Coco Jafro
Emotionally expressive and improvisational, this electrified fusion band will lead you on an groovy journey from funk to soul, embodying Latin and African beats. The addition of Moroccan born, lead guitarist Amine Said’s musical roots provide an exclusive sound with the proven power to instantly synchronize your soul.
Kutapira
Kutapira is a marimba and percussion ensemble formed in 2005 in East Vancouver. The band is made up of five musicians, ages 25-30, who started playing this fusion of world music when they were kids over 15 years ago. At the core of this band is the marimba music of Zimbabwe, fused with West African djembe, Afro-cuban conga’s and timbales and traditional drum kit which provides a steady driving groove. All members switch seamlessly between marimba and percussion.There is a magic created at the shows between audience and band members.
From toddlers to young adults, from senior’s to elementary school students, the energy and unique musical fusion, has been able to ignite something within people of all ages and from all walks of life.
Leftover Salmon
Looking back over the past 25 years of rootsy, string-based music, the impact of Leftover Salmon is impossible to deny. Formed in Boulder at the end of 1989, the Colorado slamgrass pioneers took their form of aggressive bluegrass to rock and roll bars at a time when it wasn’t so common, helping Salmon become a pillar of the jam band scene and unwitting architects of the jamgrass genre. Today, Leftover Salmon is: Vince Herman (vocals, acoustic guitar, washboard); Drew Emmitt (vocals, acoustic and electric mandolin, electric guitar, fiddle); Andy Thorn (vocals, acoustic and electric banjo); Greg Garrison (vocals, acoustic and electric bass); Alwyn Robinson (drums).
Locarno
Locarno is the Latin project of JUNO Award winning musician, Tom Landa. Like him, the music is equal parts Mexican and Canadian. Tom was born and raised in Mexico City, and moved to Canada in his teens. In the mid nineties he formed the Folk Roots band, The Paperboys, who have been touring world-wide for over 20 years. Tom has always dabbled in Latin music, and in 2005 decided to immerse himself more into genre, and started working on material for an album. In 2006 he was awarded a Canada Council Grant to study traditional Mexican Music in Veracruz, Mexico. Tom spent his days learning the jarana (an 8 string guitar), and learning songs from the Son Jarocho repertoire. Upon his return to Canada, Tom started working on what would be Locarno’s debut CD.
Over the years, the band has honed in on their sound and incorporated more of their influences such as music from Columbia, African Sukous, Mexican Marimba Music, Venezuelan Joropo and Brazilian Forro Music. Perhaps where the band shines the most is in the live shows which features Tom Landa on jaranas and guitars, Kalissa Landa on violin, Robin Layne on marimba, congas and timbales, Pedro Mota on guitar an vocals, Aaron McKinney on bass, Liam MacDonald on drums, congas and pandero, Jocelyn Waugh on trumpet and Nick La Riviere on trombone.
Los Vega
Bio coming soon!
The Paperboys
When you think of Canadian music, who are the first contemporary artists that come to mind?
Is it a globe-touring sextet that, in a single set, can be counted on to stomp through Celtic reels, traditional Mexican folk, fiddle tunes, New Orleans brass band music, classic pop songcraft, bluegrass, and even a philosophical waltz or two, before bringing it all home with a Latino/West African singalong?
I didn’t think so.
Is it a fearless, freewheeling band sometimes referred to as the “Los Lobos of Canada,” veterans of an estimated 4,300 shows since the band’s 1992 formation?
What if I told you that this band doesn’t just exist—they flourish, and have been converting full concert halls of indifferent strangers into devoted fans for the last 30 years?
The name of this musical collective is The Paperboys. They are a Canadian treasure.
The heart of The Paperboys is a trio of gifted songwriters and musicians: Founder Tom Landa, a fedora-hatted vocalist/guitarist/bandleader who immigrated from Mexico to Canada in his teens; Kalissa Landa, a lifelong fiddler/vocalist with a preternatural command of melody; and Spirit of the West’s flautist/guitarist/vocalist Geoffrey Kelly, already a Canadian musical icon when he hopped on the P’boys bus in 1997.
Though by no means a jam band, The Paperboys reinvent their show every time they step onstage. Once the band agrees on the opening song, there is no set list. The song finishes, the crowd reacts, Landa reads the room, and the journey begins. Every night. The world has changed seismically since 1992, but The Paperboys fan base has stuck with the band, and grown.
“It goes beyond perseverance,” Landa says about the band’s legacy, “and into some kind of connectivity and resonance we have with people. We’ve created a community.”
Though best known for their live show, The Paperboys also have another ace up their sleeve: A deep and impressive discography. The band has released 10 recordings—including the Juno Award-winning Molinos—receiving accolades from MOJO Magazine and fRoots Magazine along the way. They’ve been two-time recipients of the West Coast Music Award, composed scores for two films, and been nominated for a Leo Award for best original song in the Hong Kong/Canada film release, Lunch With Charles.
Although perennially adored and praised by alternative media and national radio networks NPR and CBC, commercial success has eluded the band. Undaunted, The Paperboys have kept in perpetual motion, building a cult following through the impact of its incendiary live show and proud DIY spirit.
Even the pandemic couldn’t silence The Paperboys. Tom and Kalissa maintained a warm connection with their homebound fans by posting their now-legendary Slipper Sessions online, playing gorgeous, stripped-down versions of their repertoire, with their kids and cats sometimes wandering through the margins of the videos.
"There are many ways to define success,” Landa says. “ I get to make music with people I love, tour and see the world, and connect with people through song. I can hang my hat on that."
Tonye Aganaba
Tonye Aganaba is a multidisciplinary artist, musician, and arts facilitator residing on the unceded territories of the Squamish, Musqueam & Tsleil-Waututh First Nations.
Their new album ‘Something Comfortable’ is an intentional and devotional endeavour inspired by their battle with Multiple Sclerosis. The album serves as the score to ‘AfroScience’ an immersive performance and workshop series fusing live music, dance, visual art/digital media and storytelling to stimulate conversation and action around identity, addiction, healing, and expression. Tonye’s shows, workshops, and classes are connected and intimate experiences, and evoke a kind of vulnerability that we all hunger for.
BC World Music Collective
If there ever was a World Music supergroup, this would be it. The BC World Music Collective brings together musicians from Cuba, Mexico, Brazil, Africa, and London, who now make their home in this beautiful province. The collective is comprised of Adonis Puentes, Celso Machado, Tonye Aganaba, Kurai Blessing, Locarno (Tom Landa, Pedro Mota Robin Layne, Liam MacDonald, Nick La Riviere, Kalissa Landa, Ronnie Swirl) and First Nations (Stō:lo/St’át’imc/Nlaka’pamux Territories) rapper, Ostwelve.
The project first began in the summer of 2015, when the artists were asked to come together to perform at the Vancouver Island Music Festival. After an intense week of rehearsals, the group made their first appearance on the mainstage of the festival. After their set, they were all elated with how it went, and decided one performance just wouldn’t be enough. A few weeks later, a plan was hatched to turn the one-off project into the province’s most exciting World Music band.
The Crescent Sky
The Crescent Sky is a four person indie-folk band from BC that creates music with rich soaring vocal harmonies and dynamic instrumentation. The band includes two couples: Anna Luth (vocals/percussion/guitar) and Regan Luth (vocals/violin/mandolin), and Anna Ratzlaff (vocals/cello/piano) and Jason Ratzlaff (vocals/guitar/bass). They are individually strong songwriters, and together they compose indie-folk music with string melodies, whimsical synths and rhythmic guitar lines.
Drawing on shared influences like The Staves, Bon Iver and Fleetwood Mac, The Crescent Sky places collaboration at the centre of their music which allows each member to equally shape the process. Simultaneously pensive and optimistic, their honest lyrics flow from intimate confessions to declarations in four-part harmony. Thoughtfully crafted arrangements support their vocally-driven songs that describe a search for hope, a sentiment in the foreground of everything they do.
Since forming in 2018, this indie-folk band continues to prove they are here to stay. They performed at CBC’s Nooners Concert Series, recieved the 2018 Abbotsford Arts Council Emerging Artist Award, and placed in the top 100 of CBC's Canada-wide Searchlight contest in 2019. They released their debut album “Wonder” in 2020 that explores themes of personal growth, and demonstrates the band’s versatility and ambition as emerging artists in Canada’s music scene. They have performed at the Harrison Festival of the Arts (BC), Pigeon Lake Music Festival (AB), Mission Folk Music Festival (BC), Peace Valley Folk Festival (BC) and have showcased internationally through Folk Alliance International and the Folk Music Ontario Conference.
The Crescent Sky is thankful to live and make music on the unceded ancestral territories of the Qayqayt First Nation, colonially known as New Westminster, and the unceded ancestral territories of the Stó:lō peoples, colonially known as Chilliwack, BC.
Laura Love
Laura Love retired from live musical performance at the height of the Pandemic in 2020, feeling satisfied that she’d said everything she needed to say, sung everything she needed to sing and done everything she needed to do in a lifetime of touring and playing concerts. Laura, who is a light-skinned African American woman, felt ready to put topical songwriting aside to settle into an easychair rocking groove after long days of organic gardening and playing with her legion of cats -- yet after recent frightening escalations in hate crimes, racism, sexism, anti-environmentalism and all the other “isms”, she again feels the need to poke her head up and outta retirement, however briefly, to sing and say just a little bit more. Over the decades, Laura has performed at venues across the globe, including The Philadelphia Folk Festival, Merlefest, Carnegie Hall, Club Passim, The Ark, City Winery NYC, The Freight & Salvage, Strawberry Music Festival, Winnipeg Folk Fest, Millpond and Kate Wolf Music Festivals, as well as Edmonton, Montreal and Vancouver, Canadian festivals, to name a few. In this resurfacing, she has expanded her repertoire of original, socially conscious songs, to include several hand selected jazz standards along with beloved Negro spirituals and Field Hollers. As well, she now sprinkles a dusting of covers learned from some of her favorite singer/songwriters (Shawn Colvin, Amy Winehouse, Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and the like).
Laura has received glowing reviews for her 13 cd releases (On Mercury, Rounder, Koch and other labels) from print publications such as THE NEW YORK TIMES, Billboard, The Utne Reader and People and Time Magazines. She is also a published author, having released her memoir, “You Ain’t Got No Easter Clothes” on Hyperion (Now Hachette Book Group) as well as “Nights In Tents” about the year she spent traveling with the OCCUPY Movement (Skyhorse Publishing).
Early in the Spring of 2022, Laura dropped her latest CD, “UPPITY” which she “sincerely hopes will be her last!”
The Matinee
The Matinee's words paint an apt depiction of how we've all felt these past few years. Having suddenly had time at home, the band could have easily found themselves passing the days tinkering in the studio. “We were afraid of that freedom, and didn’t want to fall victim to over-producing or over thinking the songs” says frontman Matt Layzell. Instead, they opted to track it all live off-the-floor and capture the performances they had so dearly been missing with tour dates postponed until the world gained some sense of pre-pandemic normalcy.
The band brought in sought after producer Steve Dawson from Nashville to help craft the sound, and lend his pedal-steel chops to the record. “It was Steve’s enthusiasm for the songs that gave us the confidence to strip back the recording process from our previous albums, and just gather around the mics and hit record” adds guitarist Matt Rose.
The result is a collection of songs that feels at once both fresh and natural, a testament to a group that has honed their craft for the past 15 years with relentless touring. They have truly earned each broken string, each flat tire, each round on the house, and every story they hold.
‘Bad Addiction’ is an instant classic with a dose of southern soul, and a sing-along chorus reminiscent of Nathaniel Rateliff & The Nightsweats. Driving rocker ‘Road To Hell’, which will have you rolling down the windows while you’re cruising down the highway, would fit on any setlist by The Heartbreakers, and the bluesy ‘Shake It, Baby’ is sweetened courtesy of three-time Grammy-nominee Alison Russell.
In all, ten new songs make up this third full-length release, that also features guitarist Geoff Petrie, drummer Pete Lemon, keyboardists Georges Couling and Chris Gestrin, and bassists Marcus Abramzik and Joseph Lubinsky.
Tom & Kalissa Landa
They say necessity is the mother of invention. When the pandemic hit, like many of their fellow musicians, Tom and Kalissa found themselves with a years with of cancellations for their bands, The Paperboys, Locarno, and The BC World Music Collective.
Basically unemployed, they took to playing live, online, for their social media communities. Everyday for three months, the couple shared acoustic and duo versions of their songs to entertain people and lift spirits during lockdown. They called these online gatherings, The Slipper Sessions.
From these sessions came new songs, penned specifically for the two of them. The songs were more introspective and intimate than any of their ensemble work. Being no strangers to touring or performing, these Juno Award-winning musicians are taking the living room feel of the Slipper Sessions to theatres and PACs across North America.
Leeroy Stagger
Leeroy Stagger is an artist hailing from Victoria, British Columbia. Leeroy has released 11 albums to date and won multiple awards including Western Canadian Music Awards for ‘Roots Artist of the year’ and ‘Recording of the Year’. He has also won ‘Artist of the Year’ from the Canadian Folk Awards.
Steve Dawson
Steve Dawson is an award-winning Canadian guitarist, solo artist, songwriter, pedal steel player, multi-instrumentalist, producer and engineer living and working in Nashville, TN. He spent the last few years pre-pandemic on the road playing guitar, steel and dobro with Allison Russell’s band Birds of Chicago, and Canadian powerhouse Matt Andersen. He has produced, engineered and mixed over 100 albums for many artists from all over the world, and continues to work as a side-person and freelance musician both on stage and in the studio. Steve is also the creator of the well-loved Music Makers and Soul Shakers podcast, which has been going for over 6 years and 135 episodes. During 2020, Steve recorded enough material for 3 solo albums, all of which were released throughout 2022/2023 as he continues to produce albums and tour with his band, or whoever else asks him along for the ride. (He is not the Steve Dawson from Chicago (songwriter/Dolly Varden founder), or the Steve Dawson who slays the bass in Saxon.)
Cox & McRae
Two of Canada’s finest. You can see hear the past and the present in their instrumentation, their stories and their songs. A rare treat in an intimate setting. With sixty years’ experience and countless performances between them, these veteran award-winning recording artists each with a menagerie of stories to tell, a truckload of strings and things in their arsenal and a preponderance of songs will have you glued to your seat listening to their every word, sometimes laughing, singing along, tapping your toes and humming their melodies for days afterward.
T. Buckley
T. Buckley stands quietly among a disappearing ilk of true craftsmen. Shadowed by his Western roots, his soul and voice are unmistakably genuine, and the result is a class of songsmith long revered and scarcely achieved. After numerous accolades, releasing an EP and 3 full length albums fronting the T. Buckley Trio (2008-2018), Buckley continues to build momentum, turning towards his songwriting roots and rediscovering his solo artist ambitions over the last five years.
Joachim Cooder
Joachim Cooder grew up surrounded by music alongside his father, legendary guitarist Ry Cooder who took him on
the road at an early age on the drums, playing both live and in the studio. These touring and recording projects
allowed him to share stages and recordings with Johnny Cash, Ali Farka Touré, V. M. Bhatt, Steve Earle, John Lee
Hooker, Dr. John, Nick Lowe, and most notably the award winning project The Buena Vista Social Club.
Joachim discovered the joys of playing an electric mbira through a small amp, and the sound that emanated was
inspired by the world music that always captivated him, “I’m always hearing some sort of defunct cosmic ice cream
truck in my head – that’s the sound I’m after with my mbiras and tank drums and other tuned percussion."
In 2020 Nonesuch Records released Over That Road I’m Bound, the songs of Uncle Dave Macon and Joachim’s
unique and celebrated re-imagining of these early country songs and earning Joachim #1 Most Added at
Americana, and a Top 10 Album & Single (US & UK). Here in 2023, the new album is being wrapped up for a
February 2024 release.