By Aviva Lev-Aviv

Demo Magazine recently had the pleasure of speaking with U of T alumnus Jonny Dovercourt, founder of the independent music forum Wavelength and upcoming Wavelength Music Festival (February 13-16). Check out what he had to say about the running the series, picking bands and what else is in the works for Wavelength.

Demo: Where did the idea for the Wavelength music series come from and why did you decide to make it happen?

Jonny Dovercourt: It started as an artist run collective, created by a group of independent musicians who were all playing in a broad coalition of bands in the late 90’s. There were some connections through U of T and the radio station CIUT, but mostly it was just people who met socially through going to concerts, putting on shows together and putting out records. It just came from a sense of frustration that everyone felt in [the] lack of opportunities for visibility and reaching a wider audience. In the late 90s, if you were playing in a Toronto-based indie band…there was such little external support or interest. It was really hard to break out of the city so everyone kinda felt like we were stuck in this cycle of playing the same venues, for the same people, and it being really hard to get reviews or much media coverage. So we decided to…turn this challenge into an opportunity because we felt that, despite these challenges, there was a lot of talent here that wasn’t getting recognized and needed to be celebrated. So we recognized that need, and we wanted to create something…so that we could celebrate local music culture.

D: What has been the most rewarding part of founding Wavelength?

JD: I think just creating memorable experiences for people, and creating those kind of magic moments that last a lifetime. I know, it sounds cheesy (laughs). But memorable experiences, and also connecting people. Because Wavelength is such a community-oriented and community-celebrating experience, we bring people together. There have been couples that met at Wavelength events, and gotten married, and had babies. There have been people who have proposed to their fiancées at Wavelength. So, that element of creating this environment that brings people together and connects them through music. I think that’s the most rewarding part of it.

D: What has been the most challenging?

JD: Oh you know, I think money is always the biggest challenge – there’s never a lot to go around, and Wavelength has been a passion project for us for a long time.  Only recently, in the last year, have we actually grown until the point where we have enough funding where we can actually start paying for staff to run it, and to pay our bands better. For a long time it was pay what you can admission only, and we had no grants or sponsorship in the beginning. We’re still modest – we’re what would be termed a small arts organization – and we’re competing for audience’s attention with other arts organizations and other promoters who have multi-million dollar budgets. So it’s sort of the challenge of being the little guy, of not having a ton of money to spend on big advertising campaigns, and of not being able to pay huge fees [and] being able to bring in big names. I mean, we’re small, and that’s always going to be a challenge, but I think we make that into a virtue, in terms of our accessibility.

D: What are a few qualities that a good concert organizer must possess?

JD: A good concert organizer needs to be able to think on their feet, be able to rock a budget really well, be able to look at a room and count heads really quickly and estimate how full it is. They need to be patient with flaky artists, they need to have grace under pressure, they need to be patient and not get stressed out easily. They need to multitask like a boss, they need to…possess a valid driver’s licence… (laughs). I feel like I’m giving a job description here. You basically have to be a star multi-tasker and be able to do a bit of everything.  It’s almost like you need to be a rock band veteran who has a degree in accounting. And you gotta be punctual, and have a nice personality. It’s sort of like being a party host – you need to make people feel welcome. It’s also a bit of being a radio DJ – you need to know how to put together a good flow of bands and program. And you need to know lots of people, so you need to be outgoing, especially if you’re just starting out.

D: How do you decide which bands and venues you want to work with?

JD: It really changes from show to show – sometimes there’s a concept behind the show, sometimes you’ll build a bill around one band you’re excited about. Sometimes it’s just about helping out someone who’s coming from out-of-town, and then finding suitable locals to build a bill around them. And sometimes you discover a new venue and then curate a line-up of bands that are gonna work really well and suit the atmosphere and…specifications of a certain space. In terms of how we find bands, it’s usually bands that we discover ourselves, or through reading blogs and getting recommendations from people we know and trust. But we still do book some bands that submit to play – we have an open submission policy and we don’t charge for submissions, so people just have to email us if they want to play.

D: Wavelength has a reputation of hosting bands that go on to be wildly successful – Broken Social Scene and Feist have both played for the series. Any bands this year you predict will follow a similar path?

No, I don’t make those kind of predictions…that’s like playing the lottery. The joke I make when people ask me that question is that there used to be this category in the Junos called “Most Promising New Artist,” and it was the kiss of death. Whoever got that Juno, their career went down the tubes after that. It ends up putting too much pressure on people…you don’t want to have that kind of pressure on you in the early days of your career, because the music business is really a tough business and there are so many factors beyond your control. But we’re equally excited about all the artists and since it’s our annual anniversary festival, it’s the stuff we’re most excited for from the year. So I would…put money on anyone going on to have future success.

D: What’s one of your favourite memories from a Wavelength show or festival?

JD: Well, Wavelength anniversary festival often falls over the Valentine’s Day weekend, because Wavelength started on February 13. If Valentine’s Day falls on the weekend we’ll usually have a more anti-Valentine’s Day event, but since Wavelength is all about the love and the community, we embrace the cheesiness…to a certain extent. So at our fourth anniversary in 2004, we did one night at Club Rockit, which is now closed, but it had a wrap-around balcony so you could overlook the stage from above. So that year, unknown to me, some other Wavelength people organized a balloon drop – they blew up a bunch of balloons and dropped them at the beginning of one of the bands. It was just one of those incredible moments where I lost my mind because I didn’t know it was happening so it was this amazing surprise. Balloons came down everywhere, went over the band, went over the crowd, and everyone just went crazy.

D: Where is Wavelength headed next?

JD: There’s a lot of different things we want to do – we’re in the process of re-developing our website, we’re developing our board of directors, and we’re working on a new event to fill the void of the ALL CAPS Island Festival. In the shorter term future, we have a ton of shows in the works for spring and early summer that we’re pretty excited about. There’s gonna be a sequel to All Toronto’s Parties, which was an event we did in November in collaboration with five other promoters, so we’re working on that for May. I’m also working on a show that I’m doing in collaboration with a hip hop promoter, Dalton Higgins, in April. We’re doing another North by Northeast showcase in June, and right now we’re just working on doing some Wavelength showcases at some out of town festivals in the summer.

You can catch this year’s Wavelength Music Festival beginning on Thursday, February 13 until Sunday, February 16. More information can be found here.