Toronto’s Wavelength music series celebrated its 12th anniversary last week with the Wavelength Twelve festival. That also marked the second year since Wavelength repositioned itself into a monthly/special occasion format, but those who miss the weekly series will soon find solace once again.
Wavelength co-founder/boundlessly enthusiastic emcee Doc Pickles (real name: Duncan MacDonell) has decided to revive the weekly Sunday night PWYC series under the name Crosswires.
Crosswires #1 takes place this Sunday, February 26 at The Garrison, with Julie Doiron, Tres Bien Ensemble, The Pinocones, and Holly Rankin.
We caught up with MacDonell for a typically verbose explanation of why he decided to renew the series with the new Crosswires branding.
When Wavelength first switched to its current monthly/special event format, one of the reasons given was that people were taking it for granted in its weekly incarnation. Do you think that’s no longer the case?
I think Wavelength kind of outgrew Sunday nights. Even though I love going out on Sunday nights, I think we sort of moved on to other projects that were making us more excited. And since we made the switch, we’ve had three or four volunteers that have really stepped forward, and they’re doing a lot of the work that me and the other Wavelength co-producers would normally be doing. So I have all this leftover energy now to put on shows.
Are you looking to pick up where you left off with the weekly Wavelength series?
Not exactly. History keeps repeating itself, but I think the climate now is a lot more like how it was in ’99. When the Wavelength weekly series ended in 2010, Mayor Miller was still around, it was a really healthy climate to be a creative person. And I think maybe culturally we were taking creativity and expression for granted. But the social climate’s become a lot more hostile to people who are creatively inclined. It reminds me a lot of when Mike Harris was the premier, Mel Lastman was the mayor, and there was just no real understanding of what people were interested in doing. In the meantime all of this hostility breaks out and people get better organized and put on better shows, things start to get more interesting, and suddenly there’s a desire for an outlet because there’s so much pent up creative energy.
And do you intend Crosswires to be that outlet?
I hope it will be one of them. One of the things I’ve noticed in the absence of other people organizing things their behalf, people in the community are just organizing their own shows. They’re doing it well and putting them on in weird places. It’s really healthy.
That’s what happened in 2002, 2003, before Mayor Miller was elected. It was a very different climate. In the time before that it was really exciting and really interesting, and people were just doing things out of necessity because there’s no real support network any more. They’re all meeting each other and helping each other and getting excited about each other’s projects. It’s a pretty good time to be around. And Crosswires is embracing that.
Why did Wavelength abandon the PWYC pay structure?
At Wavelength we got very organized and that’s really exciting because we’re taking what we learned on a small scale and applying it to bigger, interesting, unique things.
And those tend to cost more. If Wavelength kept being a PWYC, ghetto, dirtbag series – which is really what I loved at heart – we wouldn’t have that definition to really put on some more ambitious stuff. Last year we got the campout night on the island and put on mimics of Extermination Music Night in how we would do it in our own way. But we’ve missed having a home base. It is nice just to have a place where all the people we know in bands exchanging ideas and stuff have sort of a safe haven. Where they can go and have those same peers and try out new songs in a place that’s not just an open stage.
Does it give you more freedom to book strange, offbeat acts by running the series on Sunday, a traditional off-night?
I think so. There’s a lot less pressure. But I think with a PWYC night, too, you can bring people into the vibe of a collective experience that you wouldn’t be able to afford to on a Friday for 30 bucks. I think one day we should tie door cover to whatever one hour of minimum wage is. I think that’s pretty fair. I know on any given night more than half my friends are too broke to afford to go to a show and buy more than two or three drinks. It’s not the easiest economy. And it’s the artists who can’t afford to do anything, or at least it tends to be. How are we going to get new ideas and talk to each other if there is no safe haven?
It seems interesting that you’re bringing it back now, when a few people have been claiming Toronto is in the midst of its “Seattle moment”. Do you really think we’re the best music city in the world?
It’s not like we actually believe that we’re the best music city in the world. We wait for someone else to pat us on the head. It’s that same cycle in the ‘90s when the UN made this ridiculous list every year and said ‘Canada’s the best place to live’ and we all just believed it. It’s a great place to live, but it can’t be the best. But we believed it because someone told us it was the true.
It’s the monoculture being shoved down our throats. If we believe that then we’ll stop making our own sounds. It has to be an upswell. It has to be people spontaneously running into each other and coming up with ideas as a result. Then that leads to something else. Somebody mentions a song they like. They start a band. Then they open for another group of strangers that they bond with. That little tic tac toe happens, and that’s when culture breaks out. It’s got to be young and old and poet and punk, everyone talking to each other.
How are you approaching booking for Crosswires?
I look at it a lot like I used to look at Wavelength. Some people will be members of bands that I used to like ten years ago, and some will be stranger bands that someone recommends or that I ran into at random at another show, and some of them are bands that I’ve always wanted to have play but that I never had the nerve to ask. Like Julie Doiron, I can’t wait. This is actually the first time I’ve invited her to play. And she just went ‘cool, I’d love to, thanks’. It was so easy, but to me I’m still the 19 year old superfan of Eric’s Trip.
