THE SUMMER BOOTLEGGER featuring YUKA, THE SHUVS, TOO YOUNG TO GO STEADY and LIAM BETSON at Lee’s Palace (529 Bloor West), Saturday (July 22), doors 8:30 pm. $12. See listing.
Somewhere in the middle of a four-hour documentary about the Grateful Dead, Toronto musician Rob Nicholls – in true Deadhead fashion – had an epiphany.
“It was the bit on the tapers,” Nicholls explains, referring to the ubiquitous bootlegger community that followed the band around on tour, diligently recording and cataloguing every performance and trading the recordings amongst themselves. “It caused such a collector excitement and sort of blew up the band. I just thought, ‘Wow, this is so interesting, capturing an artifact and an experience so special.’
“That organic thing that happened back in the 60s and 70s with the Dead was the original ‘viral,’ taping concerts and sharing them in the mail,” he continues. “But it was more about love and enjoyment and pleasure than blowing something up to commercial success. It made me think I could frame a show in a really fun way by putting it to tape.”
And so Nicholls conceived The Summer Bootlegger as a way to tap into that ephemeral collector energy. On Saturday, July 22, four bands (including Nicholls’s own project, The Shuvs) play Lee’s Palace, with tapers in the audience recording 25 minutes of each set.
During the last portion of the show, the tapes will be whisked down Bloor West via a bike courier to cassette store the Dupe Shop, where high-speed dubbing machines will crank out 40 copies in a matter of minutes. These “bootleg” cassettes will then be sent back to the venue and handed out to concertgoers on their way out as a memento.
“Rob had all his ducks in a row when he approached me,” says Dupe Shop manager Malin Johnson. “We’re still pretty green. We’ve been here for 10 months and we’re still getting our footing within the community, still working with individuals to create really cool projects. We just really liked the kitschy aspect of Rob’s idea.”
Mark Streeter
Malin Johnson at the Dupe Shop.
Johnson remembers the first time he became fascinated with cassettes.
“My parents had a 1990 Isuzu Trooper and the cassette deck in it had a record function. I have no idea why. It was in that truck that I recorded my first bootleg of my favourite songs.”
After discovering that his local radio station would play independent Canadian music overnight to fulfill its CanCon quotas, Johnson would sit in the truck overnight recording the FM dial, learning about new music from all over the country and curating a collection of his favourites.
He’s nurtured that enthusiasm into the Dupe Shop at 1185 Bloor West, the Toronto storefront of Montreal-based cassette manufacturer duplication.ca. Clients can plan their cassette release in-person, with over-the-counter access to raw materials and expert services like mastering and graphic design.
It’s also a retail operation, selling cassettes, zines and stereo equipment, and an event space that hosts pop-up shows and monthly mixtape-making parties.
“We have kids come in who have never released a cassette or even seen one. We’re already seeing a huge boom in the cassette market – we had 600 orders a year a while back, and now we have 600 a month – and having a storefront is showing people that, yes, there is a cassette revival going on, but also that we’re here to stay.”
Both Nicholls and Johnson agree that while The Summer Bootlegger is about reviving a tradition, it’s also about empowering listeners to seek out and cherish live experiences through their own acts of documentation and handcrafted artifacts.
“You buy a cassette recorder,” Johnson says, “and you can either hit ‘record’ or you can hit ‘play.’ This incentivizes you to go and do something creative.”
“The fact that I’ve hung on to most of my tapes means that I really get to time travel,” adds Nicholls. “To share that experience with other people is the overarching goal.”
music@nowtoronto.com | @streetsbag
