MUSIC

MUSIC Small Town Artillery gives rock a funky injection

by Steve Newton

Tom van Deursen figures he’s been playing music with his kid brother Derek for about 20 years now. They grew up near the small town of Kaslo, B.C., and had caught the music bug by the time they hit double digits.

“We liked a lot of rock ’n’ roll,” van Deursen says on the line from Ucluelet, where he’s enjoying a few days of relaxation. “We were listening to all the pop punk and the pop rock—Green Day and Billy Talent and Rage Against the Machine. But we also had my parents’ record collection, so Asleep at the Wheel and the Blues Brothers soundtrack and Supertramp, and then it all just started to mash together.”

Over time, those early influences led to the formation of Small Town Artillery, a band that thrives on the DIY approach the brothers developed early on when it came to finding gigs. As teenagers, they would put on their own shows in the high-school gym, at the skatepark, and for friends’ weddings and birthdays.

“There was only one music venue in Kaslo that ran year-round,” van Deursen says, referring to the historic Langham theatre. “There was a healthy sort of love for the arts, but there wasn’t a lot of venues, so we had to kind of make our own venues as kids, and that totally reflects what we do now. That mentality really stuck around.”

One example of the van Deursens working hard to make music happen was the East Van Block Party, which they organized and hosted in September of 2019.

“Our old jam space was a place called the Rockery, and it had an alley behind it that was just perfect—like mostly businesses that were closed on a Saturday and one residence that we actually were able to pay them some money and tap into their stove outlet to run power. So we were able to throw a free festival. I went around and got sponsors, and we had about a thousand people in the alley, a bunch of bands, a licensed beer garden, and raised money for Big Brothers of Greater Vancouver. It was just great.”

One of the local acts that took part in the East Van Block Party was teenaged singersongwriter Aza Nabuko. She opened for Small Town Artillery last week when they performed as part of the Firehall Arts Centre’s Music in the Courtyard series.

“She started out as sort of like a folk-pop starlet,” van Deursen relates, “and she has morphed into a punk rock ’n’ roll queen. Her last album, Indigo, just came out a couple months ago, and she’s got a great voice and stage presence and writes really interesting, heavier music, so it fits really well with our band.”

Van Deursen, 32, handles lead vocals and guitars for Small Town Artillery, with 30-year-old Derek on drums and vocals. Other current band members include bassist Carson Webber, guitarist Kyle Vaughan, saxophonist Jen Davidson, trumpeter Jocelyn Waugh, and background vocalist Chelsea Webber. The group has released two albums and two EPs and is currently working on a third LP. Van Deursen describes the music as “anthemic rock ’n’ roll with a brass section”.

“It piques curiosity,” he says, “because anthemic rock ’n’ roll’s nothing new, but with horns it’s pretty unique. We have sort of an all-ages or world-music element just because of the brass, but it’s definitely funky rock ’n’ roll.”

One way Small Town Artillery finds the funk is through a mash-up of Michael Jackson’s “Billy Jean” and Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle With You”, which it performed last year as part of the online Kaslo Jazz Etc Festival. Van Deursen says the song combination just kinda happened.

“We were cooking up in the jam space,” he recalls, “and we just started putting down the ‘Billy Jean’ bassline and then singing, ‘Well, I don’t know why I came here tonight,’ over that. It felt so good that we just starting mashing the two songs together.”

Fooling around with other people’s material is fine, but Small Town Artillery’s main focus is its original music. Van Deursen’s songwriting skills are on display in the introspective 2019 tune “The Birds up North Are Braver”, which was written at a transitional time in his life.

“I was staying out with some friends on the Island and I just had an important person from my past sort of reappear in my life and I was asking myself, you know, ‘Can I let this love back in, in a safer and more gentle way?’ So I was trying to listen to my heart at the time, and the line, ‘I don’t need nobody, no saviour, but the birds up North are braver’ just kind of came. I have such a fascination and respect for the birds that live nearby, the ravens and the crows, and I just thought of their intuition and trying to run it against—or with—my own.”

Small Town Artillery has several B.C. shows lined up in August—including gigs in Lillooet, Tofino, Golden, and their old hometown of Kaslo—then for most of the fall and winter, they will work on finishing the new record.

“The pandemic really gave us all perspective on how we approach life on the road,” he explains. “I spent a decade between this band and another band, touring incessantly, filling up my energy tanks and then running them right to zero and becoming totally depleted and exhausted and broke and ending up back at home. So a more holistic, careful, and gentle approach to life on the road—especially as we’re all getting older—is on my mind now.” g

The core members of Small Town Artillery are Tom van Deursen (centre), Derek van Deursen (left), and Carson Webber (right); the B.C. band is working on its third album. Photo by Mary Matheson.

Small Town Artillery is currently touring B.C. with guest Aza Nabuko. You can check their concert schedule at www.smalltownartillery.com/shows.

Mauvey leaves his disciples wanting more with “9”

by Mike Usinger

If there’s any truth to the saying “the best is yet to come”, then goddamn if we don’t have something to look forward to in the coming months. At the end of Mauvey’s video for “9” one of the last things we see before things fade to a, um, purplish black is the words “to be continued”.

There’s a lot to build on. The joy of pedalling down a deserted road in a soft-violet jumpsuit while carrying a bouquet of flowers in a fancy print-adorned can.

A straight-from-left-field ascent to heaven where the angels look like they’ve just returned from a shopping spree at Blossom Market on Commercial Drive.

A pickup truck sequence where the greasepainted ADHDafflicted thing riding in the flatbed looks like the vaguely disturbing protegé of Pennywise, Pogo, and Art the Clown.

And, after a near-miss on the road between most of the parties involved, flying pizza slices, tortilla chips, lettuce, soda pop, and watermelon—even though there’s been zero indication that someone’s been holding an impromptu picnic. In the dark.

Yes, somehow in about less than a nanosecond, day to turns to night, after which our purple-’frod clown in question finds itself covered in what’s either sawed-in-half donuts or a completely demolished angel’s food cake.

As chaotic as this all sounds, “9” works a gorgeously smooth vibe that falls somewhere between soft-thump R&B and funky-indie, with a bit of Jamaican dancehall thrown in to keep things interesting.

Give props to Mauvey on the multitalented front—in audition to writing “9” and starring in the video, he also acted as co-director. This is the first installment in a multipart film series called “The Florist”, and that things are to be continued suggests that the Vancouver-via-England artist will be busy in the months ahead. Given what he’s already accomplished, we’ve got something to look forward to. g

MOVIES / SAVAGE LOVE Trans Latina sex workers drive story of Caer (Caught)

Director Nicola Mai decided to let them choose what tales should be included in a film about their lives

by Charlie Smith

Early in Nicola Mai’s film Caer (Caught), two plainclothes New York City police officers are scoping out a transgender Latina woman walking on a sidewalk in broad daylight. The cops look at a photo in their possession to confirm the identity of the woman, who has been the subject of a complaint by a neighbour.

“Sgt. Richards and Sgt. Hernandez have identified the suspect. Over,” one of them barks into the police radio.

With that, the male and female officers bound out of the car, run up to the woman as she approaches her residence, and tell her that she’s under arrest. As she’s being handcuffed, a youth, possibly her son, quickly packs a knapsack and flees.

This compelling film, part fiction and part reality, reflects the realities of transgender migrant sex workers who are under constant harassment from the state. But Caer (Caught) isn’t like others of its kind. That’s because the lead actors are all nonprofessional performers and are members of the Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo. This group defends and advocates for trans Latina migrant women. Plus, TRANSgrediendo was involved at every step of the filmmaking process, including editing.

Mai, a University of Newcastle professor of sociology, has been studying migrant sex workers for 20 years. He told the Straight by phone from Paris that he wanted to capture the complexity of their lives. So he asked them if they were to tell a story about themselves—either collectively or individually—what would it include?

“Who would be the protagonists?” Mai continued. “What would happen? And I think everything flows from that.”

Caer (Caught) took two years to complete and is being presented at this month’s Vancouver Queer Film Festival. The theme of police surveillance and harassment crops up repeatedly in the film because it forms such a powerful undercurrent in the two lead characters’ lives.

“It’s very important to know that the majority of people working in the sex industry are not victims of trafficking,” Mai emphasized.

He added that in many cases, they chose to work in this area because if offered a less exploitive situation and better income opportunities than other options. He wasn’t out to celebrate sex work—that’s clear from the legal difficulties encountered by the women. But Mai thinks that a great deal more attention should be devoted to migrant sex workers’ labour rights rather than victimhood, which is then used to justify more state repression.

“We wanted to look at the impact the criminalization of sex work had on the lives

The New York–based performers in director and sociologist Nicola Mai’s semidocumentary Caer (Caught) are all nonprofessionals who belong to Colectivo Intercultural TRANSgrediendo.

And the smallest thing could present the biggest risk.

– Anoushka Ratnarajah

of the people directly concerned,” he said.

The artistic director of Out on Screen, Anoushka Ratnarajah, told the Straight by phone that there’s been a growing number of people trying to enter the United States because they are fleeing the effects of colonization, climate change, and corporate resource extraction. And a fair number are queer and trans folks.

“They find themselves in a country that’s supposed to be safer for them but the only way for them to survive is to do work that isn’t legal in that country,” she said. “There are really complex conversations between them about what their experiences of ‘trafficking versus choice’ are, how they have conversations with their partners and their friends about their work, and it being such a dangerous job because the cops and ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] are constantly watching them. And the smallest thing could present the biggest risk.” g

Caer (Caught) will be screened at the Vancouver Queer Film Festival, which runs online from Thursday (August 12) to August 22.

Avoidance the best path for former kissing cousins by Dan Savage

b I FELL IN love with my second cousin about four years ago at a family reunion. (I hadn’t laid eyes on him since I was a kid!) I was 15 when we met, he was two years older, and we were in a long-distance relationship for three years. We ended things a year ago and I’m going to be seeing him for the first time since our breakup at another family reunion this fall. He’s bringing his new girlfriend.

Do I have a responsibility to make her feel comfortable? Do I avoid him and risk family drama? I’ve done so much to work through this, Dan, and I’d love to see this as a healthy exercise in staying true to myself. I’m hoping it was just the usual heartache you had to work through after this relationship ended—by which I mean to say, COUSINS, I’m hoping your ex-boyfriend (and current second cousin) wasn’t emotionally or physically abusive and you weren’t working through trauma. And I’m hoping you didn’t get too much grief about dating your second cousin from other family members. (First cousins can legally marry all over the world!)

Assuming your ex was only guilty of breaking your heart (a risk we take when dating anyone), you should approach this family reunion like any mature adult who finds herself at a wedding or a funeral or a holiday party with an ex. You slap a smile on your face and say hello to your ex, you tell his new girlfriend it’s nice to meet her, and then you avoid both of them for the rest of day. If you’re worried about getting trapped in a conversation with either or both of them, COUSINS, and don’t have it in you to say, “I’m sorry, you’ll have to excuse me, I gotta go take a monster shit,” then deputize someone to run interference for you. Your designated interferer should stay by your side as much as possible, COUSINS, and if you get separated and they see you trapped in an extended conversation with your ex or his new girlfriend, COUSINS, it’s their job to swoop in and rescue you.

from previous page

And if family members gave you grief about dating your second cousin—if you were subjected to more than some gentle awkwardness-acknowledging, tensionreleasing ribbing about the situation— and that grief was the source of whatever you had to work through since breaking up with the guy who was essentially your high-school boyfriend (a guy you were always gonna break up with at some point), COUSINS, then this reunion is an opportunity to tell those people to go fuck themselves.

b SHOULD I WORRY about my son who is 24 years old, straight, cute, has friends, and is also a virgin?

- Mulling Over Moments

You can tell a mom not to worry but a mom is still gonna worry, MOM, so you go right ahead and worry. But if your son knows he can talk with you about anything and he’s chosen not to talk with you about this, MOM, and if your son isn’t upset about it or otherwise miserable, leave him alone.

If he has friends—and you say that he does—then he has peers he can confide in about his love life, assuming he wants one, and open up to about his sexual inexperience, if he regards it as a problem, MOM, which he may not.

b I’VE BEEN READING you for many years. You have great language skills. But your use of “gonna” and “wanna” for “going to” and “want to” just comes across as adolescent and condescending. You’re too old to be using that sort of lingo, Dan. Please respect yourself and your readers.

- Griping Over Nauseatingly Nonsensical Affectations

You’re gonna hafta pry those “gonnas” and “wannas” outta my cold, dead hands, GONNA, if you wanna get ‘em outta my column.

b THREE MONTHS AGO, I came out as polyamorous in an email I sent to my immediate and my entire extended family, because I’m done asking one of my partners to pretend he’s “our roommate” when my parents or siblings come to visit, and it hurts me so much to exclude him from family events and holidays. (And it hurts him too.) My whole family is getting together over Labour Day Weekend and all three of us are planning to go. Is there any way to avoid awkwardness?

- Bringing All My Boyfriends Inside

Nope.

P.S. They’ll get used to you being poly; you’ll get used to them knowing you’re poly; and it’ll get less awkward over time. But there’s no way to avoid that first blast of pure awkwardness. Instead of trying to avoid it, BAMBI, try to have a sense of humour about it.

b I WAS RAISED in a conservative batshit household and equally batshit church. The youth leader, who was my best friend’s stepdad and who I viewed as a father figure, was a sexual predator. When I was seventeen, he started asking me for sex and also told me he’d thought of me “that way” since I was twelve.

I found out later he got a woman with a mental disability pregnant, and my childhood best friend has hinted to me that he assaulted her as well. Much to my rage, this guy’s wife, this church, and even my own parents never went after this guy, legally or otherwise. Outrageously, he’s still a member in good standing of this same church. A few days ago, a different childhood friend died. He was my best friend’s cousin, and we all grew up together. Obviously, this asshole will be at the funeral. I’m determined to be there to support my friend, but how do I interact with this predator without causing a scene? I don’t want to make this sad reunion about me, but I refuse to entertain this guy in any way. Any thoughts on telling him to go fuck himself?

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Your childhood best friend dropped hints about being assaulted by this man—her stepfather—but she never actually came out and told you that. But you know for a fact that he preyed on a mentally disabled woman and that he sexually harassed you when you were a minor. And like so many sexual predators on altars, this asshole got away with it. There haven’t been any

consequences, no accountability, and he’s still in a position—a position of spiritual authority—where he can (and probably does) abuse and exploit other vulnerable women and girls. Ugh. I’m pro telling this asshole to go fuck himself at the funeral—loudly—but there’s something you could do before the funeral. While you can’t control what your parents or this church have done or failed to do, FUNERAL, and while your childhood best friend’s story isn’t yours to tell—and you don’t know or don’t officially know the full story—you can tell your own story. You can report this asshole to the pious lowlifes who run this fucking church and file a police report at the same time. Oh, and make sure to let those church leaders know you filed a police report. While there’s no guarantee they’ll act against this creep after getting a report of sexual abuse (see Catholic Church, sex abuse scandals), they’ll at least know they’re leaving themselves open to potential financial consequences if they fail to act (see Catholic Church, sex abuse scandal settlements). CHAMBAR RESTAURANT is HIRING BOH Staff. 20 -40 hours per week I’ve been to a few funerals in my time, FUNERAL, and it’s not the people at the fuLine Cook -Full-time or Part-time, great if you're neral we tend to remember—it’s the people working through your apprenticeship. 1-2 years line cooking experience required. who were there for us before the funeral info@chambar.com and after. Head home, be there for your old CHAMBAR RESTAURANT is HIRING SERVERS.Downtown -Vancouver 20 -40 hours per week. Part-time or Full-time. friend, and feel free to skip the funeral if that asshole is gonna be there. g

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Email: mail@savagelove.net. Follow Dan on Twitter @ FakeDanSavage. Website: www.savagelovecast.com.

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