The Art of Booking Pt. 2 - Folk On The Rocks with Carly McFadden

[00:00:00] Rosalyn: Hello, and welcome to season two of ReFolkUs, where we talk to artists and music industry professionals about building sustainable careers as creative workers with a focus on folk. I'm your host, Rosalyn Dennett. Today our guest is Carly [00:00:30] McFadden. Since 2016 she's been the artistic and executive director of Folk On The Rocks music festival, which is taking place July 19th to 21st, 2024 in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories under the midnight sun. Carly also works as an artist manager at Victory Pool, which is a label and artist management company working with a fantastic roster of artists, including some FMO, artist alumni, Ellen Froese, and Status Non Status. Here's our conversation with Carly McFadden. [00:01:00] Hi Carly, how are you doing?

[00:01:07] Carly: Hey, I'm good. How are you?

[00:01:09] Rosalyn: Doing very well. You're joining us from far away. Can you let people know where you're calling in from?

[00:01:15] Carly: I'm in Hamburg, Germany, which is, uh, the second largest city in Germany in the far north. Big music city, though, where, you know, the Beatles kind of cut their teeth and lots of other great artists. So it's a cool place to be. Happy to be here.

[00:01:28] Rosalyn: Yeah, and I heard you just got [00:01:30] back from a conference in Sweden as well. So we're really grateful that you're carving out a bit of time to chat with us today.

[00:01:36] Carly: Oh, I'm happy to be here. I love Folk Music Ontario.

[00:01:39] Rosalyn: We love you. I'm wondering if you can paint us a little picture of Folk On The Rocks. Let us know a little bit more about the festival and what it's like? How big is it? Where is it? What does it look like?

[00:01:50] Carly: So yeah, Folk on the Rocks is in Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories, pretty far north. It's sub Arctic, 62 degrees parallel. takes place in [00:02:00] July, third weekend of July every year. So in 2024, we'll be on the 19th to the 21st.

[00:02:05] Carly: And, everything happens under the midnight sun. So, um, we party all night long. We're an outdoor festival with five stages, uh, including a children's stage, a beer garden stage, and lots happening in between. We've got an artist market, food vendors from all over Canada bringing food from different cultures from all over the world.

[00:02:26] Carly: It's been going for 44 years this year. [00:02:30] Uh, yeah, it's a really special community event. We partner with tons and tons of other local, arts organizations, but also lots of, like social justice organizations.

[00:02:38] Carly: And, it's really like a community built, and served event.

[00:02:42] Rosalyn: And how did you get involved?

[00:02:44] Carly: I kind of just fell into it a little bit. I had moved up to Yellowknife on a whim in 2015, from Vancouver, where I had been doing a lot of live event production, mostly in fashion, but also putting on some shows and things like that for music shows for [00:03:00] friends. And when I got there, also started a job kind of quickly.

[00:03:04] Carly: Uh, that was like an e-democracy platform. It was running alongside the municipal election, which wrapped with the municipal election. And I was doing lots of gigging for a wide variety of things. There's no shortage of need for event workers or gig workers in Yellowknife when a friend of mine introduced me to the board president, they were looking for an admin.

[00:03:26] Carly: They actually had no staff at the time. And so I started there [00:03:30] as the admin, on a tight year, a tough year. It was, maybe the festival wasn't going to happen that year or maybe ever again, but, uh, we pulled through and afterwards they let me stick around and it's, it's kind of been my baby ever since.

[00:03:42] Carly: We've got around 20 employees now, like during the height of the festival season, our operating budget has tripled. We're inviting international artists back again after many years of Canadian only and hyper focusing on Northern, which we still are, but just more expansive programming. And, yeah, I really love it there.

[00:03:59] Carly: It's [00:04:00] a great, great place to be.

[00:04:02] Rosalyn: Amazing. So, can you tell us a little bit about what kind of music? There's like, many, broad expanding definitions of folk. Um, what could people expect to see on, on the stages there?

[00:04:15] Carly: Yeah, I think that we really push the limits of what the, uh, folk umbrella might mean. It's just very rare for anyone to tour Yellowknife, which is understandable. It's a, you know, 16 to 18 hour drive from Edmonton, depending on[00:04:30] how fast you drive. So yeah, we really try and program something but everyone in the community will enjoy it.

[00:04:35] Carly: So, you know, everything from electronic and hip hop to very traditional folk music to, you know, kind of like indie rock. And we're all over the map. I would say whatever we think is fun and that our audience will like, which is a bit of everything.

[00:04:48] Rosalyn: Fantastic, let's talk a little bit about what the artist experience would be like, you just mentioned like not a ton of artists are, are maybe familiar with that territory and, and have an opportunity to [00:05:00] play up there. So it must be a pretty big deal for artists to get that opportunity to come up and play.

[00:05:05] Rosalyn: Can you take people through a little bit about what they would, kind of expect the experience to be like?

[00:05:10] Carly: I mean, the experience can sort of vary depending on what you're doing or how long you're coming up for. But, the biggest comment that we get is probably just that people are really surprised by how manic the sun not going down makes them feel. It is and it is kind of trippy for sure.

[00:05:29] Carly: And it's also [00:05:30] weird to be out at like three in the morning and my kids are out playing. It's just like we're all not sleeping all summer. That's kind of the biggest thing that we get, but, um, I think the other thing that we hear back from artists and that we really try and, provide or that we pride ourselves on is, you know, really promoting northern hospitality.

[00:05:45] Carly: So, when people come up, we really try to showcase local foods, local traditions, things that might also. Kind of like unusual experiences for people. Like we organize some float plane rides for the artists and we do fishing tours. And, you know, we try and [00:06:00] make sure that if, uh, if late night dancing is your thing, then you get to go hang out with Ernie and the boys at the range, which is like a very old hotel that hasn't been renovated in like 60 years.

[00:06:09] Carly: There's a whole town that kind of hangs out at and, Ernie and the boys play covers and dance the night away. So it's crazy. Someone has also told us before that it feels a little bit like coming to music camp. So maybe that's yeah, I don't know if that paints a good picture or not.

[00:06:25] Rosalyn: Oh, absolutely. I'm wondering if it follows a similar model to [00:06:30] like what we call the Estelle Klein model of like, folk festivals where like, do you do like workshop stages?

[00:06:45] Carly: It's primarily concert focused. We do some workshops and some collabs, most of the time with our workshops, they're more like camps or things where people would come up a week prior and work together and then present at the festival. But we do a fiddle [00:07:00] workshop that happens on our stages every year and sometimes some live collabs, but I would say we're primarily concert focused.

[00:07:06] Rosalyn: Can you tell us about the camp? beforehand or like the teaching beforehand?

[00:07:09] Carly: We do a couple. The main one, or like the one that we've done every year for the last seven years, I guess, seems to be our most well funded and beloved, is a camp that we partner with Northern Mosaic Network on Northern Mosaic Network is the LGBTQIAS+ group, for pretty much the whole territory at this point.

[00:07:28] Carly: They started out focusing [00:07:30] on youth, and their allies, but now they're kind of running what used to be pride and WT anyway, we've been partnering with them on a camp that runs a week prior to the festival. Yeah, every year for the last seven and normally we have an out of territory facilitator, artist facilitator come in, partner with a local facilitator, and the camp runs for youth, which is a pretty broad age range.

[00:07:51] Carly: It's 13 to 25. We usually have somewhere between 8 and 12 campers in the camp and they're, working together all day for the five days leading up to the festival, writing together, talking about social justice issues, how to process your emotions through music during a tumultuous time, especially for queer youth, and then they present on our festival stage at the end of all of it.

[00:08:14] Rosalyn: Oh, that's incredible.

[00:08:16] Carly: Makes me cry every year.

[00:08:17] Rosalyn: Yeah. That's such a cool program.

[00:08:20] Carly: It's kind of like a girl's rock camp model, but maybe slightly adjusted. But similar.

[00:08:25] Rosalyn: So then when we're talking about artists coming up and you mentioned there's like [00:08:30] a like you can access it By car with a rather long, even by Canadian standards, you know, drive up from Edmonton.

[00:08:37] Rosalyn: Yeah. How do artists usually, usually end up accessing the festival? Do most folks drive in or is it, can you also fly in?

[00:08:43] Carly: Most people fly in just because it's more convenient, it's faster, it's easier, especially if you're kind of on, you know, a festival tour already, then maybe you're coming from Edmonton or Calgary, Winnipeg has sometimes been the same weekend as us. Jocelyn City is sometimes the same weekend as us, sometimes [00:09:00] the same weekend afterwards, so if that's kind of what you're doing, it'll usually fly in, or folks of course come in for one offs for the weekend as well.

[00:09:07] Carly: We have had a few artists drive in and organize tours all the way up. So they've stopped in like Grand Prairie and Hay River and Fort Simpson, Fort Smith, and that's gone really well. It's something I would encourage and that I'm always really interested in talking to people about, just because again, those are underserved communities that don't see a lot of touring.

[00:09:25] Carly: So they're usually pretty pretty excited, I would say, to, to see folks come through.

[00:09:30] Rosalyn: In terms of your booking and who you're bringing in, how do you usually discover artists or, or find artists, that you want to invite to play the festival?

[00:09:40] Carly: I guess through a lot of different ways, so we do accept submissions, and those are open right now. all the way from normally October to the end of January. and we always reserve spots for those, so it's not like submitting into the void, and maybe they're never coming back. I'm at a lot of festivals and conferences throughout the year, watching showcases,[00:10:00] and, you know, sort of discovering artists that way. I also talk a lot with my fellow programmers.

[00:10:05] Carly: That's something, we all do. We all like to share with each other. We'd like to be able to block book if we can. So, you know, kind of always talking to my peers in that respect. I'm also, On different streaming platforms or even sometimes just on like, Songkick or Bands in Town kind of looking at who local support is across Canada for bands that I already like or that I think might, you know, maybe have played the festival before or I know would be a great fit to [00:10:30] see sort of what they might be looking into.

[00:10:33] Carly: I'm talking to a lot of my friends who are artists as well about who they recommend from their local scene because we do really like to program from across Canada. So it comes through in a mixture of ways, and also I should say, I work with a selections committee, which is a group of volunteers from Yellowknife who come from a variety of backgrounds.

[00:10:50] Carly: And, we meet right now, we're meeting every two weeks on Sunday afternoons to sort of talk about the lineup and, you know, they bring in. interests from, you know, all [00:11:00] different places as well. And we talk about those. So it's quite a collaborative effort.

[00:11:04] Rosalyn: Yeah, that's fantastic. And hopefully that gives anybody who's interested a chance to, to check it out. Do you book folks that don't have representation that are, like independent artists?

[00:11:16] Carly: I mean, I would say the majority of our artists do have representation to some degree, like either an agent or management, or maybe they're signed to a label, but not exclusively. And definitely there's lots of artists every year that don't have any representation [00:11:30] at all. You know, there's, I guess, layers to the booking.

[00:11:32] Carly: Like, of course, there's the headlining acts that are, kind of who we think will sell the tickets and drive people there. and then there's kind of our mid tier who've probably had, you know, some, Canadian radio play or a notoriety to some degree can be varying in level. and then of course we have our discovery artists who are folks that we just think that our audience will like and we really don't care about, you know, the number of streams or experience level or, or those sorts of things.

[00:11:58] Carly: It really is just about the art [00:12:00] and what they're creating. And if we think it's a good fit for. Our community.

[00:12:03] Rosalyn: Cool. I know you, like you mentioned, there's a kid's stage, like a family stage. Are there things that an artist could put in their application that might be attractive? Like, you know, I can also do a family set. I could do the workshops beforehand or something like that.

[00:12:17] Rosalyn: Like, is there something that you think that, like, would make an artist more attractive in an application? Yeah.

[00:12:22] Carly: Are both great tips. I mean, if you don't want to do a family set, like, please don't say that you can do a family set.

[00:12:27] Rosalyn: Yeah. Don't lie on this.

[00:12:29] Carly: Please don't lie. But if that is something that interests you, and you think you'd like to even just try it, maybe you want to do, you know, some fun covers or something like that.

[00:12:36] Carly: That's that would be totally fine. And we're open to that. workshops as well. You know, if you're a big, big band and you're. Maybe just getting started then being scalable is also really fantastic and I know not everyone loves that because it is more fun to play with a big band and that's what we love too.

[00:12:53] Carly: But, you know, sometimes it's not feasible to bring 10 people all the way to Yellowknife. So if you're able to kind of [00:13:00] find some balance within there and state that in the application, that that's really, really helpful. Or like if you're, you know, maybe going to be nearby, and by nearby I mean like Edmonton or Calgary, that's good to know as well.

[00:13:13] Rosalyn: So then let's say, as a, maybe like a more discovery, artist, get a chance to, get invited up to the festival. You mentioned that, you know, maybe there's some, some chances to, tour on your way up if you're interested in that, do you have maybe some other tips [00:13:30] about, like ways to interact with the community and kind of like build the audience around there if people are looking to develop their audience up north.

[00:13:37] Carly: Yeah, I think there's a number of ways, I think it feels kind of dead to the rest of Canada, but the North loves Facebook. So put your events on Facebook and get in touch with whoever you're playing with locally to help promote those. They will, and those are actually really strong. networks are strong places to be just because everyone's so isolated.

[00:13:55] Carly: It's a great tool for for sharing so I would say use facebook even if it feels like you're maybe your dad at that moment It's really helpful but also be friendly be open like if you are, you know playing in hay river or something Probably lots of people are going to want to talk to you. And if you are wanting to take that time and chat and learn about them and let them learn about you, then I think you'll find that you always have a home there or somewhere to go if you want to come back.

[00:14:23] Carly: People are generally really, really friendly. Those are kind of maybe the key things, but just kind of being open also to new [00:14:30] experiences and also that. you'll probably get the tour going and it'll get scheduled but response times are maybe slower than you're used to just internet outages and Sort of things like that are often things people are contending with.

[00:14:42] Rosalyn: How do you find that folks up there typically are consuming music? Like do a lot of people rely on kind of streaming to discover stuff, do folks listen to the radio?

[00:14:52] Carly: Radio is still really big. We have a few different kinds of local and by local, I mean, [00:15:00] territory wide options that people frequently listen to. It was only during the pandemic that we got unlimited internet access. So before that we were paying by data. So yeah. And it's still very expensive. So a lot of people are still just on data plans for their internet, which means that, yeah, they're listening to the radio.

[00:15:18] Carly: If you come up, I would say bring merch and CDs are actually great. A lot of people, you know, still haven't used CD players or play them in their car. But I mean, like, because things have [00:15:30] changed just a lot since the pandemic, and there is more access to unlimited internet, like, of course, people are streaming, you know, Spotify, YouTube, Bandcamp, all those things are still ways that people access music, for sure.

[00:15:41] Rosalyn: Would you recommend folks like reach out to, is it like local radio, CBC, campus, like anything like that, if they're coming up?

[00:15:49] Carly: Yeah, we don't have campus, but we do have one local radio station, Cabin Radio. Shout out to them. They worked really hard during the evacuations and we love them. So cabin radio CBC. [00:16:00] Yeah, of course we have CBC North. That is, headquartered in Yellowknife and you've got a couple other stations as well.

[00:16:06] Carly: We actually are always really happy and helpful in like making those introductions and getting the interviews going because it feeds us as well. So we actually normally get almost everyone scheduled to at least one radio station for an interview or sometimes a performance if not more.

[00:16:24] Rosalyn: Amazing. That's really fun. And like a neat way to, kind of develop that. That audience [00:16:30] up there. what if folks, so, you know, let's say that they've, they've come up for the festival and just, I'm sure they all do just like fall in love with the community and want to come back.

[00:16:39] Rosalyn: Are there opportunities year round, for folks to, to come up and maybe play a show or, you know, kind of keep that relationship going with the community?

[00:16:48] Carly: Yeah. Um, so there's another really, really cool festival in Yellowknife called the Snow King Winter Festival. It happens in March every year, and it's actually not just a music festival, like they have [00:17:00] theater performances, comedy, film screenings, literally everything in this snow castle that's built on the frozen lake in Yellowknife Bay.

[00:17:09] Carly: It's the best festival. Don't tell my board that I said that.

[00:17:15] Rosalyn: Breaking news, guys.

[00:17:17] Carly: They would be like, yeah, we know. Um, but it is, it's phenomenal. And, they're also in the process of booking artists right now. I believe they have an application portal, [00:17:30] it's a great festival.

[00:17:30] Carly: They program a lot like us. They program a little bit of everything. And, you know, they're interested in everything from discovery to major acts and all that's in between. We also have the Northern Arts and Cultural Center. That's a soft seat theater in Yellowknife, but they will do tours across the Northwest Territory.

[00:17:48] Carly: So they have outposts in Inuvik and, uh, Cambridge Bay, I believe, Hay River, anyway. I kind of all over and they'll actually organize tours for artists to go play in those places. those [00:18:00] you do have to be in touch with them a little bit. Ahead of the game, I think they program like a year to 2 years in advance and they're also multidisciplinary.

[00:18:08] Carly: But that's quite a cool way to do it. We have run like, month long artists and residency programs in the past throughout the winter as well. we're hoping to get it going again. We didn't get the funding we wanted this year, but we're hoping to bring it back soon. and you can also come up on your own.

[00:18:24] Carly: It does happen. People do it. and I think there's lots of people like myself and other [00:18:30] arts workers in the territory who would be happy to help kind of support you get there. If you, you know, You're probably going to want to write a travel grant, but if you kind of can put those things in place, then we'll help you find a venue to play and cross promote and those sorts of things.

[00:18:43] Rosalyn: Fantastic. So before we sign off, do you have any tips? I know you also work in artist development through Victory Pool and, yeah, I'm wondering if you can maybe just leave us with, some, general advice for the folks out there that are, getting their summers going and, [00:19:00] and looking to get out there and, start performing on festival stages.

[00:19:03] Carly: Yeah, I think maybe the number one thing or the thing I think about a lot is be patient. I know that's really tough, like you showcase somewhere and you want to book all the festivals and go play everywhere. And, You know, that that's not always the way that it goes, especially if you're kind of just getting into it.

[00:19:20] Carly: But you know, I think a lot of us, all of us are watching, like we're coming to those things and we're not. writing you off forever. Just because we don't book you the following next [00:19:30] summer doesn't mean that we're not watching. Maybe we want to see a little bit of development, or maybe it's just not the year.

[00:19:36] Carly: Like, maybe I've already programmed two or three metal acts, and that's the most I can do. Actually, probably more like one in my case. But, um, you know, so maybe it's like, Oh, I really like this. It's just, it's just, I'm already kind of full in that genre, this area this year. So yeah, I think be patient and be friendly, it's a small industry, we all know each other, and, uh, it's just, it's important to, [00:20:00] I think, just be polite as much as you can, and be patient with people.

[00:20:04] Rosalyn: Great. Well, thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to hang out with us. And yeah, I really appreciate all the fantastic advice and it sounds like such an amazing festival.

[00:20:14] Carly: Oh, well, I hope you can make it up someday, and thanks for having me, this was a lovely, lovely little chat.

[00:20:20] Rosalyn: Hey, thanks Carly. That's all for this episode friends. The ReFolkUs [00:20:30] Podcast is brought to you by Folk Music Ontario. Find out more by heading to folkmusicontario.org/refolkus. That's R-E-F-O-L-K-U-S. The podcast is produced by Kayla Nezon and Rosalyn Dennett and mixed by Jordan Moore at The Pod Cabin. The opening theme is by King Cardiac, and the artwork is by Jaymie Karn.

[00:20:51] Rosalyn: Please give us a download, a like, subscribe, rate, and review to let us know you're listening. Until next time, keep folking around and finding out. [00:21:00]