Downtown Hamilton will be lively with music, visual art, fashion, literature and more as Supercrawl returns for another year

A nonprofit organization founded in 2009, Supercrawl spotlights Hamilton’s vibrant arts and culture community. Taking place every year in September, the event is a weekend of artistic events and performances.  

This year’s Supercrawl features three music stages, a theatre-dance stage, a fashion tent, a family zone, a visual art zone and an author tent. Beyond all of this, Supercrawl also hosts numerous local vendors, making it a great occasion for shopping as well.  

Those interested in attending Supercrawl can see CFMU’s own Jamie Tennant moderate authors panels and discuss his own writing or they can check out the Ark Collective for local BIPOC-owned fashion businesses. Events begin in the daytime and continue into the late night. A full schedule can be found here.  

Supercrawl is a well-loved community tradition in Hamilton, but it also draws in crowds from outside the city. According to the Supercrawl website, over 200,000 people attended the event last year. The website also highlights the economic benefits of this, stating that last year’s Supercrawl had an economic impact of approximately thirty million dollars.  

For McMaster University students looking to become more involved in the Hamilton community, Supercrawl is a great starting point. Students can explore local art, music, literature, and fashion, all within a two-kilometer radius.  

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Hamilton’s Exhale Music Group was born from a desire to bring people together through free expression and thoughtfully curated events.

Over the past four years, Exhale has grown into “a multi-faceted arts facilitator; booking tours, engaging in artist development, and putting on events to support local and touring artists.” Buzzwords associated with Exhale include, but are not limited to: creativity, collaboration, and inclusivity.

I had the chance to chat with the events and promotions manager, Emily Lise. We spent some time on the phone in a busy coffee shop, while she sat comfortably at home.

Emily is one of six who play a role in this collective. Alongside Matt Carson, Dan Dell, Luke Cummins, Blake Mancini, and Taylor Heres, Lise works to keep Exhale running as smoothly as possible. Once plans are settled, dates are decided on, and people are booked, everything else seems to proceed with relative ease.

Unique to Exhale, all of their events are exclusively in nameless places — they are all at residential venues. This was inspired by the fact that when Lise started with Exhale, she was 17, and none of her friends could get into bars where the bands were playing. Bars are often inaccessible for their younger audiences.

The other factor is that there isn’t the level of intimacy that Exhale is looking for. “Sitting in a bar and waiting for a band to play doesn’t build the same kind of community as being in someone’s house would.”

Exhale got together with people like Matt Thompson, who is a big community builder in the Beasley neighborhood. He hosts shows in his house, regularly opening his doors to the community. The intimate house shows started when Exhale started bringing bands to Thompson’s house. This opened doors for their Eternal Summer series, which

With shows every few weeks, last summer Exhale hosted a number of bands at a number of locations downtown Hamilton. They sent out requests for Hamiltonians to offer their houses as venues, and their calls were answered. The positive reception proved to Exhale that their want for community building is something that Hamiltonians share.

Venues are kept secret. In order to get the address for any of their shows, you have to e-mail them. When I asked Lise why, she gave me the expected answer: as a privacy issue, Exhale looks to protect the homeowners, but there’s also the mystery factor. “It gets people to reach out and say, ‘hey, I want to come to your show.’ ”

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The audience in Hamilton has continued to grow in the past four years. There were only ten people in attendance at first, all mostly friends of the Exhale crew, but then those friends invited their friends, and so on. Word of mouth was important, because it reached Hamiltonians and visitors to the city.

Exhale’s last event, held this past Saturday, had a truly all-ages audience. There were senior women sitting behind 17-year-olds at the secret venue, which isn’t something the usual show-goer sees.

“The ability to create isn’t depression, it’s the inability to exhale.”

I asked Lise what the future of Exhale looked like, and she excitedly spoke quickly and backtracked over what she was saying, purely because of all of the exciting things planned. Exhale just finished calls for submissions for this year’s Eternal Summer, which she told me is “going to be bigger and more fun than last year’s.” In addition to this summertime-show-crawl, Exhale’s other big event is their fourth anniversary party in April.

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Aside from the larger events, Lise said there are a number of shows coming up in the next few months. Names like Vulva Culture, Kurt, Jaunt, Esmerine, and Foxes in Fiction, to name a few, are popping up on posters around town. She told me that a lot of their plans are under wraps, and was hesitant to disclose more.

As a final piece, I asked her how Exhale got its name. Lise told me that it came from the collective’s founder, Carson, and his struggle with having an inability to create. She told me the story of Carson sitting by a fire with friends, kind of feeling down, talking to his friends about depression and how it affects your ability to create things. “His friend was saying the ability to create isn’t depression, it’s the inability to exhale.” The name just seemed to fit with Carson’s vision. Everyone in the Exhale group is breathing into the project everything they can’t do outside of it, putting what they can into their project creatively.

As a member of the community they are trying to foster and solidify, I can safely say that they are answering a call Hamilton didn’t know it was asking, and I trust that they are the group to do it.

Photo Credit: Vannessa Barnier

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By: Emily Scherzinger

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Are You Alone? - Majical Cloudz

Best Song: “Downtown”

Soft, deep, and sweeping music for walking through rainstorms during existential crises. Prepare for tears to be washed away by rain.

Venue/Date: Toronto, The Garrison on January 15, 2016.

 

 

 

 

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Coming Home - Leon Bridges

Best Song: “Coming Home”

If you’ve ever listened to 1960s blues and liked it, now is your chance to see someone actually perform it — Bridges has the sound of a modern day Otis Redding.

Venue/Date: Toronto, Massey Hall on March 10, 2016

 

 

 

 

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Emotion - Carly Rae Jepsen

Best Song: “All That”

She’s known for that annoying song, “Call Me Maybe,” but her latest album, Emotion, takes us back to the best part of the 80s — the sweet pop that makes you feel like you just ate a huge bag of candy on a summer day.

Venue/Date: Hamilton, FirstOntario Centre on April 16, 2016.

Disclaimer: She’s touring with Hedley, which is less than stellar, but it’s worth going to see her and then leaving when Hedley takes the stage.

 

 

 

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Emotional Mugger - Ty Segall

Best Song: “Goodbye Bread”

Best described as super weird garage rock, but Segall is so much more than that. You need to listen to his music while lying alone in a snow bank drunk after kissing the person you’re just starting to have feelings for. Trust me.

Venue/Date: Toronto, Danforth Music Hall on March 4, 2016.

 

 

 

 

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Thank Your Lucky Stars - Beach House

Best Song: “Elegy to the Void”

Beach House may usually be the perfect music to listen to during the dreaded descent into Canadian winter, but their latest album is a lot more accessible for all emotional states. It sounds like something you’d make in your parents’ basement and nostalgically listen to five years later.

Venue/Date: Toronto, Danforth Music Hall on March 5, 2016.

 

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Sela Dor

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“Come with me,” I begged my cousin.

“I really don’t feel like it,” she says. “Just go by yourself, you’ll be fine.”

As silly as it was, I really didn’t want to go to a concert by myself. I even contemplated not going, despite the fact that I loved the artist - Lights - and didn’t want to miss it.
In the end, I dragged myself there on my own.

It also happened to be the first concert I have ever been to. At first, the discomfort of not having a friend by my side, as I couldn’t find anyone who wanted to go with me, made me feel really awkward and I couldn’t enjoy the music. I was barely even listening to it.

All I could think about was how I looked to other people. I was painfully aware of every little movement I made.

As time passed, I began to relax and danced in beat (at least I think I did). I forgot about everyone else around me.

Later, I wondered why I felt so uncomfortable. As it was, I didn’t want to dance alone. In the first few moments, I was afraid of people judging me. Which doesn’t make much sense, as people were there for the music and couldn’t care less about what a random girl was doing.

I realized that I was so used to doing things with people – from restaurants to grocery stores - that it felt out of place to be doing something on my own.

As a socially awkward human being who hides in her room when too many people are over, it doesn’t really make sense that I would react that way to going somewhere on my own. I should have been okay with doing things by myself but I wasn’t. I find comfort in solitude, but this didn’t seem to apply once I stepped out of the house.

What is it about being alone that freaks people out? Rarely have I ever gone into a cafe or restaurant and seen someone sitting by themselves, unless they had a book to read or work to do.
Why are we so afraid of being judged about being alone that we have to make it seem as if we are engaged in other activities?

Why is it that every time I do see someone enjoying a quiet meal by themselves with no distraction in front of them that I think it to be extremely strange?
It is funny how we’re conditioned by society to believe that we need others in order to be able to do things.

We really don’t. It is perfectly okay to be by ourselves. We don’t need the validation of the presence of others in order to go out and have fun.
The next concert I went to by myself, I danced as if no one was watching.

Perhaps people did see how ridiculous I looked, dancing alone. Perhaps they laughed at me. But it didn’t matter. I didn’t care how I looked. I forgot about the rest of the world in that moment and in doing so, had the time of my life.

Ill Scarlett, USS and Walk Off the Earth were announced as the bands playing at McMaster's Homecoming Concert on Homecoming Weekend, Oct. 12-14.

The three bands will be performing in the Burridge Gym and tickets will cost $20, which includes admission to the football game. Tickets can also be purchased individually, $15 for students and $18 for alumni and students at the door.

Tickets will go on sale for the concert at Compass on Sept. 28 at 9 am.

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