BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - March 2016

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WORKING FOR THE WEEKEND with Matt Owchar of Blueprint Events by Glenn Alderson Photo by Sarah Whitlam Matt Owchar dedicates his day life to making sure your nightlife is the best it can be. He got his start in the music industry as a DJ and can still be seen behind the decks from time to time, spinning choice cuts late in to the night as Expendable Youth. During the day Owchar keeps regular office hours as talent buyer for Fortune Sound Club and marketing manager for Blueprint Events, one of the largest entertainment, lifestyle and events organizations in Western Canada. This month Blueprint is hosting their annual Seasons Festival, a multiday/multi-venue electronic music festival stacked with that Blueprint caliber of entertainment we’ve come to expect. As lead marketer and assistant buyer for Seasons, Owchar has been pulling double duty lately but we managed to track him down to pick his brain about music and the Vancouver nightlife community that he has become such an integral part of. BeatRoute: What does an average day look like for you at the Blueprint office? Matt Owchar: The Blueprint office happens to be a central location where our team convenes on a daily basis, but we’re all pretty much working on keeping the machine going every waking hour. The music industry never sleeps, so to speak, so neither do we. BR: Do you ever find it difficult juggling your nightlife with your day life? MO: Of course. Inherently going out all the time and working a day job are diametrically opposed to one another. After awhile though, the novelty wears off and you begin treating going out like a job itself. There’s obviously still a lot of fun involved - I get to book and see artists I personally enjoy listening to, meet new people all the time, plus I still actively DJ. There’s also a youthful energy in our industry that helps keep us all young in spirit. Also, I’ve discovered in recent years that you basically have to engage in rigorous physical exercise a few times a week to maintain mental and physical health, plus combat the wear and tear on your body from staying out late, drinking, so on and so forth. BR: What kind of music do you listen to at the office? Is it different from the music you find yourself listening to at the club? MO: When I can I usually listen to mellower mixes or rap mixtapes. Recently I’ve been super into Young Thug’s “I’m Up” but I’m a fan of Ben UFO’s mixes both because he’s an incredible DJ and for track discovery. I also enjoy Derek Duncan’s Leisure series and have been trying my best to dig into the LibraMix.org catalogue as much as I can. BR: What are some of the best things about your job on a day-to-day basis? MO: In essence, I really do have a dream job. As someone who dreamed about working in the music industry my whole life, essentially shaping my career path has been a true blessing. Discovering a new artist that you know is going on to great things is very satisfying. Discovering and promoting music and contributing to our city’s culture is just a rewarding experience in general. BR: Can you tell us a bit about what it takes to pull together a successful festival? MO: In the case of Seasons - a lot! If you think about the logistics involved, Seasons, compared to say a Contact or FVDED in the Park (both of which are insular festivals taking place in static locations), is a far bigger project in scope. I mean it’s five days, 30 events, 60+ artists, eight venues, showcases, art installations, etc. There’s some commonalities between the events, as they wouldn’t be grouped together as a festival if that weren’t the case, but at the same time, every event within the Seasons sphere has to be treated with its own care and detail. BR: What are some of the things you are most excited about at Seasons Festival this year? MO: An overall more cerebral, mature and experimental lineup - from the main event all the way down to the small club shows. It’s something we’ve slowly been building towards, but it was important for us to learn the ins and outs of running a multi day festival first. Now that we have that foundation, curating and booking more in line with our personal tastes and vision of what we’ve wanted the festival to be has become the priority for Seasons. Also, the addition of very credible curators like Derek Duncan (Pacific Rhythm) and Malcolm Levy (Hybridity) is exciting to me. I’ve been friends with Derek for a long time and we’ve always had this mutual respect for one another despite operating in different lanes as promoters and DJs. We’re essentially using Seasons as a pilot program to bring our collective expertise together to offer something unique that will hopefully open up awareness and discovery from people across various scenes in Vancouver. BR: When Seasons is over, how are you going to spend your first day off? MO: Probably in a shallowly dug grave somewhere. Just kidding! I’ll be at home, asleep. For more information about Seasons Festival, which takes place March 23 to 27 at various venues, visit www.seasonsfestival.com 4 MARCH 2016 •
MUSIC PROTOMARTYR the bender before the benediction Eight Mile is a road in Detroit Michigan that runs east to west. Stretching from the I-94 to the city’s western point, it acts as a border separating the predominantly African American core from the more white, upper-class suburban neighbourhoods that crowd the north. Only two miles closer to the Detroit River sits the much less culturally significant “six-mile” and a slightly more stabilized community called Nichols where Protomartyr frontman Joe Casey was born and maintains residence in the childhood house he grew up in. “It’s one of those things where you don’t really know what other people think about where you live until much later,” Casey says about his Motor City upbringing. “I didn’t think it was odd that the majority of my friends were black or that the majority of the city was black. I just assumed all of America was African American.” As he talks to BeatRoute about his band’s most recent album, The Agent Intellect, and their upcoming tour, Casey relaxes at home eating a pączki donut; not because he’s Polish but because it’s Fat Tuesday and that’s just what you do in Detroit on the day before Lent. People line up for hours to get their hands on these pączkis; they start drinking early in the morning and dance to polka music late into the night. To celebrate this bender before the benediction, Casey is laying relatively low, enjoying a brief moment of downtime in between tours. His band has been actively on the road for the past two years since signing with Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art in 2014 for their sophomore release, Under Color Of Official Light. Protomartyr has come a long way from their unrefined beginnings in the city’s garage rock underground, playing basement shows where Casey would join guitarist Greg Ahee, drummer Alex Leonard, and bassist Scott Davidson for a portion of each set, walking on stage from the back of the room to transform the dynamic of the three twenty-somethings who round out the band. “We were really kind of a hacky band with a lot of gimmicks originally,” Casey says. “The original idea for Protomartyr was the guys were going to help me record a quote-unquote ‘solo album’ or a single and then we thought it would be funny if when they were playing shows, they would play two Protomartyr songs and then I would walk up, sing a song and then leave. But all that stuff sort of fell by the wayside when we started taking things more seriously.” Protomartyr might be his first band but Casey is very serious about his craft as a lyricist, and as a frontman this passion shows, despite the fact he doesn’t exactly look the part. Not that the singer of a post punk band needs to fit a certain mold, but Casey’s casual attire is so perplexingly heavy on the dad vibes that there’s even a blog dedicated to his style. Descriptions Of Joe Casey is a Tumblr page that compiles comparisons music journalists have scrambled to use in an attempt to wrap their heads around his on-stage aesthetic. One refers to him as an inverse Bono, another compares him to the crazy guy at the bus station, and another to a bad ass middle school English teacher. Casey doesn’t seem too bothered by it though. “The sad thing is, there was one that said I looked like a Belgian lorry driver and we recently played in Belgium and I looked around and I can tell you right now that I really do look like a Belgian lorry driver. Saw a lot of guys that look like me. But I think I look pretty cool,” he says with a laugh. The dad-like attire of frontman Joe Casey doesn’t make Protomartyr’s music any less menacing. by Glenn Alderson Though being almost ten years older than the rest of his bandmates puts Casey in a peculiar position, at the end of the day it’s all part of the dynamic that makes Protomartyr so unique. “For this to have come off as well as it did, I needed Greg, Alex, and Scott to come together and do it. The more we go along, I’m pleasantly surprised by how good they are. I kind of lucked in to that. So it’s going to be really sad when I fire them all,” he says, maintaining his cheeky disposition. “They’re getting too old now. Sorry guys.” Protomartyr performs on March 8 at Fortune Sound Club photo: Zak Bratto Music • MARCH 2016 5
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BeatRoute Magazine B.C. print e-edition - March 2016

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