Cashbox Canada participated in our first Indie Week Canada and oh what a week it was!

Continuing our journey of the Cashbox Caravan, (recently performing in France and Sweden) we had two official showcases and both were met with resounding success. In addition, our acts performed at other venues throughout Indie Week, all to great reviews and accolades.

The first Cashbox Caravan Showcase was Thursday, November 14 at the B-Side Lounge, a cozy gem of a venue with a great stage and friendly staff. A cocktail hour show from 5-7pm featured Toronto’s newest shining star Ventresca, followed up by veteran singer-songwriters Barry Stagg and Don Graham.

The Cashbox Caravan continues its journey, having stopped in France (MIDEM in Cannes, France) and Orebro, Sweden (Live at Heart Sweden) and ending our year back here in Canada at the ever-popular Indie Week 2019.

“The idea behind the travelling Cashbox Canada Caravan was to give indie artists a chance to showcase at major events and have the opportunity to perform for agents, pr people, and labels with first-class sound and on professional stages all on a global level,” says organizer Sandy Graham. “We are proud to be able to offer an alternative way of showcasing at major events where the competition for submission is so high.”

Now the third event this year of the Cashbox Caravan will be back in the country of origin for the magazine, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.

“Indie Week has given us the opportunity to bring talent from other areas in the world so we will be able to have acts from not just Canada, but Sweden, Spain and the USA,” Graham says.

The first CASHBOX CARAVAN SHOWCASE is at the cocktail hours of:
5 pm – 8 pm
Thursday November 14
B-Side Lounge (669 College St)
Doors: 5:00pm

It’s a blue-skied and sunny day and pouring out of the speakers is the most melancholic UK voice since Bert Jansch. It belongs to Kete Bowers, a Liverpudlian singer-songwriter and it’s rolling out the tunes of the current album, Paper Ships. It has a Canuck connection, produced by and featuring Michael Timmins alongside his Cowboy Junkies drummer brother Peter and released on the Current Records. The material is very much about loss, depression, fear and despair on both a community and individual level, delivered in tones reminiscent of Leonard Cohen and Townes Van Zandt.

So, four hunks of burning babe magnets, three voices entwined in celestial harmonies, two savage guitars, pumping bass and one unifying vision on drums and to date, with zero ineffective ballads which even rock.

This is Tribe Royal, musical children of Ottawa with a deep investment in the honeyed sounds of yesteryear’s amber colored folk rock as dished up by the likes of CSNY and The Byrds but not Sonny & Cher. They are all young dudes tho so they don’t get all tribute bandy about their music, just keep kickin’ it 21^st century streetwise while shaping and moulding a specific creative vision.

Which is what?

Before we get into that, the speaking voices of founder/members Chris Kerwin and Terry O'Brien are similar and their speedy, tag team style of answering questions makes it diff to figure out who’s replying. So we’ll hear the quotes as coming from the dual mind of Kerwin O'Brien.

So, the vision thing. Is Tribe Royal looking to build a distinctive sound?

Westway LAB, Portugal’s first showcase festival and professional music conference, will take place for the sixth consecutive year from 10th to 13th of April in Guimarães, Portugal. Founded in 2014 with a clear mission: to operate a cultural, social and economic transformation through music, crossing borders enabling the construction of sustainable internationalization of artists and professionals from Portugal. During the 4 day event, Guimarães becomes a music city, combining in an innovative way the realization of an event based with three dimensions: Process (artist residencies), Thought (PRO Conferences) and Product (showcases and headline concerts).