This here has been shown on Eastlink Magazine during 2 separate weeks in 2009

ELMAG – Feature – TAB.mov

Dale Leckie produced a little Folk-u-mentary for East Link Magazine….

Kimberly Smith and his fellow travelers from www.moviegames.ca made the best of the AMP Festival by assisting as event reporters…

AMP Festival Promo Clip featuring photos by Amanda Ferguson, Bruce Dienes, Ming Sam, David Gallant and others. Depicted are Thieves of DAGDAD, Ariana Nasr, Caleb Miles, Dungaree Brothers, Ian Sherwood, Scott Hupman, Ryan Hupman, Ronley Teper, Bob Ardern…

The photos in this vid taken by Bruce Dienes, Ming Sam, Amanda Ferguson, David Gallant. Depicted AMP 2009 participants are John Kavanagh, Jack McDonald, Chris Robison, Adam Bazinet, Cheryl Gaudet, Heather Kelday, Mike Aube, Rocket d’Eon, Sean Peory, Ryan Hupman, Scott Hupman, Ariana Nasr, Andy Flinn, Kimberly Smith, Mike Milne, Kate Adams, Darren Arsenault, Aran Silmeryn, Denise Aspinall, Paul Marshall, Carter Lake.

Between May 8 and May 10 this year, a brand new music festival is going to take place in Wolfville: The Acoustic/Alternative Music Producers (AMP) festival. “Why would that be necessary?”, I asked myself more than a few times already. Acoustic could be quite an elastic term, and most things are an alternative to most other things…

So I spent some time talking to several people involved in the AMP festival. Most of them are professional performing or recording artists, or both. Some are media folks, venue representatives, photographers, film makers, actors, poets, legal experts, politicians or “organizers”. Turns out, apparently, that there are many, mostly legal and financial impediments to selling concert or movie tickets, posting YouTube videos, printing photography books or distributing films, DVD’s and/or CD’s. Independent artists are typically too busy struggling. They’re unlikely to solve or circumvent the problems associated with media production. There are intellectual property issues, recording costs, photographic model releases, various forms of copyrights, mechanical rights, synchronization rights, credits, remuneration, accounting… feeling nauseous yet?

In the media and entertainment industry the money goes to whoever secures all required rights, to the pushers of pencils, to the providers of the (cash?) “advance”. Traditionally production problems are solved like this: One single (legal) person buys the services of camera operators, writers performers and writers, sound engineers and others. That (legal) person also purchases the required rights and permissions for background music, songs and “logos”, and, as a result, owns and controls the entire production. A workable arrangement if you’re included, compensated and credited. In these parts, where water, ideas and air apparently can be “owned”, people with “legal tender” thus control people who create or invent things.

The AMP music festival, on the other hand, works like this: Performers, songwriters and composers, including some of the valleys very finest, will gather during several (ticketed) festival events, and perform exclusively self-composed material to which they own all intellectual property rights. The ticket money collected from the audience will pay for venue rental, advertising, professional sound recording, photography, and the operation of multiple video-cameras. It will also cover some of the expenses incurred by the performers and festival staff. All net profit from the festival will be evenly divided, as honorarium, among performers and festival staff alike.

In the center of it all, the festival facilitates the bartering of artistic services by creating contract relationships with performers, photographers, audio and video professionals, staff and audience (ticket conditions). Performers end up with the right to commercially use all photo, audio and video footage of their performance. Photographers will end up with the right to freely profit from any photographs they took during the ticketed events. The festival will be allowed to use one composition per performer for compilation CD’s or DVD’s and promotion.

But most of all, the Audience will experience some of the most intense performances by some of the finest independent talent. Performers are very likely to perform some of their newest and hottest material in order to produce the newest and hottest media possible. I’ll be there for sure, lemmetellya!

Yes, 2008 was a blast. We (t@b) released our first ever live concert DVD called “t@b, Live at the Whittle“. We toured Ontario on summer and played the Canadian Deep Roots Music Festival in Wolfville (with TripALady). We recorded a whole bunch of new songs live, for the first time, and released a brand new Compact Disc on December 8, 2008.

We finished the year as members of TripALady, and that’s how we started it: The video is from our New Years Eve Party 2008/09…

On the 3rd of January, 2009, Ariana and myself will be playing with Sara Nasr as “Sara Nasr and the great Debauchery” or similar at the Al Whittle Theatre. The event is called “Night Kitchen Refreshing”. Sara Nasr is our sister and an amazing performer and member of another duet in our family….