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Music

Feast fest

FEAST IN THE EAST on Friday, July 8, at Dickens Street Theatre (35 Dickens). See listing.


For years, Toronto’s rock geography has heavily skewed west, and seems to only be pushing farther in that direction.

However, promoter Tad Michalak and musician Neil Rankin have created a monthly concert series called Feast In The East that brings together music, food, art, and fans, to balance this bias.

Now on their third installment, this month’s Feast goes down this Friday at a loft dubbed the Dickens Street Theatre (35 Dickens) and features pizza, projections by resident artist Cameron Lee, and music by Black Walls, Polynesian Bride, Entire Cities, and Foxfire.

We caught up with Rankin (also Foxfire’s bassist, and a life-long east end resident) to dish on creating the Feast.

What made you decide to start an east-end concert series?

Tad and I started this because we both live in the east end, and wanted to put on monthly shows that we could easily stumble home from. (Getting home from Parts and Labour at 3 am is a long trek.) Tad had the idea to incorporate art and food along with the music. Also, with a lot of small venues closing down, we wanted to find a place that we could control.

Why is there a dearth of indie rock shows east of the Don River?

Over the past couple of decades it’s become a residential spot, and a lot of musicians actually live and practice there. Shows used to happen-if you talk to some older people they remember nightclubs and venues as far out as Main and Danforth-but in the years since Toronto’s nightlife has moved way west. People forgot about the east. There’s been the odd one-off show here and there, but never a consistent thing.

We want to unsettle the east and make it wild again!

What’s the venue like? How did you find it?

The space is a massive loft with a capacity around 80 to 100. It has really high ceilings, and big walls for projections. Finding it happened totally by chance. A guy came into the bar I work at while I was lamenting the lack of shows in the east end, and the difficulty in finding a venue for our idea due to noise and time restrictions, and different musical expectations of established bars. He mentioned that he had a massive loft he’d just started using to throw shows and said I should come by to check it out. It’s his living space, but it’s huge and has a kitchen and a bar setup.

What about the “Feast” aspect?

We started with cupcakes at our first show, just as a way to encourage people to buy advanced tickets. So we gave a free (vegan) cupcake to anyone who had a ticket, and sold the rest for a dollar a piece.

At the last feast we had ice cream cones from Ed’s Real Scoop (an east end institution) to match the feeling of summer. This next one is going to be a pizza party, I mean, who doesn’t like pizza?

Planning ahead, we hope to expand the feast element and have chefs from restaurants around the city come in and curate meals. For our October show we’re looking at having a full-on harvest meal.

How has the series been going?

It’s been really successful, and we’ve gotten a lot of positive feedback from our friends and from local people coming out to see the bands we bring in.

As much as I want people from the west end to come explore possibilities in the east, this series is mainly to allow people in the east to go out and enjoy bands in their own neighbourhood.

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