / Pop

It’s only noon and Zak Pashak is already exhausted.

Sitting in Broken City, the bar he’s owned for five years, he stretches his arms across the top of a bench, leaning back like a boxer resting against the ropes between rounds. In the week before his independent Sled Island music festival kicks off, finalizing last-minute details and preparing for an influx of more than 200 bands, Pashak takes a moment to criticize what he feels is inadequate coverage from the local press.

“Fast Forward this week is really shameful,” says Pashak of the June 18 paper. “You’ve got a major international music festival happening in your city and in the city’s weekly arts and entertainment paper, it’s a side note? We’re getting press in England. We get 4,000 hits a day on our website.”

Pashak isn’t the kind of person to hold back. It’s a quality that, love him or loathe him, has made him a central and divisive character in the local music scene. But, undeniably, he cares deeply for that scene. If SkyNet was to gain sentience overnight and transform Calgary into a post-apocalyptic wasteland, you get a sense that Pashak would continue fighting for the local music scene.

“There’s something that feels new about championing the local scene,” he says. “A city like New York, where people have been championing their own scene for many decades, is more established. In Calgary, people don’t give a fuck about things that happen in Calgary. So, there’s an opportunity here to really put something together and fire people up."

Three years since the festival’s creation, it’s difficult to imagine a Calgary without Sled Island. In its first year, the festival brought immediate international attention and legitimacy to the scene by importing attention-grabbing acts like Japan’s Boredoms. This year, though, the festival is relying less on heavyweight headliners and putting the burden of success onto the shoulders of the local scene. With veterans like The Dudes and Hot Little Rocket, internationally acclaimed artists like Chad VanGaalen and Women and up-and-coming shit-disturbers like Desert Boots and Miesha & the Spanks, the scene is more vibrant than it has been in years and the festival is more than willing to step up.

"Sled Island has galvanized the local music scene," says Spencer Brown, the man in charge of booking and promoting bands at The Palomino. "It's the strongest it's ever been, and it was more fuel to the fire when Sled Island came around."

Brown has been with The Palomino for about two years, but he’s promoted and booked shows for almost his entire adult life. More than most people, he understands a scene needs venues to establish a strong foundation. For a long time, Calgary didn’t have a proper base, perilously balancing on a single venue like the Night Gallery or Republik, and then falling into disorder whenever that venue folded. It’s only in recent years that things have changed. Sled Island has made large efforts in exploring and celebrating the many venues the city has to offer. Calgary is no longer just a one-show-a-night city, something that wasn’t true even a few years ago. “You have quality and consistent venues and each one is completely distinctive. Seeing a show at The Palomino, Broken City, The Marquee Room or at The Ship & Anchor, even if the bands are the same, each room has its own character,” says Brown.

Ian A. Russell, founder of Calgary music label Flemish Eye, concurs. “You can have four shows in one night now, and have each one be packed,” he says. “That’s a recent development. But I think Sled Island is more of a bellwether than an instigator for this change — this is the way things have been going for a couple of years.”

Russell’s label is home to arguably the most critically acclaimed musicians in the city — Chad VanGaalen and Women. When talking about the local scene, he mentions a certain sensibility those two bands share that comes from living in a city that spreads suburbs like Gonorrhea in a pantless hot tub party.

“Chad made a record long before he played a show and Women played one show before making a record,” says Russell. “Neither of them really relied on playing local bars. It comes from being suburban kids, hanging out in their parents’ basement and being in isolation. People here aren’t exposed to music on a non-stop basis, so they’ve got to make it themselves.”

“Though I don’t think this necessarily reflects an explosion of talent or that Calgary’s the next big thing,” Russell clarifies. “We don’t have the support here, in the same way other cities do. Montreal gets a lot of buzz because it’s a destination for artists. Until city council changes its perspective, we’ll never be a destination — we’ll be the place people choose to leave.”

Despite the general lack of respect the municipal government may have for the music scene, despite stringent sound bylaws, despite being a city that practically freebases oil and gas, there’s no question that a strong community has formed within the scene. In speaking with locals, most don’t remember a time when the scene was this united and proud. It isn’t all trust circles and friendship bracelets among Calgary musicians, though. A growing number feel Pashak and Sled Island play too strong a role in shaping the scene. Those who don’t share Pashak’s headstrong opinions and tastes feel they’re being ostracized.

The Lions is the kind of good old-fashioned rock and roll band that doesn’t get praised enough, the kind that proudly lists Oasis, Led Zepplin and The Beatles as influences without any irony. This year, while Calgary is overrun by Sled Island, The Lions are leaving the city to play Toronto’s North by Northeast festival — and they couldn’t be happier. Disgusted with what the band sees as a small group of so-called tastemakers wielding far too much power, it has stuck to doing its own thing and has actually succeeded without the help of Pashak or Sled Island.

“The music scene revolves around Broken City and how they tell other people what to do,” says Chris Millar of The Lions. “There is an outside scene because of that. Everybody does their own thing now, as a lot of bands are realizing they don’t need to play these ‘popular’ bars to be a band. We don’t kiss up to Zak or give a shit about Broken City, so if we don’t get to play Sled Island; that’s probably one of the reasons why.”

Tanner Holthe of the Nix Dicksons shares Millar’s frustration. Like The Lions, he feels his band is ostracized for not adhering to a certain sound and an unwillingness to play with Pashak’s ball, so to speak.

“It’s like if you don’t hang out at Broken City twice a week, you can’t get into the secret club and that means not playing Sled Island,” he says. “Sled Island markets itself as Calgary’s music scene and people start thinking that every band out of Calgary sounds like SIDS — just music in that hipster or avant garde genre. We have a versatile music scene and the vast majority of it isn’t represented in [that] music scene.”

When Pashak hears these accusations, he becomes visibly frustrated. He doesn’t understand the level of vitriol certain people level at him, because he believes he has nutured the scene and let it grow.

“This year, we’ve got a Calgary beardcore show in Sled Island, and I think that’s significant,” he says. “This is a ridiculously eclectic and diverse lineup of Calgary bands. What other festival in the world has 100 local bands playing? This is happening in Calgary, a scene that gets overlooked too often. Anyone who would claim it’s cliquey is missing the point.”

“It seems like there are a significant amount of people who do control the music scene here and don’t give a fuck,” says Pashak, referring to the local media. “That makes it seem like maybe this isn’t the right city to do it in. I feel like I’ve put in enough money, passion and time into building stuff and it’s not on my head. We’ll see how it goes this year. If it goes well, let’s do it again. If not, maybe we’ll move it out to Vancouver.”

That’s a lot of pressure, for both the scene and the festival. Sled Island can’t save us all, no matter how hard people wish. In speaking with various bands and luminaries of the scene, you would think it was the festival’s responsibility to usher in a new age. It seems people project all their hopes for the future of the scene and its potential onto a festival that was never meant to handle that burden. It cannot be all things and please all people in five days. If the festival does leave for Vancouver, it would be a shame, but the scene will survive.

“There was a period in the ’90s where there were festivals just as big as Sled Island, and much more lumbering,” says Russell. “They sort of come and go. It’d be nice if Sled Island can stick around for a long time, but if it doesn’t, the scene will recover just fine.”

This is all new for the three-piece funk band Platinum Alibi. Last week, the band celebrated its one-year anniversary. Like most bands in their second year, it’s still pursuing an audience. As outsiders stepping into a post-Sled Island music scene, the band is keeping a level head.

“Sled Island is not the end-all, be-all for local acts, but people look at this city because of it and think Calgary must have a rich music scene," says Chris McGeachy of Plantium Alibi. “We’re not playing the festival, but people will start hunting down more local music because of it. That’s how we’re all benefiting. Maybe we need to work harder. Maybe we need to do more to promote ourselves. We’ll keep on doing what we’re doing and maybe we’ll play Sled Island next year.”