ECMA news, day 1
April 15th, 2011 by Katherine Moller
Kim and I arrived in Charlottetown at about 1pm today. We signed into our hotel and I went down to the Delta to sign in to the ECMAs. Registration was quite smooth, although I did end up with a conference pass instead of an artist pass. Right after signing in, I ran into Kathleen Gorey-McSorley, Roly McSorley, Carolyn Holyoke and Derrick Miller, all people from home.
There is a lot of material to sift through with numerous shows and workshops going on in various venues at all times of the day. I think that I have worked out my schedule for the next couple of days.
Skip Holmes arrived around 5:30pm came over for a rehearsal. We prepped our material for our showcase tomorrow and then jammed on some new tunes and old favourites. Thinking about CD #4, although that will have to wait for a year or two.
Kim, Skip and I headed out for dinner. We tried downtown Charlottetown, but it is impossible to find parking, so ended up back at the hotel and walked across the street to the Old Triangle pub. We lucked into some excellent music as the Rollo Bay Fiddle Festival was sponsoring a show there. J.J. Chaisson opened the show. What an excellent fiddler!
We had intended on going to the Roots Room in the evening, but ended up hanging around the Old Triangle for a while enjoying the music there. We then went over to MIAfest at Murphy’s Community Centre. One of the things that I love about events like the ECMAs is that you hear new bands you would likely never had heard of otherwise. A great example is the Colin Grant Band. Colin Grant is an excellent fiddler from Cape Breton and his show was excellent. Check him out on youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cz9tP-vLNEY.
We also enjoyed a performance by The Once, and excellent band from NFLD that we met last summer at the NB Highland Games. Their three part harmonies are fabulous!
All in all, this was a great first day to the ECMAs.
