For folk musician Craig Cardiff, the live venue is the least of his concerns; he views the real challenge as being able to have an honest connection with his audience. The Juno-nominated artist will perform at Good Earth Café in Canmore on Saturday (March 21) at a fundraising event for Banff-Airdrie Liberal Party Candidate Marlo Raynolds, then switch gears to a more intimate performance at a house concert in Canmore on March 22.
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For folk musician Craig Cardiff, the live venue is the least of his concerns; he views the real challenge as being able to have an honest connection with his audience.
The Juno-nominated artist will perform at Good Earth Café in Canmore on Saturday (March 21) at a fundraising event for Banff-Airdrie Liberal Party Candidate Marlo Raynolds, then switch gears to a more intimate performance at a house concert in Canmore on March 22.
The Love is Louder singer/songwriter says he doesn't let political factions get in the way of his performances and only wants to provide an entertaining tour schedule.
“I've done stuff for friends that are involved in the NDP in southwestern Ontario, it's kind of a case by case basis ... and I have good friends who are within the Conservative Party,” Cardiff said. “Well here (Arnprior, Ont.), you either get really progressive or not progressive. It's more an issue of a case by case basis and this was part of the touring schedule. We looked at it and we decided to get behind it so there's nothing more to be made of it, I don't think.”
Over his career, Cardiff would often receive notes from people encouraging him to check out a venue in a certain city or town, but would get frustrated when he wouldn't hear back from establishments.
“I would reach out to the bar or venue and I wouldn't hear back and it was so discouraging,” Cardiff said. “I took a step back and realized I was the problem. Here are these communities encouraging me to perform and I was waiting on permission from the bar, so the idea with house concerts was just to go directly to the people and ask for help in organizing the show and do as much as possible from our end.”
He says the mainstream industry didn't consider house concerts as real shows and Cardiff would just shake his head, knowing the most important thing out of a live performance is just people connecting through art.
“I don't care if it's a theatre or a festival or basement, if there are people who are excited to hear music and connect, then go to them and play to them,” Cardiff said. “I feel sometimes like it's a stone soup, I have this magic stone and if you just put it out there people will help and those are the people you want to be working with anyway.
“The biggest mistake that artists make is to be so precious with their art, it's just ridiculous that these audience members have this disconnect from the musicians because obviously one doesn't exist without the other.”
Cardiff schedules his tours to make time to be with his daughter and spends as much time as he can with her by volunteering at her school.
“I like coming home on Monday, picking up my daughter from school and we have our regular week together and then she starts her week with her mom,” Cardiff said. “It's been like that for the last three or four years, it works for me and thank goodness flights are so reasonable it's all working out.
“When I first starting volunteering, teachers didn't realize I was employed as a musician and they would always ask, ‘Oh, how are you doing?' I would tell them I was doing really well, it was the year that Floods & Fires was nominated, and I finally realized that they thought I was out of work – why else would a dad have all this time to volunteer? I just work different hours and organize my work differently.”
He says the Canmore shows will offer a little bit of everything, and is excited to start sharing what he's been recently writing. Along with intimate house concerts, Cardiff has also garnered respect for being a musician who knew how to utilize digital and social media when the music industry was changing. But he said he just took the tools available to him and used them in a new way that was explained to him by older peers.
“Around 13 years ago I was opening up for the Cowboy Junkies and they had a story about them going to different places to play and they had a big container of quarters and they would keep lists of every city they were in,” said Cardiff.
“They would wake up early and call everyone to remind them they were in town and to come check out the club and I just remember thinking that was so real; everyone reaching out and connecting and this is pre-email. I like at that story of the Cowboy Junkies and the quarters and say it's just about asking and reminding people to come out.”
Visit, www.craigcardiff.com to purchase tickets for his March 21-22 concerts in Canmore.
