Erin Bond has curated the 36 song New Brunswick music sampler NB Calling for national distribution.
Matt Carter
Back in February, TwoFifteen Records founder Erin Bond announced an ambitious plan to help share the work of New Brunswick musicians with the rest of the country. As Station Manager for Fredericton’s community/campus radio station CHSR FM, she has been able to see first hand how other communities have been working to support their local artists in a similar fashion. By seeing what works and what doesn’t, she decided to put her experience to work on behalf of the music makers she loves and supports.
“I’ve worked in CHSR’s music department for many years now, and a couple of the larger stations like Lethbridge, London and Hamilton have sent out compilation CD’s of artists from their towns,” said Bond. “I thought, why not New Brunswick too? Local compilations have been created in the past, but to my knowledge, never widely distributed.”
Her initial call for submissions attracted interest from 65 artists or bands interested in being part of the project. This created the unique challenge of deciding who to include on the first release of this series which Bond named NB Calling.
“I honestly thought maybe a dozen or so [artists] would want in on this, but 65 song submissions came in and there’s no way that I could narrow that many down to fit onto one CD,” she said. “I chose the songs according to what I thought would be a current snapshot of our province and focused on being inclusive to many different communities. Represented on NB Calling Vol. 1 are artists from the Acadian, English, Indigenious, LGBTQ+, and POC communities from 11 towns across the province.”
As a result of the overwhelming response in submissions to the project, NB Calling Vol. 1 grew to become a double CD featuring music by 36 New Brunswick bands or artists.
Bond had planned for a relatively quick turnaround. Collect submissions in February and have these CDs in the mail by the end of March. The process ended up getting delayed on account of the ongoing health crisis.
“The plan was to have these mailed out to 50 campus and community radio stations across Canada by the end of March, but the COVID-19 crisis has closed most campuses and community radio stations are working with only a skeleton crew at the moment, and remotely,” said Bond, who is also recording the shows she hosts from home. “I’ve been sitting on this project for a while now, and am still unclear of when I’ll mail them out. For the time being I’m holding on to them because I don’t want them stranded in a backlog of mail once radio stations start getting back to their normal operations. I plan to email out digital advance copies to stations that will accept them.”
Now that she’s worked through a near complete cycle that involved collecting, curating, compiling and producing the first NB Calling release, Bond expects to see Vol. 2 out before the end of the year.
“I think releasing a volume a couple times per year is feasible, and we certainly have the art to support it,” she said.
Watch for the next call for submissions announcing later this year.
Track Listing:
Disc 1:
1. Chloé Breault: Quand on y pense
2. Motherhood: Bird Chrip
3. Short for Arthur: Planting SeedsSainte-Folie: Les Mayas
4. Jason Ogden: Tethered (and that’s alright)
5. Honey Gut: Unsung
6. Joey Robin Haché: Alright
7. Kill Chicago: Two Drinks Behind
8. Heat $heets: Groger
9. Jerry-Faye: Good Heart
10. Mike Bern: Apatapasiq
11. Tortise The Hare & The Millionaire: When The Blues Comes to Town
12. Chris Colepaugh: Louder
13. The Fiery: Myself
14. Smoke: Bleed
15. Diner Drugs: Rotten Eggs
16. Shades of Sorrow: Break
17. Red Usurper: Blacked on the Second Day
Disc 2:
1. Simon Daniel: Nightcrawler
2. Nebullama: The Swing
3. The Gregories: Show Your Teeth When You Smile
4. Rey D: Loyal
5. Zoe Fitch: Omnibot 563
6. Open Strum: What We Need is Love
7. CY: Acadian Dream
8. The Mighty River: Lake Mourn Party Happy
9. Ms. Thomas: Headspin feat. Sasky Mali
10. Fishstixx: Jon Hamm
11. Elephant Skeletons: Blindfold
12. Austin Atman: Walking Paranoia
13. Joel Strauss: Wildheart
14. Ryan Hillier: Apropos of Nothing
15. Menoncle Jason: Double Double
16. Chickahominy Mountain Band: Fairy Tales
17. Émilie Landry: Dans Ma Peau
18. Mandy Silk: Kiss Me Goodnight
