A new event on the local music scene will soon be a television fixture as well.
Okotoks promoter Rick Harding has crafted his A Room Full of Sound concert series into a Shaw TV Calgary series to begin airing in November. Harding, who has never been a musician himself, has great respect for many of the performers who play regularly in the foothills.
After being a part of the renowned Okotoks Christmas Concert the last few years Harding said he wanted to give these talented musicians another opportunity to showcase their music.
“The last three years I have videotaped the Okotoks Christmas concerts and put a DVD together just basically for the artists,” he said. “We didn’t sell them or anything like that. They were just for the artists so they could use them to promote themselves or to see where they wanted to improve their stage performance.”
Not long ago Harding began to feel the annual holiday music show just wasn’t enough for him.
“I started to wonder why I could go to these Christmas concerts and watch all these fabulous musicians but I couldn’t watch them any other time of the year in Okotoks,” he said. “So that’s what got me thinking, ‘why not do a concert series?’
There was one A Room Full of Sound concert at Rotary Performing Arts Centre (RPAC) in late March featuring local artists such as blues stylist Darren Johnson. It served as a test run for the new slate of nine monthly shows, beginning Sept. 24, to take place at the Okotoks United Church.
“I’m looking forward to the new room,” Johnson said of the venue change. “I liked the old room (RPAC) but it’s hard for people to sit there for three hours in those wooden pews. It’s also a little tough when you’ve got a 100 people in there. It’s pretty crowded. If you have 50 people it’s probably fine.”
With a much larger stage and seating for up to 225 the United Church was deemed to be a more viable location for the upcoming run of concerts, which will feature three acts each. The performances will be video recorded then edited into Shaw’s 26 segment television series.
Johnson, who will perform in A Room Full of sound show on Nov. 26, admitted he had a role in bringing A Room Full of Sound to television.
“The idea had come up that he (Harding) wanted to do this series and he wanted to turn it into a pilot he could pitch to different stations,” he explained. “I just came up and said, ‘why not Shaw?’ They are kind of in the infant stage of doing their thing and they need programming. You can only watch so much burning log at Christmas.”
The Sept. 24 concert will feature the husband and wife act TWO comprised of Dwight and Lisa Forseth of Okotoks. It will also present Bragg Creek’s Sarah Troy Clark and Longview’s The Traveling Mabels.
Subsequent shows will highlight the likes of 16-year-old Cochrane folk performer Lucas Chaisson, Okotoks’ own country songstress Tanya Ryan and Calgary Celtic band Tir Na N’Og.
Johnson said he is hoping the concerts will attract good crowds and build awareness of the amount of musical talent in southern Alberta. The local blues man said he would like to see the day when Okotoks could support it’s own outdoor summer music festival featuring a diverse roster of homegrown artists.
“I’d love to have something at the ball stadium,” he said. “That’s a wonderful little stadium and they (the Okotoks Dawgs baseball team) only use it a handful of weeks each year. I think it would be logical thing to have something start as a one-day festival and just have 10 acts or so. I think it would be great and I think our community is big enough to support it.”
While an Okotoks summer music festival at Seamen Stadium has yet to materialize the A Room Full of Sound concert series and TV show are about to become a reality. Information on featured artists, tickets and how Alberta musicians can be a part of the series can be found at www.aroomfullofsound.com
