Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Yola, Nathaniel Rateliff, Tony Joe White, Billy F Gibbons, Lucas Nelson, and JEEN

By Will McGuirk

“This song is about a celebration of being awake from the nightmare supremacist paradigm. Truly alive, awake and eyes finally wide open and trained on your path to self-actualisation. You are thinking freely and working on undoing the mental programming that has made you live in fear. It is about standing for ourselves throughout our lives and real change coming when we challenge our thinking.” - Yola

“I wrote "Better Drugs" eight months after watching the world burn, with everything so exposed and gross. Like we had all lost too many pieces of ourselves to put back together or something...I wondered how fundamental it was, like how broken are we, you know?” - JEEN

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Art Bergmann, Daniel Lanois, Chad VanGaalen, Tony Joe White, Jitensha, and spotlight on Triptides

By Will McGuirk

“Since the advent of social media, and with cameras everywhere, everybody now knows about police killings, the plague and climate catastrophe, and who these purveyors of this nightmare are. Who needs sci-fi anymore when we're living in the best Philip K. Dick novel ever?” - Art Bergman

“Our goal was to be a force for good with these songs. We wanted to remind people not to let the world steal their joy, to remind them that even during a global pandemic, it’s our responsibility to protect our spirits and find ways to keep on dancing, keep on singing, keep on teaching, keep on loving.” - Daniel Lanois

“I’ve been meditating on the nature of resilience, endurance, and grace more deeply since becoming a mother. I was trying to bridge the divide and embrace shame and my inner divinity equally with this piece…” - Allison Russell

“Go out into nature instead of watching the video” - Chad VanGaalen

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Slowcity.ca Open Mic with Chad VanGaalen, The Strumbellas, Valerie June, Tami Neilson, Amythyst Kiah, Cadence Weapon, Matt Berninger, Tony Joe White, Maggie Szabo, and Art d'Ecco

By Will McGuirk

Big guns, big lungs, big sounds, big ideas showed up for this Open Mic on this night here in ShwaRawk City. We always have room for the emerging voices and always happy to share those voices on this platform, thats the being an all of what we do really, but when the name kats come by, well, there’s just as much room for those folks too and we appreciate the support. Listen and learn kids, and if you haven’t begat a band go begat a band right now.

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“Black Myself is the first song I’ve written that was confrontational. I’d always made it a point to sing songs that anybody could relate to, but this was something that had been welling up inside me for a long time. The reception of the song so far has given me hope that there are people out there who are ready to confront the shared trauma of racism, to look within ourselves and see how we might be perpetuating racist beliefs, and to do what is needed to create equality for all people.” - Amythyst Kiah

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