Calgary and GMA Canada Week, Covenant Awards: Day 2

View from Samaritan’s Purse

It was a full day in Calgary with the continuation of GMA week. Today featured a number of workshops, held at the Samaritan’s Purse building, for artists. Topics covered songwriting, keyboards and bass. One of the most interesting was “Live Stage Makeover”. Linnea Salte and her band put their live performance under the microscope of Kevin Pauls who analysed their stage performance of one of their songs. A number of changes to how the band performed. Suggestions included a short guitar solo, Linnea moving out from behind her keyboard for a portion of the song, and drawing out the overall length of the performance. Small changes, but a dramatic difference.

Dining area of First Alliance

Five separate showcases were held this evening at various churches in Calgary. I opted to attend the rock emphasis showcase at the First Alliance mega-church in the south-west corner of the city. Six bands had the opportunity to perform three songs each. Short sets were needed due to the number of bands playing.

The Silent from Moncton, NB lead off. As one of my favourite bands, I was delighted that they were available to play at GMA week while I was there.

I won’t go into a detailed description of the different bands as it is really late and I’ll be up early tomorrow to attend the radio conference seminars. It’s great having Samaritan’s Purse only steps away for the doors of the hotel I’m staying at.

Here are some photos of the bands that performed.

The Silent
Linnea Salte
Wretch Like Me
Sky Terminal
Junkyard Poets
Fresh IE

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