Tuesday, September 30, 2014

Warning: May Cause Happiness


Another band I had the pleasure of sharing the stage with back in the day was, The May Cause. I had a talk with Curtis Vee about the bands thoughts on Vancouver. Check out  their Facebook page HERE.

James: How has Vancouver helped your bands career?
Curtis: Our band started in Calgary, after a few years of gigging locally in Calgary we decided to make the move out to Vancouver to further our career... At first( 2004-2007) Vancouver provided us with a lot of fun and interesting venues to play and the scene there definitely seemed to be happening.

James: What is your favourite venue to play in Vancouver and why?
Curtis: My personal favorite established venues in Vancouver are The Railway Club, The Media Club and The biltmore. However, the best gigs we ever played there were at strange / illegal venues, we played at The Morrissey once for a Music West showcase which was brilliant, also we once played in a big hall in Emily Carr Art School for the graduation party that was amazing, there also used to exist a small secret venue called The Black Door that was the coolest. Any place that actually respects live,original music is my personal preference.

James: Where do you plan on going? Staying? Moving?
Curtis: Sadly, after our drummer Eric was killed in a car crash, we stopped playing for awhile and I found it very difficult to become motivated to start over again in Vancouver, I felt like the city and the scene had changed quite a bit since we moved there, and I didn't feel like there was much support overall for the indie scene, ( bars making bands go on at ridiculous 6pm, 7pm timeslots so that they could have dance club nights afterwards just truly upset me at the lack of respect given to hard working musicians in favor of DJ's spinning the latest J Lo tracks. It is for this very reason that I decided to uproot and move out East to Montreal, a city which I feel has a MUCH greater appreciation for arts of all types and in fact strives to support its artistic community. Now, that I am here, I have been meeting with local musicians and am putting together my next project.

James: What's do you think is in Vancouver's future?
Curtis: I am not sure what the future will hold but I am very excited at the possibilities! It was sad to see a lot of cool venues in Vancouver just pull the plug on local music, it upset me in a very real way, so I had to leave! It simply was not the same city we had moved to 10 years ago. That being said, we had a glorious run out there and Vancouver is a beautiful place, I hope that someday soon the talented artists of Vancouver will get the respect that they deserve.



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