‘Long live Big Fun!’

Local music festival returns for a second year

The organizers of Big Fun have put together a festival that includes performances by Winnipeg’s Jenny Berkel and Saskatoon’s Jeans Boots. Dylan Hewlett
The organizers of Big Fun have put together a festival that includes performances by Winnipeg’s Jenny Berkel. Jonas Hrebeniuk
The organizers of Big Fun have put together a festival that includes performances by Saskatoon’s Jeans Boots. Supplied

Huddled around a table in the warmth of Cousin’s Deli, four friends are having a few pints and pondering the blur of a year they’ve had since creating arguably the best thing to hit the Winnipeg music scene in years: Big Fun.

For those out of the loop, Big Fun is a music festival that celebrates local acts, with genres spanning from hip hop to folk to rock and everything in between.

Performances are held at various venues throughout the city - this year from Thursday, Jan. 24 to Sunday, Jan. 27.

The creative quartet behind Big Fun - Stefan Braun, Lauren Swan, David Schellenberg, and Aaron Johnston - got the ball rolling in late August 2011 and haven’t looked back since.

Braun’s long-time goal prior to the inception of Big Fun was to create a Winnipeg music festival inspired by Pop Montreal.

“I volunteered for Pop Montreal for a couple years and I loved the place,” Braun says. “We just needed somebody to give it a push, and I foolishly took that jump and rallied people together, and now we’re doing something.”

After taking a month off after last year’s festival, the crew began planning anew in March 2012, holding weekly meetings, and brainstorming which bands and venues they’d like to see participate in 2013.

Their hard work and dedication have resulted in what is probably the truest reflection of a Winnipeg festival to date - a combination of home-grown music and art, with performances at unique venues around the city that run the gamut from the Young United Church to Gio’s Nightclub.

All of this taking place in the dead of winter. You can’t get much more Winnipeg than that.

“We went through the calendar year and realized there’s something going on in almost every single month except for January,” Braun says of the organizers’ decision to host Big Fun during this blustery month. “I also kind of feel like there’s no winter festivals really ... There’s nothing that tells anybody to go out and face your fears, put on your scarf.”

Bundling up will be key this year as venue hopping between shows is going to get trickier than last year. The 2012 edition of the festival took place almost exclusively in Exchange District venues.

This year, the organizers focused on hosting each day of the festival in a different neighbourhood.

“Say on a Friday, you’re mostly going to be in Osborne Village, and Saturday you’re going to be in the downtown region,” Braun explains.

Hannah Godfrey, co-director of Ace Art Inc., a venue that’s hosting a few Big Fun events this year, agrees on the value of celebrating the artistic community downtown.

“I think the organizers of Big Fun are doing a really essential thing of bringing a music festival into the Exchange District,” she says.

“It’s an area of town that’s getting all this cultural quarter naming, but it’s this kind of grassroots stuff - where people are actually making use of the space - that’s actually bringing more people here.”

More than 200 bands applied to play at the festival, 30 of which were accepted. Swan is hoping that Big Fun will build upon its inaugural success by expanding its audience this weekend.

“We’ve got 12 shows this year, and we’ve also got more free shows,” she says. “We wanted to open up the doors to people who maybe can’t afford it. There are lots of all-ages shows. Basically everybody can come in, see a part of the festival and participate.”

Creating a buzz

New to this year’s festival are some out-of-town imports, such as Saskatchewan ramshackle rocker Jeanette Stewart, a.k.a. Jeans Boots.

Stewart likens Big Fun to the MOSO Festival in Saskatoon that she helps organize.

“It’s about creating a lot of buzz in a city that doesn’t necessarily have a huge scene. I think every city should have their own NXNE,” Stewart says.

Stewart is excited to get reacquainted with old friends and to make some new ones.

“So much of the talent that’s playing is actually bands I want to see and party with,” she says. “Cannon Bros. will be my backup band.”

“I’ve known them for a long time and we’ve talked about being a band called Jeans and Teens,” Stewart adds with a laugh. “They’re not really teens anymore I guess, but, well, they’re still teens at heart. Watching them perform makes me grin.”

The Big Fun crew is confident that unlike some other music festivals that disappear over the course of a few years, this startup is going to be around for a while.

“We’re trying to stay relevant throughout the entire year, by putting on shows, by putting on fundraisers, and just trying to stay completely in the ear of everything that’s going on in Winnipeg,” Johnston says.

Sam Smith, the music programmer at another Big Fun locale, The Windsor, isn’t worried about the festival going anywhere either.

“The tenacity of the organizers has brought this to life,” he says. “As long as that remains we need not worry about the festival going away.”

“As a venue guy, you tend to want to marry organizations like this one,” he adds.

“Long live Big Fun!”

Big Fun takes place at various venues from Thursday, Jan. 24 to Sunday, Jan. 27. Festival passes are $40 and are available at Into the Music, Music Trader and at www.ticketworkshop.com. For more information on Big Fun, follow @bigfunfestival on Twitter, visit www.bigfunfestival.com or www.bigfunfestival.bandcamp.com for free music downloads by festival performers.

Published in Volume 67, Number 17 of The Uniter (January 23, 2013)

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